Overview
The Jomon lasted more than ten thousand years and left almost no clothing, because Japan’s acidic soils destroy organic material. What survives is the equipment and the ornament, and a body of clay figurines whose surfaces may or may not be showing what people wore — which makes this a page about reading indirect evidence carefully.
Key garments and style
There was no loom. Cloth was made by twining and plaiting bast fibres, and carbonised fragments and impressions on pottery show fine twined textile from early in the period, so fibre technology is very old even though weaving is not.
The ornament is abundant and is the real record. Clay ear spools worn in stretched lobes, some large and elaborately pierced; beads of jade, jasper and shell; bracelets cut from thick shell; combs and hair ornaments. Jadeite from Itoigawa was already being worked and traded, the same source that later supplied the magatama.
The dogu figurines carry incised and painted patterning over their bodies. Whether that represents tattooing, body paint, or decorated garments is genuinely unsettled, and reasonable readings differ — so the figurines establish that appearance was worked on deliberately without settling how.
Transition
Wet-rice farming brought the backstrap loom, hemp and ramie cloth and metal from the continent, and Yayoi dress became woven where Jomon dress had been twined.