Noboru Watanabe is 53 years old, works as a civil servant in the Tokyo Metropolitan Government and a few days ago His office colleagues saw his shins for the first time. The heat was pressing and Watanabe, like another handful of colleagues (few), decided to swallow his shame and skip the rigid code of etiquette that dictates that office workers must wear a shirt, jacket, tie and long pants. He didn’t do it just because. With his gesture he joined an initiative launched in April by the authorities to make the heatwave more bearable.
There are those who are not so clear.
calves in the air. It is not easy to combat extreme heat waves. In Spain there are institutions that have begun to distribute thermal bracelets among the workers who work on the street and in France have reached restrict alcohol so that emergency services can prioritize heat strokes.
However, there are few initiatives as peculiar (and extravagant) as the one they have activated in Tokyo. There, in April, anticipating what was to come, the Metropolitan Government gave carte blanche his employees to come to the office in shorts. Not only that. With its measure, the Executive hope to set an example and that companies also relax their dress codes.
Dating back to 2005. To understand the measure we have to go back to 2005, when the Ministry of the Environment launched a campaign called “Cool Biz” to promote energy savings. Its premise was simple: the strict Japanese etiquette code leads office workers to go to their jobs with a tie, jacket and long pants, which in turn forced companies to spend more money (and energy) on air conditioning to make their day more bearable.
So… Why not change it?
“It’s liberating”. As part of the campaign, the authorities agreed that the thermostats in public offices should set at 28ºC and they relaxed the dress code for their employees. Of course, not too much. The ‘flexibility’ was limited to jackets and ties, which became optional items of clothing.
“There were complaints and resistance, but they soon realized that not wearing a suit and tie in 35ºC is liberating,” remember Sumie Kawakamiprofessor at Yamanashi Gakuin University. The idea was to set an example from the public to the private sector to control energy expenditure and pollution in the country.
one step further. The great architect of that measure was Yuriko Koikethen Minister of the Environment and since 2016 governor of Tokyo. Hence, he has taken advantage of his new position to go one step further in the capital: in spring Koike publicly encouraged his administration officials to leave their long pants in the closet when the heat hits.
The idea was the same: to make the heatwave more bearable without having to skyrocket the energy bill, an important objective if two keys are taken into account.
And what are they? First, last year Japan experienced a summer of record temperaturesabove 40ºC, and begins to get used to supporting extreme heat waves. He even named them: kokushobi.
The second key is that when Koike launched the measure, in April, the energy cost was a national concern, both in Japan and in much of the planet. It had been barely two months since the start of the Iran war and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz had shot the price of oil, taking it to levels not seen for years. It is estimated that 90% of imports of oil that Japan receives arrive through that strategic maritime passage.
The great enemy: taboo. However, ending a habit carried on for decades is not so easy. When the AFP agency visited the office government where Noboru Watanabe works, a week ago, he only saw five men wearing shorts. And that day they reached 34º.
Among those brave few was Watanabe himself, who admits that at first he was embarrassed to walk among his colleagues showing his shins. The reporters of The New York Times they met with a similar panorama: They only saw 11 men wearing shorts, just 16% of a staff of 70 men.
And the great debate began. The shorts perhaps they are more comfortable for the summer (Watanabe himself recognize that once the initial reservations are overcome, they are “comfortable” and even make you feel “younger”), but that doesn’t mean they convince everyone. In June The Japan Times public a column in which it was slipped that the Tokyo government may have gone “too far.”
Other Asian media have collected testimonies from Japanese who do not quite accept the new Tokyo directive. “I’ve been to business meetings in Pakistan, Thailand and the Philippines and people there don’t wear tights when it comes to something important,” explains a 56-year-old businessman.
A new concept: Sune Hara. It’s not just a question of whether to go with shorts to a meeting is appropriate or not. In Japan, a new term has been coined that indicates a deeper debate: sune hara“bullying because of leg hair.”
Its approach is very simple. Now that men can wear shorts, will they also experience the pressure that women feel to have perfect legs? Why does society expect a woman to spend time and money getting rid of hair but tolerate it in a man? Will women still be expected to wear long skirts or stockings in certain areas?
“Wearing shorts in the workplace has started to gain acceptance, but will society accept women showing bare, stockingless, hairy legs (because women have hair on their legs too) in a business environment?” a user launched one recently on the Weekly Women’s Prime platform. “If it is acceptable to men, it stands to reason that women’s legs should also be accepted.”
Images | Egor Myznik (Unsplash) and Fikri Rasyid (Unsplash)
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