NyanChuu🔮🇯🇵🍭@tanpukunokami
In Japan, public schools still dictate the color of students' underwear.
Not a rumor. A rule in the student handbook.
White only.
No patterns.
No logos.
In some schools, teachers check.
In other schools, if your hair is naturally brown, you must submit a "natural hair certificate" — signed by your parents — proving you weren't born with black hair.
If you can't prove it, the school makes you dye it black.
This is still happening in 2026.
In July 2025, Japan's Ministry of Education published a national survey of 799 public middle and high schools.
— 91% had updated their rules since 2019.
— Only 57% publish their rules online.
— 15% wrote those rules without ever consulting students or parents.
In April 2025, the Second Tokyo Bar Association audited every public middle school in Tokyo's 23 wards — 374 schools.
Only 53.2% had revised any rules at all.
That's Tokyo. The capital.
Elsewhere, it gets worse.
Nagasaki (2021): 57.8% of 237 public middle and high schools still required white underwear only.
Gifu (2019): the prefecture audited 61 public high schools and found rules flagged for human rights concerns in nearly all of them.
A 2023 nationwide survey of 5,697 students found:
— 25% of high schools still demand a "natural hair certificate."
— 25% of middle schools still dictate underwear color.
— 33% of middle schools still force students to dye their hair black.
— 70% of middle schools ban makeup.
— 74% of high schools ban part-time jobs.
Real rules. Collected from real schools.
— No umbrellas unless approved by a teacher.
— No sunscreen.
— No tights in winter.
— No down jackets.
— No rolling up sleeves.
— No studying one-on-one with the opposite gender.
— No heart shapes at the school festival.
— Confiscated manga gets sold, not returned.
In 2017, a naturally brown-haired student in Osaka sued her high school for forcing her to dye her hair black. She developed a scalp condition from repeated dyeing.
In 2021, the courts ruled in the school's favor. The Supreme Court upheld the ruling in June 2022.
In March 2025, a political party submitted a bill to parliament requiring schools to consult students before writing rules about their bodies.
As of April 2026, the bill has not even been assigned to a committee.
It hasn't been debated. Not once.
These rules have a name.
"Black school rules."
They have a name because there are too many of them to list.
It's rotten.
It's obsolete.
It's abuse dressed up as education.
And Japan still calls it "discipline."