This Vintage Japanese Military Boot Took the World’s Best Boot Maker Three Years to Recreate

Rose Anvil built a following and respected reputation by cutting apart hundreds of boots and shoes on YouTube to explain how they are made.

In August of 2022, the channel’s host and head leather worker, Weston Kay, proclaimed, “Of all the hundreds of boots we’ve cut apart, we’ve never seen one built in this way.”

John Lofgren

The boot facing dissection was a WWII Japanese military M98 boot made from pig skin. It had a brilliantly simple upper and an unprecedented midsole.

It was invented in 1938 as the standard-issue footwear for the Japanese Army. It was designed to be as simple as possible to produce, as quick as possible to repair and as easy as possible to maintain.

The upper is made from four pieces of leather — the toe box, tongue, vamp and heel counter — sewn together with minimal stitching and completely unlined. There are five rows of metal eyelets, and a leather tab that doubles for pulling on and storage.

John Lofgren

What sets this boot apart from pretty much any other in history is the sole construction. The midsole has a double 360-degree Blake stitch construction, which is two rows of stitching running through the insole to the bottom of the midsole.

It has a leather half-sole made from a full leather heel stack with a gap between the rest of the outsole panel. The midsole is connected to the heel stack with stitch-down construction, and there are two pegs on the front and back ends.

John Lofgren

As Kay explains, the purpose of this unorthodox sole construction was to allow for quick and easy repair and resoling of the boots. In theory, you could resole them an infinite number of times, compared to the best standard Good Year welt boots, which can be resoled four or five times at most.

On top of that, the outsole is loaded with metal studs to add durability. Other surviving examples have rubber outsoles or hob nails (metal cleats driven into the leather).

Let the master cook

According to Kay, shortly after the M98 boot video was released, legendary Japanese boot maker John Lofgren contacted him about reproducing it.

Lofgren is as much a boot historian as anything else, and his footwear is as faithful to historical production methods as any made today. Apparently, he had previously wanted to reproduce the Japanese Army boot but didn’t think there was enough demand to justify the effort.

Rose Anvil

The Rose Anvil M98 video went viral on YouTube, which was enough for Lofgren to start working on a reproduction. He started sourcing leather and experimenting with stitching and sole construction methods.

It took nearly three years of development to reproduce the nearly century-old design spot-on, but Kay knew enough to, as he puts it, “let John Lofgren cook.”

Whole hog

Pig skin is exceptionally uncommon in boot making, but given the circumstances, it makes perfect sense for the M98 boot. Pig hide is stronger than cow hide by thickness, meaning an equivalently durable cow leather boot would be heavier.

John Lofgren

The issue with pig leather, aside from social stigma, is that you get much less usable hide per animal than cows, but pigs were abundant in Japan during the early twentieth century, so that didn’t matter in 1938.

It creates an interesting boot because pigs have thick, spaced-apart pores visible on the leather. Pig leather also does not have a fuzzy flesh (Rough Out) side, meaning both sides look and feel smooth like the grain side of cow leather.

Lofgren found a Japanese tannery to provide pig leather that mirrors the original used in the M98 boot, which was the crucial ingredient to making a nearly-exact replica of the most unique military boot ever created.

Availability and pricing

The Rose Anvil x John Lofgren Japanese M98 boots are available exclusively from John Lofgren for $900 starting at 4:00 PM EST on August 7.

Rose Anvil is offering an early access email sign-up to get a code that unlocks the product page starting at 10:00 AM EST on August 7.

Since this John Lofgren boot is made-to-order, the estimated ship date is March 2026. This is a single-batch creation, so once the preset order limit is reached, it will never be available again.

John Lofgren

Rose Anvil x John Lofgren M98 Boots

• $900 at John Lofgren

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