Green Bamboo Tiger Sukajan 'Takeyabu'

An orange tiger through bamboo under a red sun, on black with green sleeves

Green sleeves are rare on a sukajan, and this one earns them. The back is a tiger, orange with black stripes, prowling through bamboo embroidered in green and gold, under a red sun and a red mountain with clouds and blossom round it. The chest keeps it small: a red sun with a grey cloud on the left, a spray of bamboo and blossom on the right. Black body, dark green sleeves, and the ribbing black with a green stripe.

It is the tiger sukajan with the most landscape and the least fuss, because the tiger is drawn walking rather than roaring, and the bamboo round it is the reason he is there.

The name, Takeyabu, is the bamboo grove, the thicket the tiger is walking out of, and in Japanese painting the tiger is always in one.

Every motif is embroidered, not printed, in dense satin stitch that stands off the cloth and catches the light differently as you move; that is the whole point of a sukajan, and it is the reason the jacket weighs what it does. The body is a satin blend with a soft sheen and a light quilted lining, and the collar, cuffs and hem are a ribbed knit, which is the construction the sukajan has had since the first ones were sewn for American sailors in Yokosuka in the late forties. It zips at the front and has a slash pocket at each hip. It washes cold, inside out, on a gentle cycle, and dries flat.

Wear it over a white tee and white trousers, as in the photograph, or over black for the green to stand alone. It goes with olive, with khaki, with cream, and with nothing else that has a pattern.

From across a street it is a black bomber with green sleeves and a red dot at the chest. From close the tiger has every stripe, the bamboo every joint, and the sun a soft edge. It is the sukajan for the person who does not want red sleeves, and there are more of them than the range suggests.

The sleeves are set in raglan, and the red sun on the chest sits high on the left where a badge would go, with the bamboo answering it on the right. The green satin of the sleeves is a deep one, closer to a bottle than a leaf, and it goes with the tiger the way a forest does.

Sizes run from M to XXL. It is cut to Asian sizing and runs small, so take one size up from your usual. Between two sizes, take the larger.