Court Backs Osaka High School over Hair Color Rule

Osaka, Feb. 16 (Jiji Press)--Osaka District Court ruled on Tuesday that it is legitimate for a prefecture-run high school to ask its students to dye their brown hair black under school regulations and instructions.

In a lawsuit filed by a 21-year-old woman in 2017, the court, however, ordered the Osaka prefectural government to pay 330,000 yen to her for failing to add her name to a student list after she stopped attending the school.

The woman sought some 2.2 million yen in damages from the prefectural government, claiming that she suffered mental distress as she became a truant student after she was ordered by teachers to dye her hair black. The school regulations ban brown hair.

“The school regulations are reasonable in light of conventional wisdom, and hair color instructions are based on a legitimate purpose under the school education act,” Presiding Judge Noriko Yokota said.

Yokota also rejected the woman’s claim that her natural hair color is brown.

[Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]