Dyeing Hair in Japanese Schools

This article describes an emerging campaign by the hair care brand Pantene titled "#HairWeGo What's Wrong With My Hair." The campaign takes aim at the all-too-common experience of children in Japan who don't have naturally straight and black hair being "urged" to dye their hair so that it matches with the students who do. A push against school policies has been rising in the wake of a lawsuit that a student filed for suffering mental and physical damage as a result of her school's demands that she dye her hair.

An outside article covered the story of that Osaka teen in more detail: the girl was forced to repeatedly dye her hair black every one or two weeks until her hair and scalp suffered damage and rashes and she could no longer dye it. On top of this, she was ridiculed even when undergoing the dyeing process. She was told that if she would not dye her hair black then she shouldn't bother coming back to school, so she didn't, and the school acted as if she were no longer enrolled there.

Through some outside research I learned that one of the roots to this phenomenon is the common desire of Japanese school systems to prove how "majime" they are with their students. With a large amount of competition between schools, a school's best shot at getting parents to send their children there is to impress them with how serious, strict, and rigorous they are. Enforcing uniformity and an intolerance for rebellious behaviors like dyeing one's hair an "unnatural color" is one way in which schools may try to impress parents.

Another source to this is the cultural importance of conformity in Japanese society. A derivative of the old "a nail which sticks out is hammered down" adage is one of the excuses given by administrators when they are asked about why they are so strict with their students straightening and dyeing their hair. They say that they enforce the uniformity of all students' hair so that those with hair that is not naturally that color will not be picked on for their differences. Similar to the way that school uniforms are meant to equalize students, this "hair uniform" is supposedly intended for the same purpose. I, personally, am unconvinced, since there is a large difference between requesting that students wear certain regulated clothing to school and ordering them to hide or alter their natural hair so that they can look like everyone else. A person's hair is a part of them, and although people dye and alter their natural hair all the time, ideally they should do that out of an intrinsic desire to do so rather than out of a fear of being punished for being themselves. I could potentially understand a school's desire to keep students from dyeing their hair potentially flashy or distracting colors like a bright purple or neon green, but to request that a kid change their natural hair so that they can look like the school's ideal is damaging.

This issue also highlights a weird disconnect in the experience of mixed-race children or children who are not ethnically Japanese in Japan, which was brought up in a video about a British-Japanese person recounting their experiences growing up mixed-race in Japan that I watched after reading these articles. On one hand, mixed-race individuals are sometimes treated like exotic specimens (if the other part of their ethnicity is not also Asian, and especially if part of it is western), and their peers might say things like "wow I wish I had your hair color/texture," or suggest that mixed-race people are attractive and interesting. On the other, they constantly have school administrators and officials requesting that they change their natural appearance to be more traditionally Japanese or prove that their appearance really is natural. Adding this to the fact that those same individuals who express interest in their appearance and ethnicity still don't always accept them into their community as strongly as they do with people who are ethnically entirely Japanese makes for a really confusing experience.

Students and teachers alike have expressed their confusion and frustration with the contradictory nature of these policies. One is required to have natural hair, unless their natural hair is not the standard straight black hair that schools expect. One is also expected never to dye or treat their hair, unless they're dyeing it black and straightening it, which they actually must do if their hair does not already fit that description. As problematic and potentially discriminatory as these hair-dyeing policies in Japanese school systems are, one would hope that this Pantene campaign can lead to actual change.