The World’s Toughest Bag Wrote the World’s Toughest Book
The heritage Japanese label is celebrating its 90th anniversary with the release of a commemorative book made of the same material as its famously strong bags.
What’s the best thing you could possibly put into the world’s toughest bag? The world’s toughest book, of course. Yoshida & Co. already makes the former but now it's creating the latter as a commemorative publication tracking the heritage brand’s journey from a small Tokyo atelier founded in the mid-1930s to the country’s — and maybe the world's — foremost expert in quality luggage and bag with a steezy edge.
Fittingly, the book is as purpose-built as Yoshida’s signature, military-strength products. Each edition was bound with the same thread as Yoshida’s bags using a traditional needle-and-thread watoji handbinding method, but that’s not even where the heritage brand has truly popped off.
Alongside a more traditional library edition with a cloth-bound cardboard cover, real Yoshida heads can buy a collector’s edition that uses the same nylon as its signature TANKER bags — a 3-layer material inspired by those used for OG US Air Force MA-1 bomber jackets.
Not every book needs to be a technical masterclass in construction (we’d never expect to see Twilight made military-grade, for example), but this is Yoshida & Co. we’re talking about. The brand is unmatched in turning seemingly simple objects — like, say, a folding fan — into covetable grails.
And really, there’s never been a better time to give some shine to the publishing industry. Books are caught in an odd cultural moment. “Performative reading” is trendy, yet literacy levels are plummeting. People are paid to act as a celebrity’s “book stylist” or to professionally weather new novels to give them a perfectly aged look. Suffice to say, it’s weird out there.
With its 90th anniversary publication set for release in Japan on August 15th, all the fans who snapped up the tactical tote bag from its PORTER sublabel last year will finally have an object worthy of sliding into it.
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