Photo/Illutration Students of the prefecture-run Fukaya Senior High School in Fukaya, Saitama Prefecture, are dressed in gender-free uniforms on Jan. 30. As of April, the clothes can be worn in any combination preferred by the student. (Yuri Nishida)

SAITAMA--High schools run by the prefecture here that still have dress codes requiring female students to wear skirts as part of their uniforms will soon allow girls to choose slacks instead.

The move is designed for transgender students whose gender identity is different from what they were assigned at birth.

Tatsuya Furudo, 30, from Nijiizu, a general incorporated association that supports the LGBT community, hailed it as a step forward.

"I see students who find it difficult to go to school every day because it is painful to dress in a uniform unfit for their gender identity, so I have always felt it is a serious problem," Furudo said.

"Some of those students who want to spend their school lives as boys want to wear uniforms with stand-up collars or similar clothing for boys--not slacks for girls. I hope male and female uniforms are not distinguished by color or design."

The Saitama prefectural board of education had issued its directive calling for the early introduction of slacks for female students after a prefectural ordinance promoting societal respect for sexual diversity went into effect in July 2022.

"It is meant to make school environments more like the rest of society, where it is normal for women to choose to wear either skirts or slacks," one official said.

Although some schools have adopted gender-free uniforms, others continue to require boys to wear uniforms with stand-up collars and girls to don sailor-style clothing, albeit with slacks as a new option for them.

But only about 3 percent of schools allow male students to choose to wear skirts as of May 2022.

That figure is expected to remain unchanged for the 2023 academic year.

ORDERS SURGE FOR GIRLS’ TROUSERS

It comes on the heels of a trend, as the number of schools now allowing girls to wear slacks has been steadily increasing across the country.

According to the Saitama prefectural board of education, there are 130 prefecture-run high schools that have female students and require them to wear uniforms.

About 70 percent of those schools allowed girls to wear slacks as of May 2021, but that figure rose to 79 percent the following year.

According to a public relations representative at the major school uniform maker Kanko Gakuseifuku Co., slacks for female students began to be introduced for protection against the cold in Nagano Prefecture, Hokkaido and elsewhere in the late 1990s.

But the trend really started to take off after the education ministry issued a directive in 2015 to boards of education across the country instructing them to better accommodate students with gender dysphoria.

The number of schools ordering slacks designed by the company for girls increased by 800 to about 2,200 in the 2022 academic year, according to the company.

"That number has sharply increased over the past three years," the company representative added.

The Asahi Shimbun has discovered that all prefectural high schools in Kanagawa, Nagano and Gifu prefectures that require students to wear uniforms now allow girls to choose slacks for their uniforms.

Mami Banba, a professor at Kyoto Kacho University specializing in the history of clothing, welcomes the diversifying choices for school uniforms.

“Just like speech and thought, it should be up to us to decide how we dress because clothing expresses our bodies,” Banba said. “I also think it is necessary to have discussions on whether school uniforms are needed in the first place."

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