Japan's "Unique": Uniform

Japanese seem to like uniform.

Most school students, particularly junior high and high school students, are ruled to wear uniform.

Japanese School Uniform

The uniform, which the boy is wearing in the above picture, looks like one a solder wears. In fact, it was introduced to Japan more than a hundred years ago from a uniform which Western countries' solders were wearing.

I like this men's uniform as I also wore one when I was a student. This uniform has a problem, however, on its collar. Because the students are in growing periods, the collar becomes tighter and tighter. The school, however, usually doesn't allow to unclasp hooks of the collar as such a loose wearing of uniform might lead to lax discipline. This exactly reflects a bad aspect in the Japanese education, which sometimes forces unreasonable things.

This type of men's uniform was majority for a long time, however, it's been taken over by a blazer type, maybe by taking into consideration the above type of problem on collar.

Blazer Type Uniform

Today school uniform is a very important factor for girls to choose their schools. And I just learned that many girls wear school uniforms of other schools on their private times as fashion as they hanker for some uniforms of other schools and think they can't wear school uniform itself after graduating schools.

Uniform days continue for some women even after school graduation if a company they enter rules to wear a uniform for women.