Overview
The Kofun period is when Japanese dress stops being wrapped and starts being tailored. The unsewn kantoi of the Yayoi gives way to a cut-and-sewn two-piece arriving from the Korean peninsula, and because the period set clay figures around its burial mounds, there is a large sculptural record of people wearing it.
Key garments and style
The haniwa show an upper garment closing at the front and tied with cords at the chest, worn by men over trousers gathered and bound below the knee, and by women over a long pleated skirt. Sleeves are set in, seams are visible, and cords rather than a sash do the fastening — all of it construction the previous period did not have.
Ornament is substantial and survives where cloth does not: strings of beads at the neck, comma-shaped magatama, bracelets, and among the elite gilt-bronze crowns and shoes recovered from mounded tombs, the shoes far too fragile to have been walked in.
The haniwa also show what the elite did rather than only what they wore — armoured warriors, women in ritual dress, falconers and musicians — so the figures record occupation and rank alongside costume.
Transition
The Asuka court turned this continental influence into regulation, adopting cap-rank grades in which colour marked office, and Japanese dress entered its long period of Chinese-modelled court costume.