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Paper short abstract

This paper, focusing on Japan, first explores how clothing science has understood and modelled thermoception since the 70s and, second, examines its role in current strategies to tackle heat stroke cases.

Paper long abstract

In the 70s, the female professor Tamura, at one of the first editions of the Human -Thermal Environment Symposium in Tokyo, reminded a room of male engineering professors and architects of something they had overlooked: humans are not naked; humans are always clothed.

This was not obvious among engineers who modelled the body’s thermal exchange. They saw the human as a uniform, heat-generating mass, while Tamura noted that clothing causes uneven surface temperatures. To architects deciding on early air conditioning temperatures, she emphasised the importance of studying how people are dressed. During this time, the scientific study of the body-clothing microclimate emerged, transforming how thermoception and thermal comfort were valued, understood, modelled, and monetised.

In recent years, heat stroke has officially become a public health concern in several subtropical Japanese cities, prompting national and local governments to take urgent action: several programs educate on the role of clothing, the use of cooling wearable gadgets, and how to target early heatstroke symptoms with ice patches. If in the 70s and 80s the body-clothing microclimate was studied to enhance thermal comfort, now the body-wearables relationship is increasingly important for survival.

Based on ethnographic research conducted in Fukuoka with local government and citizens, and on interviews with key figures in clothing science at Bunka University, this paper first explores how thermoception has been modelled and its socio-cultural implications, and secondly examines the role of clothing and wearables in managing heat stroke risk in contemporary Japan.