No one forces them to use them. There is no decree, nor regulationnor order of any other type that requires your purchase. And yet every year (especially In May or August) The families of Japan with children about to start school are subjected to the same ritual: they travel stores to choose with great care the backpack that must accompany the child during their six years of primary school. They do it paying attention to colors, shapes, fabrics … but not to the model.
That is taken for granted: the backpack must be a ‘raondoseru’.
‘Rondoseru’? Exact. The word may not tell you much, but if you usually read comics or watch Japanese series and movies it is likely that the article itself is familiar. THE ‘RANDOSERU’ (A style, not a commercial brand) are the backpacks used by Japan children during their early years in school, the equivalent of our primary. Large, rigid, usually of leather, they usually always share the same design: rectangular shape, straps and a huge flap.
Where do they come from? The ‘Randosseru’ connects with its origins, at the end of the 19th century. The word is a kind of adaptation of the Dutch “Ransel”, which can be translated as “backpack” or “backpack.” And it is no accident. It is said that the first to use the ‘randoseru’ were the Japanese soldiers at the end of the EDO period, who used them for their luggage. The design must like the prestigious Gakushūininstitution created to train the children of the aristocracy, because Towards 1885 He decided to incorporate a similar model as an official backpack.
Other versions They say that in those years, at the end of the 1880s, the Prime Minister Itō Hirobumi He gave the prince Yoshihito (eight years old) A backpack for the school made with leather and remembered the backpacks that the soldiers loaded behind the back. Whether or not, the ‘ramoseru’ ended up triumphing and established a tradition that has managed to survive the nineteenth to the twentieth and twenty -first century, with their wars, political swings and fashions included.
A symbol of distinction? Today they are a community symbol. With the passing of the decades, the ‘ramoseru’ have become so popular, have extended so much by the schools throughout Japan, which have become almost a timeless icon. They were used by parents and use them children. In fact they are usually The grandparents Those who give them to their grandchildren and families spend time, resources and attention to choose the best backpack for their offspring.
Mainichi Shimbunone of the most relevant newspapers in the country, defines it as something similar to “a rite of initiation” for children who are about to start at school. “Getting a backpack ‘ramoseru’ before the first grade is an important mile In June Moe Yamamoto.
Maybe it sounds exaggerated, but families often choose backpack with a surprising anticipation, a year before the child is going to step on the classrooms (they get to work in May in the face of the course that will start in April) and pay attention to all the details. In the department stores Isetan It is even celebrated A special event with hundreds of models to choose designs, colors or materials.
How common are they? In 2024 the reporter of The New York Times In Tokyo Motoko Rich He dedicated them A report It starts with an interesting experiment. Rich recounts the first day of the school year at a Koto school, in Tokyo, and then looks at how many of the elementary children carry the famous backpacks. His conclusion is resounding: “almost all.” “It is not a rule imposed by anyone, but a rule that we all comply with together,” confirms Shoko FukushimaDeputy Educational Administration professor at the Chiba Institute of Technology.
But … what are the ‘Randoseru’? Although tradition has remained over the last decades, backpacks have not been alien to fashions. Before The usual It was that the boys carry black backpacks and the red girls, but that has changed. And we know it for sure because there is an association of ‘randoseru’ that Monitoring trends: Colors (L Lavender and Rosa triumph among the girls, more than red), sizes, materials or even dates and places of purchase.
Unlike what happened a few decades ago, today the offer is wide and includes models of different shades and with cartoon characters, embroidery or linings of various fabrics. The objective: that each one has their ideal ‘raondoseru’.
Comfortable and cheap? There are reasons to doubt the first. And objective reasons to deny the second. The ‘raondoseru’ are heavy. Vacuum, the classic model Round the kilo and a halfand Motoko Rich acknowledges that when books, notebooks, cases or even tablets are added to more than four kilos. In Your report He speaks, for example, of a student of the first course that one morning left for school carrying a three kilos backpack. It may not seem much, but it supposed more or less a seventh pass of his body weight.
As for prices, Rich Explain That the average leather models is around $ 380, although that is just a reference. There are much more expensive versions, which go to more than 500 or even exceed The 1,000 barrier.
Of course it is not necessary to resort to such heavy or expensive bags. Mainichi remember That manufacturers have created alternatives to traditional leather wallets, such as Nylon editions that weigh between 650 and 1,200 grams (far from the 900-1,500 g of the oldest models) and can be bought for less than 70 dollars. Another alternative is to pay for backpack subscription services that in exchange for a monthly payment allow the portfolio to be changed every so often.
Are they used in Spain and Europe? The undeniable thing is that the ‘ramoseru’ have aroused interest outside of Japan, something that is found to see the amount of articles that the western press has dedicated to him in recent years.
One of the last published it Just a few days ago The countrythat interviewed some parents of San Sebastián who decided that their son went to school with one of the Japanese backpacks, a red model. Their experience showed that here the Japanese bags do not ‘fit’ as well as in Japan. Percheros are not as spacious as those of the Asian country and not everyone knows how to handle them.
Images | Cory Doctorow (Flickr), Wikipedia 1, 2 and Tatsuo Yamashita (Flickr)
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