Japan is a very different place from the U.S., and during my years as an ESL teacher I often found myself surprised at what I saw around me. One example was the custom of teachers periodically checking students to make sure they were conforming to the standards of moral decency with regards to fashion. This mostly took the form of teachers standing in front of the school on a specific day and measuring the school uniform skirts of the female students to make sure they hadn’t been raised too high, checking to make sure students didn’t have pierced ears (a big no-no in most schools), and also making sure students hadn’t dyed their hair, another sure sign of moral decay. My daughter was once taken aside by teachers during one of these checks, who were embarrassed to realize she was haafu and that her hair color is naturally light brown. In the anime and manga Nichijou (which is really weird yet really awesome in a way I can’t describe, kind of like Lucky Star but with deadpan jokes about Buddhist statues), there’s a scene in which the shy Sakurai-sensei is charged with getting the students to conform to the school’s fashion guidelines. Let’s just say it doesn’t go the way she expects it.
Ms. Sakurai tries to enforce the school’s rules on appearance and behavior.
