In recalling their youth, it seems Japanese parents look on their elementary (primary) school bags with the kind of nostalgia that I’d reserve for my Star Wars toys. My own school bag did the same thing, you know, carry books & stuff, but In my home country of Australia, it was probably something we could kick around without a second thought. In some instances, It was the home of the very smelly, forgotten banana. A dreadful discovery.

In Japanese, the word for school bag is Randoseru, written as ランドセル, it is an introduced word (gairaigo – 外来語), coming from the Dutch language. By the looks of the photo below, it hasn’t always meant school bag.

The photo tells a thousand words, but I’ll add just a few more anyway. Both of the examples above exhibit golden Kamon, one is the Hollyhock (aoi – 葵) of the Tokugawa & the other is the horse’s bit (kutsuwa – 轡) of the Shimazu. I’m pretty sure these bags weren’t for traipsing off to school. The woodblock print shows a military parade from the Meiji Period (1868-1912), and the title of the display being: Hainou (Ransel) – 背嚢 (ランドセル). My Googling suggests that the first word, Hainou, is used to specifically describe a soldier’s backpack.