In the 1950s, there were miserable water accidents that many children had drowned in Japan. As measures to such accidents, the Japanese government promoted swimming education and made swimming a compulsory subject in the elementary and ju-nior high school. Because many of the victims were a clothing state, some swimming leaders and researchers started studies on the swimming with clothes on in 1980s. In the swimming with clothes on, there are two major purposes. One is to train basic swimming abilities not to be drowned, available even in the clothing state. Another is to acquire survival abilities to stay floating safely until a rescue. According to the history of swimming education in Japan and the actual situation of the instruction about water safety in the world, clothed swimming is a part of the method to obtain water safety and should be planned in conjunction with developing individual abilities not to be drowned, which are included in the basic and fundamental swimming skills.