Photo/Illutration Public school students walk to school in identical uniforms, socks, shoes and bags in 1985. (Asahi Shimbun file photo)

Strict rules that governed Tokyo high school students from the color and style of their hair to the color of their underwear will soon be a relic of the rigid past. 

Tokyo metropolitan senior high schools have announced they will do away with five rules long considered irrational that mandated conformity in the classroom.

“The times have changed and this is now likely a time to convert to a new way of guiding students," one education board member said about the rules elimination. "While it may take time, we want to continue deciding on rules while holding discussions with students.”

The rules included one requiring all students to dye their hair black and banning undercut hair styles that have the hair longer on top and buzzed on the sides.

The rule designating the color of underwear to be worn to school will also go out the window as well as the rather ambiguous one about teachers guiding their pupils to act as proper senior high school students.

The disciplinary measure of forcing problem students to remain at home will also be retired.

The rules will be eliminated from the school year starting in April. The decision is based on discussions held at each Tokyo metropolitan senior high school involving students, teachers and parents.

One male student who will enter his third year of high school in April said, “This issue has gained this much attention because so many students have found the rules discomforting. It is only natural to do away with those rules.”

Between March and April 2021, the Tokyo metropolitan board of education asked all schools to review the five rules along with a sixth asking students to voluntarily submit forms certifying the natural color of their hair or that they had natural wavy hair.

Of the 240 programs available at the 196 metropolitan senior high schools, 216 programs included some of those rules.

The rule about natural hair color will be eliminated at 35 of the 55 programs that had it, but remain in place at the other 20 programs.

Education board officials said students at those 20 programs asked that the requirement remain. Many students in those programs find jobs after graduating from senior high school and some programs ban the dying of hair or getting a permanent wave. 

The students asked that the rule about natural color and wave remain on the grounds that informing the school about the color and wave would do away with needless instructions from teachers about their hair.

To increase transparency about school rules, all metropolitan senior high schools will also post their regulations on their websites from April.

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A document for reporting natural hair color used at a Tokyo metropolitan senior high school (Asahi Shimbun file photo)

OSAKA LAWSUIT IN 2017 STARTED SCHOOL CHANGE

The issue first gained national attention in 2017 when a female student at an Osaka prefectural senior high school filed a lawsuit seeking compensation from the education board for the emotional distress she endured from teachers who repeatedly asked her to dye her naturally brown hair black.

While the Osaka prefectural government was ordered to pay compensation, the district court did not say that school regulations regarding hair color were illegal.

Other prefectural education boards have since reviewed the rules for their senior high schools.

The Gifu education board in September 2018 instructed schools to review their rules and many changed the rule about designating the color of students' underwear.

The Kagoshima board instructed schools to constantly review their rules after finding that 97 percent of schools had revised rules over a three-year period until 2020.

The education ministry in June 2021 issued a notice about the efforts made in Gifu and Kagoshima and encouraged other boards to ask their schools to look over their rules.

(This article was written by Kayoko Sekiguchi and Hikari Kanazawa.)

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