The Uniform

This little bit of contemplation is for Sarfaraz because he gets up to far more social commentary in his blog than I do, and I should really try to keep up!

So last month I had to go buy a tracksuit.

And I feel dirtier for it.

I have often sworn that I will never wear trackpants. I can’t quite explain it, but I find there is something unseemly about them. Perhaps I’ve just had my eyes scoured by too many sketchy men taking advantage of baggy trousers.

Regardless, apparently I need to get over it as tracksuits are a requirement in Japan.

Michael, the outgoing JET in Furubira/my predecessor and guru for all things Furubira-related had been getting me prepared for what it was going to be like for me over in Japan. One of the things we went over most recently was the dress code for my various workplaces. Since Furubira’s such a small town, I’m the only foreigner game in town and I’ll be working at the elementary, junior high, and high schools. And, unlike in North America where a teacher is pretty much good in business casual attire no matter what school they work in, in Japan the school very much dictates the wardrobe.

At the high school, Michael explained, everyone dresses very formally, and men are required to wear dress pants, a dress shirt, and a tie. As annoying as that may be, I had been previously informed that the Japanese view high schools as formal environments and that I should be so lucky as to get away with anything short of a full-on suit and tie.

At the elementary school, he described the environment as more informal and mentioned that I would be spending a lot of my day playing with the kids, so it was acceptable to wear a tracksuit. Tracksuit or not, that made sense.

With the junior high school/middle school being the step between elementary and high school, and being the place where Japanese students started wearing school uniforms for the first time, I expected it to be kind of a business-casual setting. And I was right, as Michael told me that the ideal wardrobe for the junior high school was dress pants and a button-up shirt with a collar.

“Or,” he said “you can just wear a tracksuit.”

I laughed, and explained that, from my perspective, a tracksuit was pretty much as far as one could get from business casual attire. I mean, hell, even on casual Fridays at my old employer, I would have gotten a fair few side-long glances, if not an out-and-out thinly-disguised, all-call email had I elected to show up in a tracksuit. Michael conceded that it did seem a little strange, but I accepted the advice, and I dutifully went out and bought my first track suit (shudder).

But I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Japanese society is focused on ceremony, formality, and handling pretty much every interaction in a manner that was officially sanctioned. Whether I’m going into a tiny grocery store or a big-box kombini, every single clerk greets me in the exact same fashion, and when I leave they all say the exact same thing to me. Every time the door to the store opens, they robotically spout the exact same thing, even when they are in the middle of an interaction with another customer. In a society that is this formal, how could something as informal as a tracksuit be on the same level as business casual attire?

Then I got it.

Like the suit and tie of the Japanese salaryman, and the polyester polo-shirt-and-visor numbers of Japanese fast food workers, the tracksuit was just another uniform. It didn’t matter that you were wearing a tracksuit, it mattered that everyone was wearing tracksuits. It mattered that you weren’t wearing something else.

The Japanese enjoy the uniform.

But should that “uniform” be a noun or an adjective? Is it the matching clothes or the elimination of differences—better expressed as uniformity—that the Japanese appreciate?

Indeed, uniformity would serve The Collective Mind/Cohesive Social Unit that seems to pressure and dominate Japanese society. The uniform erases the individual, as well as all of the inconsistencies and unpredictabilities that go along with it. Just as the uniform of cotton and polyester makes one comfortable knowing who is the one serving and who is the one being served, so, too, can uniformity provide us with a degree of tempting comfort. With Uniformity, there is no question as to who is leading and who is following. In the Uniformity of the collective, one is comforted by numbers and insulated from responsibility.

So, you can say what you like about how all the people in western society are drones, and how even individualism has been commodified and mass-marketed, but the fact remains that I can freely go swimming in a public place in Canada without worrying about bearing my tattoos. However, here in Japan, tattoos have been assigned to the uniform of the Yakuza, regardless of how archaic an association that may be. And, being part of this less-than-desirable uniform, there are certain places in Japan that people with tattoos are not allowed to go. One example would be the hotel we stayed at in Tokyo (the swanky Keio Plaza), where I was told that if I wanted to use the free, roof-top pool, I would have to rent a wetshirt for the equivalent of about $12 Canadian to cover my tattoos.

Another, better example is the Japanese Onsen or hotsprings/communal baths. The onsen, I’ve been told, is one of the single greatest Things Japanese to experience over here. I haven’t been yet, and I intend to go, but that plan is accompanied by a certain amount of trepidation on my part because of my tattoos. I mean, I’m luckier than most because my tattoos are usually concealed, and I could likely get into the onsen without the proprietors knowing, but I’ve been informed that they will have no problem coming and hauling me out of the communal hottub at any moment and telling me, in no uncertain terms, that I should leave.

This is because, in Japan, even when you’re bare-ass naked you are still wearing a uniform—or rather your body is being evaluated against the ideal of The Uniform. To say nothing of the overly-hyped western physiological differences that would go against the uniform, the ideal of the uniform is clear skin (to use a wince-inducing cliché: a blank canvas) and, should you have had the audacity—the individualistic GALL to accessorize your skin, to create the birthmarks that you wanted but were never born with, then, my friend, you are an aberration and an abomination.

The Japanese would claim the yakuza link for this pejorative stance. The yakuza are the only people in Japanese society who have tattoos, and the yakuza are not allowed in onsen. But, as a former JET explained in his rather rude, last-ditch tattoo defense, “Yakuza janai! Gaijin desho?!” I’m clearly not a member of the Japanese mafia. I’m clearly a foreigner. The little pictures I have on my back pale in comparison to the full-shirt irezumi of the yakuza, and trying to equate the two—trying to confuse whitey ‘ol me with Japanese-only, nine-fingered mobsters—is a thin smokescreen over what is actually going on: I am being denied because I do not adhere to the Uniform.