Porter-Yoshida & Co Bags

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Porter-Yoshida & Co has been making bags in Japan since 1935, and every one is still made there. The range here runs across the Force, Flex, Crag, Clan, Mile and Dissection series — backpacks, tote

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40 products

About Porter-Yoshida & Co bags

Kichizo Yoshida left his home town at twelve, in 1918, to apprentice as a bag maker in Tokyo. Five years later the Great Kanto Earthquake flattened the city, and in the rush to get out he bundled his tools and belongings together with a length of cord and carried them out on his back. That improvisation became the founding idea: a bag is something that carries what matters when it matters. He set up Yoshida Kaban in 1935.

The Porter name came in 1962, taken from hotel porters — the people trusted to handle other people's luggage. It was unusual for a Japanese bag maker to have its own label then. What has not changed is where the bags are made. Yoshida works with more than eighty individual workshops and studios in Japan rather than moving production offshore, and the phrase the company uses for it is heart and soul in every stitch.

Porter-Yoshida Force, Flex and Crag

The Force series is the most military of what is here — olive drab and black, boxy shapes, the shoulder bags and 2-way waist bags that read most obviously as Porter. Flex uses ripstop nylon and packs down, which makes the Bonsac and 2-Way Tote the ones to travel with. Crag is the heavier canvas end, in khaki and coyote, covering the boston bags, rucksack, messenger and tote.

Worth knowing across all three: Porter uses its own hardware rather than off-the-shelf zips and buckles, and the founder worked with YKK to develop zips from scratch — reportedly the first such partnership of its kind.

Porter-Yoshida backpacks, totes and travel

The Mile Daypack and 2Way Tote are the cleanest shapes in the range and the easiest to carry every day. The Dissection backpack and tote are the most technical-looking, the Senses and Future backpacks sit between the two, and the Explorer Daypack L is the largest. For travel, the Booth Pack converts three ways and the Clan roll, tote and weekend bags carry the quilt pin detail.

The smaller pieces are worth a look as a way into the brand: the Dill travel wallet and multi coin case are made to the same standard as the bags at a fraction of the price.

Browse all bags at Yards Store, read our Porter-Yoshida feature, or see what we have in our Manchester and Sheffield shops.

Porter-Yoshida and Co FAQs

In Japan, all of them. Yoshida & Co. has never moved production offshore, and rather than running one large factory it works with more than eighty individual workshops and studios across the country. That is unusual at this scale and it is the main reason the bags cost what they do.
Porter's best-known line, introduced in 1983 and inspired by the MA-1 flight jacket. It uses a three-layer nylon in sage green or black with a bright orange lining — the same rescue orange used inside the original jackets so a downed pilot could reverse it and be seen. The nylon softens with use without losing its strength.
It comes from the MA-1 flight jacket, which was made reversible with a high-visibility orange interior so a pilot could signal for rescue. Porter carried the detail across when it built the Tanker series in 1983, and orange linings now appear across much of the range as a brand signature rather than a functional one.
They are made in Japan by hand in small workshops, using hardware developed for the brand rather than bought in, and they are built to be repaired. Whether that justifies the price depends on how long you keep things — the argument for Porter is that a bag lasts decades rather than seasons.