SCHOOL

Tokyo educational institutions fall controversial gown code on hair and underwear colour

March 16, 2022
iwano@_84

For a long time, staying a scholar in Tokyo intended you experienced to search a sure way. Beneath the community college system’s dress code, all college students experienced to dye their hair black, sure hairstyles were being prohibited and even their underwear experienced to be a selected color.

But these rules, which have a short while ago come less than scrutiny and been criticized as out-of-date, will now be abolished, the city’s authorities introduced this 7 days.

A full of five guidelines will be dropped by almost 200 public colleges throughout the Japanese capital, including rules on hair and underwear shade, and a ban on “two block” hairstyles, which are extensive on prime and shorter at the back and sides — a model presently in trend in lots of nations around the world.

Other procedures remaining lower involve the apply of punishing students with a form of house arrest, and ambiguous language in the recommendations on what is thought of “normal of substantial school pupils.”

The policy modifications go into result at the start off of the new educational 12 months on April 1. The go came after Tokyo’s board of education executed a survey final calendar year that requested educational facilities, learners and mom and dad about their views on the guidelines.

Tokyo isn’t really the only Japanese city with a strict dress code — comparable procedures are in result all around the country, with many schools requiring college students to have on shoes and socks of a designated colour.

Colleges in Fukuoka, on the island of Kyushu, also have regulations limiting students’ hairstyles and dictating equally the shade and sample of their underwear, in accordance to Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun.

Like Tokyo, Fukuoka done a community study last 12 months, in which college students complained that the costume code caused them tension and minimal their self-expression, Asahi noted.

The concern was thrust into the highlight in 2017 when a high college college student in Osaka prefecture sued her faculty, a situation that attracted nationwide focus and prompted popular public discussion on restrictive gown codes.

She alleged that she experienced been pressured to dye her obviously brown hair black when she very first joined the university, and was told to re-dye it each time her brown roots grew back again, in accordance to Asahi. She was inevitably presented academic penalties for not dyeing it generally plenty of.

Her lawsuit complained that the repeated coloring experienced broken her hair and scalp, and brought on her psychological distress. Final yr, she received 330,000 yen (about $2,790) in damages.

Other learners and households have given that spoken out with related problems, when several educational institutions have declared improvements to their dress codes.

This spring, a college in Ube, Yamaguchi prefecture, will come to be the 1st in the city to introduce a “genderless” uniform, with students of all genders specified a preference among slacks and skirts, Asahi described — a key split from the strictly gendered costume codes nevertheless popular in Japan.

This write-up was up to date to clarify that April 1 is the start of a new academic calendar year and that Asahi Shimbun is a Japanese newspaper.