Forum - View topicAnswerman - What's With All The School Uniforms In Anime? [2019-04-03]
|
Goto page Previous 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 Next Note: this is the discussion thread for this article |
| Author | Message | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Rogueywon
Posts: 252 |
|
|||
|
Here in the UK, school uniforms are absolutely the norm. Private school uniforms tend to be a little more elaborate than state school ones, but almost all schools enforce them and the differences are pretty marginal. A handful of schools don't, but these are very much on the fringes of the system.
I'm in favour. It cuts the potential for brand-label snobbery in schools. Never minded wearing a uniform in the slightest back in my school days. |
||||
|
||||
MajinAkuma
 Posts: 1199 |
|
|||
|
Mirai Nikki was one of those where the middle schoolers didn't have uniforms. Both schools Yukki and Yuno attended didn't have them. I found that weird.
|
||||
|
||||
|
FukuchiChiisaia
|
|
|||
Japanese was under heavy internationalization after they open Japan for foreign market/society after Meiji Restoration. They saw "Western culture" as the future. The government ended assimilate with politics system, culture, education, and technology from across the European and American continent, just for modernize every aspect of their country. |
||||
Alan45
 Village Elder Posts: 9850 Location: Virginia |
|
|||
|
In non non Biyori the school has dwindled to five students from all grades in one classroom and the middle school students are wearing uniforms.
In Coppelion the thee main girls have been specifically made to be able to tolerate what ever contagion destroyed the city at great expense and time. However, when they send them into that wilderness they are wearing school uniforms. They don't even have as much protection as you would have going camping. Bodacious Space Pirates is set multiple light years from Earth and hundreds of years in the future and the girls in the school are wearing uniforms that would not look out of place in Tokyo today. It is almost as if they simply can't imagine school age children who are not in uniform. |
||||
|
||||
Sakagami Tomoyo
 Posts: 940 Location: Melbourne, VIC, Australia |
|
|||
|
As an Australian, I find it stranger that American schools usually don't have uniforms. Basically all primary and secondary schools here have a uniform of some kind. In my primary school everyone had tracksuits in the winter, and in the summer boys had shorts and t-shirts and girls had a type of cotton dress that's roughly as ubiquitous as sailor suits were in Japan. In my secondary school, boys had a button-down shirt with tie all year round, paired with wool pants and wool jumper in the winter and shorts in the summer. Girls had a wool skirt, stockings, skivvie and wool jumper in the winter and aforementioned cotton dress in the summer. Different schools have different ideas about uniforms; some go more formal and have blazers, others go less formal and go for polo shirts.
I've honestly got mixed feelings about school uniforms. I didn't like my secondary school's uniform at the time, and especially hated the school's military-like attitude that strict adherence to it was vital to the proper functioning of society. On the other hand, out-of-uniform days were tiresome fashion parades, and all up I think I'd have liked that even less if it was all the time. All up, I think it's better to have a uniform, but for it to be a uniform t-shirt or polo shirt and a pair of pants or shorts that's more-or-less the right colour. When I first got into anime, I found the common styles of school uniform - gakuran and sailor suits - a little odd, but the idea that everyone has uniforms I'm right at home with. |
||||
|
||||
|
NOGI48
Posts: 70 |
|
|||
|
I love when girls wear the sailor suit.
|
||||
|
||||
|
NOGI48
Posts: 70 |
|
|||
The same reason for the boys to be one of international imperialism, so militarism was something that was seen as aspirational. When it came time to design the school system, it stood to reason that good kids would model themselves after the military. |
||||
|
||||
|
CandisWhite
Posts: 282 |
|
|||
The downsides of uniforms are recognized in America and Canada: There's the cost but the larger one is individuality. Dress is one of the biggest ways we express ourselves-our creativity, our thoughts, our views on the world. The wide variety of people who live in our countries would be hard-pressed to find a "uniform look" that worked for them all, and they should not be forced to. Children need to be free to be themselves and must be exposed to a large assortment of people; They need to be taught to love and work with others: Dress is one of the easiest ways to do this and the many days & years of school means a child is raised in an environment where difference and respect are as everyday and everywhere as oxygen. It leads to a society where a white Christian woman can get out of the pool, throw jean shorts over her tankini, and go to the park where many different kinds of Muslim families, from western blacks in modern dress to South Asians in traditional dress, are having picnics for Eid ( the end of Ramadan) whilst non-Muslims run down the paths or sit on benches and nobody bats an eye. The delight of this real world photograph is its normalcy. Plus, there's plain old logistics: People need to wear what's appropriate for the weather, for their own health. |
||||
|
||||
Cryten
 Posts: 993 |
|
|||
|
As an Australian it just was not that weird. School uniforms are the standard and out of uniform is the exception, generally reserved for high end exclusive schools or alternative schooling. What Japan seemed to be weird about for me was a regular obsession with mini skirt level uniforms in anime and of course the sailor outfits.
