A hair color code is being strictly applied to almost half of all high schools run by the Tokyo metropolitan government.
Students attending classes with wavy hair or non-uniformly black locks must submit a document signed by their parents or guardians stating that it is their natural appearance.
The policy has been adopted by more than 40 percent of these schools in the metropolitan area, according to members of the Japanese Communist Party in the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly who questioned the edict.
The question of school regulations on hair color is an issue that has been raised in the courts and has aroused international interest in the rigid system that governs Japanese schools to promote compliance.
The JCP, understanding that the problem violated human rights, filed a request for disclosure of information and was rewarded with a stack of documents delivered by the Tokyo Metropolitan Board of Education.
Of the 177 metropolitan high schools for full-time students, 150 or 84.7% had some form of regulation regarding hair. Seventy-nine schools, or 44.6% of the total, asked students to hand in documents signed and stamped by their parents to certify that they had been born with a natural wave in their hair or a color other than black.
According to the documents, some schools even asked for photos of certain students when they attended primary or secondary school to confirm the veracity of the data provided. In other cases, students had to provide documents from their doctors to support their claims about the natural state of the hair.
Some schools invalidated the documents if the student had even dyed his hair or had a permanent at a hairdresser.
Some schools used a color scale so that students could classify hair color.
Education board officials insisted the documents were necessary to prevent situations in which teachers reprimanded students for their hair on the basis of misperceptions.
They added that notices had been sent to individual schools asking them to explain to students and their parents that the submission of documents was entirely voluntary.
However, a study by the JCP bloc in the Tokyo metropolitan assembly found that only five upper secondary schools had pointed out that this was the case.
“Registering a student’s hair color is a similar human rights violation to asking him to register his skin color,” a JCP member said. “It’s a natural right to have the hair the student was born with and it’s not something that has to be approved by others.”