In the late 1980s, Belgian fashion designer Martin Margiela stunned the European fashion world when he sent a pair of unusual boots down the runway at his collection debut. The boots were made of black leather, but with a split toe, making the models’ feet look almost like cloven hooves. The Margiela “Tabi Boots” helped launch his brand and he became a fashion icon in the decades that followed with a passionate fan base drawn to their surprising form and avant-garde look. But these boots were hardly his invention—they took both inspiration and name from the traditional Japanese footwear known as tabi, which emerged centuries before and have a rich history all their own.
In ancient Japan, going barefoot was common, or people might wear simple straw sandals or animal hide wraps to protect their feet from the elements. Over time, Japanese farmers developed elevated wooden thong sandals known as geta that allowed them to keep their feet dry from rain and mud, but they still typically wore them barefoot. In the fifth century, the shitozu—a type of closed-toe fabric sock that tied above the ankle—was introduced from China and became favored by the Japanese nobility. Gradually another type of leather footwear known as tanbi (literally “single hide”) evolved. However, since it enclosed all five toes of the foot, the tanbi didn’t allow easy wear of the thong sandals like geta or zori that were becoming more prevalent among all classes of society. Sometime between the late Heian period (794 – 1185) and the Muromachi period (1338 – 1573), a leather split-toe tabi that fit around a sandal’s central thong emerged as a solution. Leather remained the standard for centuries, until it was replaced in the Edo period (1603 – 1867), when cotton cultivation spread across Japan.
Tabi quickly evolved their own distinct fashion codes. In the Muromachi period, samurai were known to wear white or smoked leather tabi with their zori sandals, while women typically wore purple-dyed ones. When cotton became widespread, white became the refined choice for formal or ceremonial occasions like the tea ceremony, while darker colors like blue or black were worn by travelers to hide the dust of the road in an era before modern infrastructure. Tabi were also adopted for outdoor use by laborers such as farmers, fishermen, and craftsmen—usually made of thicker canvas or leather, with more durable soles of reeds or leather. In 1922, the brothers Tokujirō and Shōjirō Ishibashi created the first rubber-soled tabi, known as jika-tabi, literally translating to “tabi that touch the ground”; the Ishibashi brothers later went on to found Bridgestone, the tire company.
While the separated toe of tabi first emerged as something functional to allow sandal wearing, it eventually also came to be seen as promoting better balance and foot health, giving wearers more grip and nimbleness especially for outdoor workers, martial artists, and athletes. This was showcased in dramatic fashion in the 1951 Boston Marathon when Japanese runner Shigeki Tanaka was first to cross the finish line wearing a custom pair of tabi-style sneakers made from denim and rubber developed by Harimaya. Not long after, another Japanese shoe brand, Onitsuka, created their own “Marathon Tabi” in 1953, a nod to Tanaka’s win.
Fast forward to the 1980s, when Japanese fashion designers like Rei Kawakubo, Yohji Yamamoto, and Issey Miyake were expanding abroad (to learn more about Miyake and his legacy, read an article from our archive), and their Western counterparts were learning from their avant garde designs, as well as from Japanese traditional garments. On a trip to Japan, Martin Margiela was so fascinated by the unique form factor of tabi socks and jika-tabi workmen’s boots, that he set about creating his own twist on them for a high-fashion context. At first, he could not find any manufacturers willing to work with him—everyone in the West thought the design was too structurally difficult and simply didn’t understand it. He eventually found an almost-retired Italian cobbler who was willing to take it on, and together they created the shoe that helped popularize the tabi’s recognizable silhouette in the West.
From then on, tabi would continue to inspire designers and fashionistas abroad—including Nike, whose 1996 Air Rift running sneaker was credited by the company to Kenya’s barefoot marathon runners, but whose distinctive split toe clearly echoed tabi. They’ve even showed up in pop culture: in 2023, a New York–based fashion designer posted a TikTok video claiming her Tinder date had stolen her Margiela Tabis, which these days have a price tag of around $1,000. The video went viral and quickly led to the recovery of her shoes.
Within Japan itself, tabi remain an essential part of the fashion toolkit—especially for ceremonial or festive occasions from weddings to tea ceremonies to festivals to religious observances. For formal or ceremonial occasions, zori are traditionally partnered with tabi. Geta, on the other hand, are most commonly worn barefoot in casual settings, such as with summer yukata. Some of the artisans making tabi today are family-owned multi-generational businesses founded centuries ago, carrying on the craft of tabi making which involves care, attention, and expertise ranging from the cotton layering, to form cutting, to stitching in the kohaze (metal clasps that close the tabi around the ankle), to the most difficult step of all: carefully reinforcing the signature split-toe seam.
But these artisans face real challenges—chief among them the general decline of tabi as everyday wear over the course of the 20th century. Even in a famed hub of tabi-making like Gyoda in Saitama Prefecture, there were over 200 tabi workshops and up to 500 related businesses in the 1930s; today, less than 10 tabi makers remain. There’s also the sheer time it takes to reach proficiency: some of the most skilled artisans are now in their 80s and 90s, with few novices entering the trade. Luckily, in 2019, tabi-making was added to the list of specially designated traditional crafts by Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI), and there’s deep interest in keeping the art alive. Influencers and travelers are embracing tabi heritage, drawn to Gyoda and its historic tabi makers (there’s even a museum), and shops like Tokyo’s Ōnoya Sōhonten, founded in the 1770s as a specialty producer of tabi for actors and performers in the city’s theater district (to learn more about Japan’s “longevity businesses,” read an article and see related videos on the theme here). And while traditional tabi require masterful talent and time, there are also popular and less expensive knit split-toe socks, available in a wide variety of colors, patterns, and featuring cartoons and pop culture themes. Many workmen in Japan also still use outdoor jika-tabi with rubber soles, sometimes even with steel-capped toes to meet safety regulations.
From humble beginnings, tabi have traversed a remarkable distance—from functional solution to sandal-wearing in medieval Japan, to an exquisitely-crafted fashion staple, to an inspiration for designers around the world. Yet their core innovation remains the same—the split-toe form that lets a construction worker climb scaffolding and a bride walk to her wedding ceremony in her formal zori. Margiela Tabis remain a cult favorite in the West and continue to spread influence across Western fashion, worn today by celebrities ranging from Zendaya to Rihanna to Pedro Pascal. That such a small design twist could travel so far, and carry so much with it, reflects the enduring power of Japanese craft—and to the artisans who continue, stitch by stitch, to carry it forward.
