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When I was living in Japan in the '90s, I saw a group of kindergarten-age kids all walking to school with the exact same comically-large leather backpack. A local explained to me that they were called randoseru, that they were based on a Dutch design, and that it was tradition in Japan for grandparents to purchase them (they're quite expensive*) for their grandchildrens' first day of school. All of the boys I saw carried black randoseru, and all of the girls had red ones; it didn't take a genius to figure out this was an informal rule.
That was over 20 years ago, and the rules have changed. The notion of gender-based color assignments now seems quaint even in tradition-obeying Japan, and randoseru manufacturer Tsuchiya Co. and others now offer them in a variety of shades, some of them riotous.
*Randoseru, by the way, run ¥56,000 to ¥140,000 (USD $439 to $1,098)! Talk about investing in a child's education.
I’m a lapsed industrial designer. I was born in NYC and figured I’d die there, but a few years ago I abandoned New York to live on a farm in the countryside with my wife. We have six dogs.
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Traditional Japanese School Bag Colors Have Evolved
When I lived in Japan, there were the leather packs but also natural white canvass ones. They were sometimes associated with the bullies of the neighborhood who also walked around in Geta's (wooden flip-flops) just to be tough (they're so old, I couldn't even find an image on the web). That showroom above is SO Ginza.
Those look as unnecessarily large and heavy as the traditional German school bags. At least the German bags have a lumbar belt to put the load on the hips and off the back and shoulders - not that any kid has them adjusted properly.