Why have some Japanese schools banned the ‘two-block’ haircut?
- It’s favoured by actors, baseball players, singers and bears more than a passing resemblance to the emperor’s hairstyle, so why the fuss?
- The head of Tokyo’s education board says the long and short of it is the style has been linked to ‘incidents’ and ‘accidents’
The issue was raised in a meeting of the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly by Yuichi Ikegawa, a member of the Japanese Communist Party, who said some of his constituents had asked why the “two-block” cut – very short at the side and back of the head and slightly longer on top – was outlawed in some schools.
The vast majority of the messages expressed incredulity at the board’s justification for defending schools’ decisions to ban what is commonly known elsewhere as a short back and sides.
Ikegawa is seen asking why two-block haircuts are not permitted, to which Fujita replies, “There are cases when [students] have become involved in incidents or accidents as a result of their appearance and other factors, so it is decided from the perspective of protecting the students.”
Confirming what he has just been told, Ikegawa says, “Frankly speaking, I do not understand what you mean and I am surprised by your answer. Is there any data to show that they become involved in ‘incidents’ or ‘accidents’?”
The board has not clarified what “incidents” or “accidents” refer to and has not provided examples of haircuts getting students into trouble. The board oversees 196 schools across the city, with 83 per cent having regulations on hair cuts or colourings, with 15 explicitly banning the “two-block”.
Ikegawa is continuing his campaign through his Twitter page, arguing that banning a certain type of haircut that is perfectly acceptable in broader society for arbitrary reasons runs counter to growing efforts to encourage individuality among children and promoting the ability of young people to think for themselves.
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Messages on Ikegawa’s feed support his position, with one poster saying the “two-block cut looks clean and tidy because it eliminates sideburns and makes the face look fresh”.
In a subsequent Tweet, a poster said surely it was better to have a haircut that was easy to maintain and looked well-groomed because it was short than to have hair that looked “like a squid’s legs”.
Another message suggested the rule was less about a particular haircut but more designed to “instil loyalty” and “maintain order” in schools’ strict hierarchies.
It was also pointed out that the “two-block” cut was popular with celebrities in Japan, such as actor Yusuke Iseya, Takayuki Kajitani, the star batsman with the Yokohama DNA Bay Stars baseball team, and Hiroomi Tosaka, singer with the Third Generation J-Soul Brothers band.
“I do not understand their objection,” said Kanako Hosomura, a housewife from Yokohama with a 7-year-old son who sports a “two-block”.
“I think it looks very smart, it does not require much attention when he gets out of bed late for school and it has to be cooler than thick hair in the middle of summer,” she said.
“I do not get why some schools say the ‘two-block’ gets students into trouble because I’ve never heard of a haircut being the cause of a problem,” she said. “And if you look at the emperor, I think that he has something that looks very much like a ‘two-block’ cut.”
Makoto Watanabe, a professor of media and communications at Hokkaido Bunkyo University, said he had a “two-block” when he was at school in the 1980s and he was “surprised to hear that some schools still have this old-fashioned rule”.
“When I was a boy, school rules were strict and we were not allowed to have coloured hair, but my school was pretty relaxed on the ‘two-block’, which was quite fashionable even then,” he said.
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“This is just an outdated regulation that represents the rules and ideas of the past but have never been updated,” he said. “The idea is to constrain students’ way of dressing and hairstyles, with any that do not do as they are told singled out as a ‘bad influence’ on other pupils and for damaging the school’s reputation.
“The education board’s reasoning is very vague and makes no sense to me, but of bigger concern is that they do not seem to be willing to change these sorts of rules at a time when the community of students in a city like Tokyo is becoming more diverse and internationalised, where children are going to have different colour hair and so on.
“Rules like these do not take into account the individuality of students and how they need to be encouraged to be creative and different,” he said.
