JAPAN ACTIVISTS DECRY DRESS CODE ‘HARASSMENT’

TOKYO—YUMI Ishikawa’s feet bled after a day in the high heels required by her job, a memory that led her and other Japanese activists to demand on Tuesday that forcing women to wear certain items be treated as workplace harassment.

Japanese women took to social media in November to insist on the right to wear spectacles at work after reports employers were imposing bans, the latest outcry against strict office dress codes that included forcing women to wear high heels, stockings and makeup, and even stipulating what color hair they can have.

The labor ministry drafted guidelines in October against workplace harassment—known as “power harassment” or “power hara,” but failed to address the issue of employers dictating how female employees should dress.

“You might think this is nothing, but the fact is that some peoples’ lives have been changed because of these rules,” Ishikawa, an actress and activist, told a news conference. “People have hurt themselves wearing high heels ... and all of these people are women.”

Just hours before, Ishikawa and other activists submitted papers to the labor ministry calling for such dress codes to be seen as power harassment under the new guidelines, expected to be finalized this month.

Ishikawa earlier this year began the #Kutoo protest movement, sparked by her own memories of being forced to wear 7-centimeter heels at a job at a funeral parlor.

The movement, whose name plays on the Japanese words for “shoe” and “pain,” swelled into a viral outcry on social media about women being forced to wear high heels.—