School pupils often complain about the weight of their backpacks and about pain in their backs and shoulders, but Japan's primary school children (aged 6 to 12) seem to be hit harder by this problem. Their leather backpacks - also known as randoseru - can indeed weight around 4-10kg when full and kids are looking for something lighter at the moment, a survey by Footmark, a Tokyo-based manufacturer of swimwear for schoolchildren, recently revealed.
When filled with textbooks, notebooks and stationery, the randoseru can weight almost 5kg, but some children complain about their bags being heavier and reaching almost 10kg.
Inspired by manga and anime (think for example about Hime in Kakushigoto: My Dad's Secret Ambition by Kōji Kumeta), trendsetters and fashion fans made the bag popular for adults in other countries, but the randoseru is a box-shaped backpack mainly used by Japanese kids in primary schools.
The name of the bag comes from a Dutch word - "ransel" (meaning "satchel", borrowed from the German noun "Ränzel") - dating back to the late Edo period. At the time Japan had a relationship with The Netherlands and the Japanese Army adopted the cloth bags carried by the Dutch soldiers.
In the late 1880s, Prime Minister Hirobumi Ito presented the Crown Prince (later Emperor Taisho) with a leather box-shaped bag when he entered Gakushuin Primary School. The school was the first one that started using the bags and, from there, the trend spread.
In the 1950s the randoseru backpacks were made of leather and weighed almost 2kg. Traditionally, randoseru bags were black for the boys and red for the girls, but manufacturers started adding new colours or special finishes and now they are available in a wide range of shades and even in two-tones.
Besides, manufacturers moved on from leather and started favouring synthetic materials such as Clarino, a brand name for artificial leather made from blended nylon, polypropylene fibers and a sponge-like polyurethane binder, manufactured by Kuraray Co., Ltd. of Japan. These materials are durable and rainproof, sturdy enough to last for the duration of elementary school. Some people tend to keep the bags as a memento of their childhood or pass them down to younger siblings and relatives, but nowadays there are also companies offering to upcycle the beloved randoseru and transform them into functional accessories such as wallets or passport covers.
Traditional randoseru bags are expensive and can reach over ¥56,000 (around €400), but parents and grandparents are willing to spend such money on the high-quality bags as they can even protect children in case of an accident as they can serve as a cushion or they can be placed over the head in case of an earthquake. Randoseru bags are also naturally buoyant and they can therefore float in case of water-related accidents.
These characteristics are extremely remarkable: yesterday's devastating earthquakes in Turkey and Syria killed (at the time of writing this post) over 5,000 people and, in the aftermath of the earthquake, a tsunami warning was issued by Sicily's civil protection department (the alert was later withdrawn). So, developing a bag or a backpack with such features may be an added bonus in our times. Yet would it be possible to make an alternative randoseru for Japanese kids?
There has been an experiment a couple of years ago when a newspaper delivery agent, Joji Shimizu, shocked when more than 80 pupils and staff members died at a public elementary school in Ishinomaki, Miyagi Prefecture, in northeastern Japan as a result of a tsunami generated by the magnitude-9.0 Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011, started developing randoseru bags that could be used as makeshift emergency flotation devices during a tsunami or heavy flooding.
Joji Shimizu eventually developed a floating backpack with Takashi Yoshizawa, president of Sakae Shokai, a leading manufacturer and seller of eyewear accessories founded in Hamamatsu and now located in the city's Higashi Ward.
In case of an emergency, finding shelter on elevated ground first is recommended before floating face up to wait for help when water levels rise, and this randoseru - renamed ukuran - is designed to help kids floating.
As stated above, conventional randoseru bags are naturally buoyant, but the bag must be attached to the stomach, otherwise a person's face will automatically be submerged.
The ukuran is instead made of nylon fabric and integrates a 10 cm-thick urethane sheet inside the flap that serves as the lid of the backpack. To use the bag as a flotation device, the lid must be brought to the front and placed on the chest. Another thin urethane sheet integrated in the back of the backpack ensures the backpack stays buoyant. by fastening the back to the body at the armpits and the groin with plastic clips, it is also possible to float face up longer and in a more stable manner. Besides, the float section of the backpack is also detachable so that more than one person can grab hold of it and float. Videos of simulations in swimming pools on Sakae Shokai's official YouTube channel show how to use the backpack.
The life-saving randoseru is of regular size, although slightly heavier at 1,4 kilograms, but being made of nylon, the price is lower, around ¥49,500 (€350).
The weight remains therefore a problem even in this very useful reinterpretation of the randoseru, which leads us to wonder if it will be possible to reinvent a randoseru for Japanese schoolchildren that can be lighter, but could still prove useful in emergencies. It would be cool to see a fashion designer interested in technologically advanced materials such as Anrealage's Kunihiko Morinaga working on such a project, but, all sorts of designers should take part in such a challenge. Providing clever creative and innovative solutions to everyday problems or to emergencies is indeed the key to designing products that aren't just desirable, but that may be genuinely useful in our complex and challenging times.
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