School uniforms in Japan
school uniform used in Japan
The majority of Japan's junior high and high schools require students to wear school uniforms. Female Japanese school uniforms are noted for their sailor aesthetics, a characteristic adopted in the early 20th century to imitate the popular sailor dress trend occurring in Western nations. The aesthetic also arose from a desire to imitate military style dress, particularly in the design choices for male uniforms. These school uniforms were introduced in Japan in the late 19th century, replacing the traditional kimono. Today, school uniforms are common in many Japanese public and private schools. The Japanese word for the sailor style of uniform is sērāfuku (セーラー服).
History
The use of school uniforms in Japan began in the mid-19th century. Previously, students had worn standard everyday clothes to school: kimono for female students, with hakama for male students. During the Meiji period, students began to wear uniforms modelled after Western dress.
Late 19th century: The Hakama era
In the 1880s female students wore Western dress, but this came to be considered impractical.
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This entry incorporates text from “School uniforms in Japan” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.