TOKYO (AFP) – Every school has its rules, but tough regulations at some Japanese institutions, mandating everything from black hair to white shoelaces, are facing increasing criticism and even legal action.

A father of two in western Japan’s Oita Toshiyuki Kusumoto is seeking court intervention to protect his younger son from regulations he calls “unreasonable“.

They include rules on hair length, a ban on styles including ponytails and braids, prohibition of low-cut socks and a stipulation that shoelaces be white.

“These kinds of school rules go against respect for individual freedom and human rights, which are guaranteed by the constitution,“ Kusumoto told AFP.

Later this month, he will enter court-mediated arbitration with the school and city, hoping authorities will revise the rules.

Change is already under way in Tokyo, which recently announced that strict rules on issues such as hair colour will be scrapped at public schools in the capital from April.

But elsewhere, the rules are fairly common and Kusumoto, who recalls chafing at similar restrictions as a child, hopes his legal action will bring broader change.

“It’s not only about our children. There are many other children across Japan who are suffering because of unreasonable rules,“ he said.

Such regulations, which generally come into force when children enter middle school at around age 12, emerged after the 1970s, according to associate professor of education at Mukogawa Women’s University Takashi Otsu.

At the time, “violence against teachers became a social problem, with schools trying to control the situation through rules“, he told AFP.

“Some kinds of rules are necessary for any organisation, including schools, but decisions on them should be made with transparency and ideally involving students, which would allow children to learn democratic decision-making,“ he said.

The array of regulations has been defended as helping ensure order and unity in the classroom, but there have been other challenges.

In 2017, an 18-year-old high-school girl who was repeatedly ordered to dye her naturally brown hair black filed a lawsuit in Osaka seeking compensation of JPY2.2 million (USD19,130) for psychological suffering.

The case made national headlines and eventually led to the government last year instructing education boards to examine whether school rules reflect “realities around students“.

But in a sign of the difficult debate over the subject, both Osaka’s district and appeals courts ruled schools could require students to dye their hair black within their discretion for “various educational“ purposes.

The student said she was regularly harassed over the issue even though she was colouring her hair to meet the requirements, according to her lawyer.

“This rule destroyed a student’s life,“ he told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity to protect his client’s identity.

The student, now 22, has not given up though, and in November appealed to the Supreme Court.

There are other signs of pressure to change the rules, including a petition submitted to the Education Ministry in January by teen members of rights group Voice Up Japan.

They want the ministry to encourage schools to work with students on discussing rule changes.

“We started this campaign because some of our members have had unpleasant experiences with school rules,“ said 16-year-old member of Voice Up Japan’s high-school division Hatsune Sawada.

The petition gives the example of a girl who was humiliated by a teacher for growing a fringe that, when flattened with a hand, covered the girl’s eyebrows – a violation of the rules.

In Oita, the rules also include school uniforms designated by gender, with trousers only for boys and skirts for girls.

The local education board said the rules “not only nurture a sense of unity among children but also ease the economic burden for families of buying clothes“.

But Kusumoto disagrees.

“A sense of unity is not something that is imposed, it’s something that should be generated spontaneously,“ he said.

Imposing these kinds of rules “is a recipe for producing children who stop thinking“.

BERLIN (AP) – Every other hour, another packed train from Poland arrives at Berlin’s main train station filled with hundreds of Ukrainian refugees, mostly mothers and their children looking for a safe place away from the brutal war in their home country.

As they spilled out of the trains loudspeakers blared in Ukrainian and English: “Dear refugees from Ukraine, welcome to Germany, please follow the instructions of the volunteers in the yellow and orange vests.”

Spread across the platforms, a small army of volunteers in bright-coloured vests appeared – yellow for those who speak German, English and other languages, orange for Ukrainian and Russian speakers – ready to manoeuvre the exhausted masses through the maze of Berlin’s sleek and shiny glass-and-steel railway station into the building’s basement.

The operation runs so smoothly that the seemingly endless stream of refugees goes largely unnoticed to the city’s tens of thousands of regular commuters making their way through the station’s five levels.

Most don’t even know of the sprawling refugee town that has sprung up in the station basement.

Vadim, a 17-year-old teenager who came on his own from Kharkiv in eastern Ukraine, travelled for three days and nights before arriving in Berlin on Tuesday afternoon. “No sleep,” is all he said, a tired, petrified look in his eyes.