I dont know if it is just me but the uniform seemed to represent that school time was a time to be a student and not your usual self centred larakin self. Thus uniforms didn't feel like oppression or a bad of service. It was your representation of being a student. |
||||
|
||||
|
shabu shabu
Posts: 79 Location: Tokyo |
|
|||
|
School uniforms are also used for identification purposes. It's to show which school you go to. If you are skipping school and either go downtown or try to go to another school it is easier for other people to identify you and tell where you actually belong. Causing trouble while in uniform is seen as bringing trouble for the school you attend
|
||||
|
||||
|
Sakagami Tomoyo
Posts: 940 Location: Melbourne, VIC, Australia |
|
|||
I'm... not sure you actually understand how school uniforms work. You are aware students are only required to wear them at and on the way to and from school, right? That kids can still wear what they like after school and on weekends? And for that matter, that uniforms don't make everyone look exactly alike in every way, that some measure of individuality is still able to be expressed? I'm not sure you understand how the social landscape at schools work, either. No American I've spoken to who's talked about their experiences at school has left me with the impression that everyone's differences are accepted and respected. Neither has everything I've read in the news about schools in America.
What makes you think that and uniforms are mutually exclusive? Even my secondary school didn't pull students up for taking off their jumper if the weather wasn't quite cold enough to justify it, or wearing a winter coat over it if it's colder than a mere jumper can cope with, short-sleeved shirts were an option in warmer weather, etc. |
||||
|
||||
|
Greboruri
Posts: 378 Location: QBN, NSW, Australia |
|
|||
Noticed this the first time I went over there. So many kids going to school on Saturdays and even Sundays. When I was over there in July and August during the school holidays, my accommodation was next to the high school. At least a hundred kids showed up everyday, in uniform, mostly playing sport when they got there from what I saw. Guessing they were part of school clubs. |
||||
|
||||
|
Snomaster1
Subscriber Posts: 2805 |
|
|||
|
For years,I've heard about a push for school uniforms in this country that isn't confined to private or religious schools. Personally,I think it's an absurd thing to do. I think a lot of this is just a smoke screen. They think that it might improve things. It won't. It'll just cover up the real problems that exist in our schools. What needs to be done is make a real effort to improve our public schools. Make clear rules for dress and enforce it.
To me,the school uniforms should be kept where they belong,in religious and private schools in this country and anime. They don't belong in public schools. I admit that this may not have anything with what other people are talking about but that's my stance on the subject although I have no idea how others feel about it. |
||||
|
||||
|
OldBezzy
Posts: 3 |
|
|||
|
I think this documentary is very useful. It explains the role and history of uniforms in Japan: not only school uniforms, but also work uniforms and the cultural role that uniforms have in Japan.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_Y_7lzHgs0&frags=pl%2Cwn |
||||
|
||||
|
nargun
Posts: 925 |
|
|||
Well, the imperial navy wore the same collars [all navies at the time were inspired by the royal navy, but the IJN rather more than most]. Why for schoolgirls? well, the previous standard -- hakama and kimono, itself a fairly new development in this role -- was increasingly being seen as old-fashioned and unsuited to the modern westernising japan &c &c, and at the same time the sailor collar was briefly popular in women's clothing in the west. These things are pretty contingent, all possibles and potentials rather than certainties. I mean, by the time the japanese navy was adopting the sailor collar the utilitarian reason they were used -- lack of water for washing -- was going away. Some context [for those who can't read the japanese, those are dates, from 1901 onwards] https://twitter.com/xavita/status/521321571810414592 |
||||
|
||||
 |
All times are GMT - 5 Hours |
|
|
|
Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2005 phpBB Group