adidas reissues the Japan 1993 home shirt

There are a handful of football shirts from the early nineties that need no introduction among collectors. Japan's 1992-93 home kit is one of them. adidas has now reissued it, and the design holds up entirely.

The design

The shirt uses the same blueprint as the original: bright blue base with a large white diagonal graphic running from the right shoulder across the chest and down to the lower left hem. Thin blue lines and red angular shapes run across that graphic, giving the shirt an energy that most kits of the era, and almost all of them since, have never matched. The effect is bold without being garish, and immediately recognisable as one of the defining shirts of the adidas archive.

The collar is a fold-over polo with a V-shaped front opening. The cut is long sleeve with ribbed cuffs and a straight hem. The adidas Trefoil appears on the right chest in white, the vintage Japan Football Association crest sits on the left, and a small Japan flag is placed on one sleeve. The fit is described as regular, with lightweight textured fabric throughout.

The original

The 1992-93 season was a pivotal moment for Japanese football. Japan won the 1992 Asian Cup in Hiroshima, defeating Saudi Arabia in the final, and the J.League launched in May 1993 as the country's first professional football division. The shirt was worn across both events, which gives it a particular historical weight beyond its design.

The diagonal graphic was unusual for a national team shirt at the time. Most international kits of the early nineties were conservative in colour application, even when the template work was strong. Japan's went in the opposite direction, and the design was striking enough that it became one of the most traded shirts in the vintage market over the following thirty years.

adidas has described the reissue as bringing back "one of the most recognisable Japan football shirt designs from the early 1990s." That is an accurate description, and an understatement.