Sexualization of Japanese School Uniform: Beauty in the Eyes of the Holders or the Beholders?

The Japanese female high school uniform is almost a cultural institution in itself.  Immortalized in anime such as “Sailor Moon” and countless bittersweet love stories of campus romance on the big and small screens, its distinctive blue-and-white sailor-like design is recognizable to even the most casual purveyors of Japanese culture.  For millions in Japan, it is the visual manifestation of what it means to be youthful, innocent, and full of hope and drama.  It is the physical reminder of the coming of age.

But for many men, the female high school uniform is more than just a reminder of the past.  It is very much a part of their sexual desire in the present.  A casual review of the country’s various portals of lust can easily confirm the uniform’s “other” role.  Pornography sites stream videos of “younger sisters” dressed in the uniform, getting their “forbidden” “first experiences.”  Sex-toy shops hawk skimpier version of the uniform for couples hoping to kink up their domestic sex life.  The country’s red light districts offer up drinks with, massages by, and even simulated groping of girls dressed in the uniform.  Clearly, a significant portion of men is turned on by the uniform for it to become a common part of business models. 

The psychology of why the high school uniform is popular is worth some analyzing.  One reason could be the need for older men to feel younger when they first came face-to-face with their sexual desires as high schoolers.  They wanted to be reminded of their high school crushes and first porn stashes, and the memories of the first encounters with eroticism help stimulate their libidos in ways that their ordinary lives can no longer sufficiently do.  And frankly, some men are just fond of younger women, with their more desirable biological features.  There is no better marker of youth than the school uniform. 

Those who wear the uniform also should not completely escape the blame for turning the uniform into an object of sexualization.  Real high school students pull up their skirts to make it look shorter, revealing a bigger portion of their bare legs, and sometimes much else, as they climb upstairs in Tokyo’s busy stations and ride packed trains during the rush hour, for all the middle-aged men to see.  The erotic businesses, by adopting the naughty behaviors of real high school students into their costumes, only help cement the sexualized nature of the uniform. 

In the process, the uniform became the medium by which both those who wear and see them, both in the past and present, express and understand sexuality.  High school girls, by “adjusting” their uniform for the male gaze, come to comprehend what is sexually attractive. And men, by acting upon the uniform as an object of lust and desire, reinforce the uniform’s image, among the girls and erotic businesses seeking more customers, of the uniform’s power to draw in men for various purposes, in exchanging for presenting sexuality in the relatively benign form of the high school uniform.  Without such complex psychological interactions as well as businesses and media forms to entrench them in the public imagination, school uniforms in other countries, however beautiful and recognizable, simply do not take on similar sexual nuances as Japanese high school uniforms do.

The sexualization of the Japanese female high school uniform is, without a doubt, a social problem.  While some girls actively seek to use the uniform as a medium of expressing their youthful sexuality, most high school students are simply wearing the uniform because, as students, they are required to do so.  They have no desire to participate in the sexualization of the uniform and feel extremely uncomfortable with the lustful male gaze fixated on their uniforms and, by extension, their bodies throughout their daily lives.  Simply going about their supposedly innocent high school lives, they can be forced to confront the unwanted sexual advances of men drawn by the uniform.

As sexual desires seep into the supposed innocence of high school lives that many students desire, the conflict can lure many in the direction that they did not initially want to go, but found too enticing to resist.  Enjo Kosai, of normal high school girls, wanting extra spending money, “hanging out” with sugar daddies, has become all too common in recent years.  It is difficult to completely disregard the role of the sexualized high school uniform in the popularity of the practice.  For young girls with materialistic demand, to use something they already have and use every day, the uniform, as a means of acquiring more money, is just too hard to say no to.  With underage sex illegal in Japan, the sexualized uniform has inadvertently become a tool for crime. 

There is no easy solution for de-sexualizing the high school uniform.  Other sexualized uniforms exist, including those of nurses, flight attendants, and teachers, but none other is worn by millions of the psychologically and financially vulnerable like the school uniform.  Perhaps the one true way of ridding the association of the uniform with sexual predation is to get rid of it.  Schools in Japan can, like most public schools in the U.S. do, for instance, allow students to wear whatever they want to school instead of making the student uniform a mandatory requirement.  While such a solution can introduce new issues of students competing on the stylishness and price-tag of their street fashion, at least the sexualized high school uniform can finally become a piece of novelty, safely consumed at home and business establishments without harming real students who do not want to be involved in its sexualization.  To keep its female high school students safe, Japan may have to abandon something truly unique and recognizable in the process.