When asked where his parents were, the teen, who gave only his first name, simply shrugged his shoulders, grabbed a dirty backpack and slowly walked away.

Like Vadim, most refugees were too exhausted and traumatised to say much. Their frightened looks seemed to reflect the horrors of war.

They sat huddled on long rows of wooden benches and tables, tightly holding onto plastic bags, school backpacks or duffel bags containing the few belongings they packed before fleeing the wailing sirens, detonating missiles and hastily arranged funerals back home.

More than three million refugees have left Ukraine since Russia attacked the country three weeks ago.

Most have fled to neighbouring countries such as Poland, Moldova and Romania.
But as the war continues and civilians are increasingly in the crosshairs of the Russian military, many are making their way further west.

Some 160,000 Ukrainian refugees have been officially registered in Germany, but their real numbers are thought to be much higher as Ukrainians can enter Germany without visas and there are no thorough controls along the Polish-German border.

Berlin has become the number one gateway for tens of thousands of refugees, with around 7,500 arriving at the train station every day. Because city officials were initially slow to react to the massive influx, thousands of volunteers have stepped up to help cater to the refugees’ every needs.

They take the new arrivals from station platforms to a waiting area in the basement next to a McDonald’s.

There, an entire refugee town opens up: Volunteers hand out food and hot drinks, stands offer free shampoo, diapers, tampons, sanitary napkins and other hygiene supplies. A nursing tent is set up for moms wanting to breastfeed their babies.

There is a safe zone for children with toys and boxes full of second-hand clothes, as well as volunteers offering pet food for the many dogs and cats the refugees bring with them.

There’s also a stand operated by German railway company Deutsche Bahn handing out free train tickets for those who want to continue their travels to another destination. More than 100,000 tickets have been issued so far.

There are volunteers handing out cell phone chargers, power banks and German SIM cards so the refugees can keep up their lifelines to the husbands, fathers and sons who stayed back home to defend their country against the Russian invasion.

“When the first thousands of refugees arrived here, it quickly became clear that up on the platforms, where the trains arrive from Poland, there was not enough space. That’s why our station management very quickly decided to free up a protected area in the basement,” Deutsche Bahn spokeswoman Anja Broeker told The Associated Press.

“There, together with the many volunteers who also very quickly organised themselves … we have been creating an aid structure that’s getting better with each passing day.”
The operation runs efficiently: Volunteers know their place and task; they are friendly and patient, but the atmosphere is eerily quiet and subdued.

There’s no loud laughter or chatter, no shouting, not even babies crying, only the hum of the escalators and the shrieking sound of braking trains entering the station.

About a third of those who arrive plan to stay, but most have no family or friends to welcome and shelter them, no place to sleep.

So the volunteers bring them to a big white tent outside the back entrance of the station, next to the Spree River and within sight of the Chancellery.

Here, a constant flotilla of buses stands ready to take the refugees to Terminal 5 of Berlin’s new BER airport, the city’s former Tegel airport or a convention centre on its outskirts.

In recent days, those places were turned into huge makeshift shelters filled with rows of hundreds of cots.

Earlier, volunteers had lined up inside the station holding up signs saying how many refugees they could house at their private homes.

Recently, however, reports of men pretending to offer shelter and then sexually harassing and exploiting women have led authorities to warn refugees not to accept private accommodation offers.

On Wednesday, authorities in the western city of Duesseldorf confirmed that a young Ukrainian woman was allegedly sexually assaulted by two men earlier this month.

The many volunteers who spearheaded the initial help have mixed feelings about the city taking control now and some feel sidelined by the authorities.

Maya Grossman, 28, a baker from San Francisco who moved to Berlin three years ago and Alyse Conn-Powers, 30, from Bloomington, Indiana, have come to the train station every other day to drop off supplies they bought with donations raised back home in the United States.

While they first brought leftover food from Grossman’s bakery, the city now no longer wants private food donations or hygiene supplies, so instead the two friends have brought colouring books, pencils, sharpeners and soap bubbles for the children.

“We’re just going to keep working for as long as we can with the money that we have and keep doing as much good as we possibly can,” Grossman said.

“It’s a marathon, not a sprint, and whatever is happening here is going to be happening for a long time and people are going to need a lot of things.”