Japan Blue Jeans launched in 2010 as a brand under Hiroki Kishimoto's Japan Blue Group, the same company behind Momotaro Jeans, built specifically to put the group's own COLLECT mill fabrics into contemporary-fit jeans. The mill develops and dyes its own denim in-house rather than buying fabric from outside suppliers, making it one of only a handful of vertically integrated denim producers in Japan. It's based in Kojima, the Okayama district that's been a center of Japanese textile manufacturing for decades.