It’s a hairy situation to say the least.

Summer in Japan seems to be getting hotter and longer each year, to the point where I’m wondering how much longer some places will even be habitable for humans. Only a few years back, Japan introduced the Cool Biz initiative, where office employees could go without neckties or jackets to beat the heat. Now, some workplaces here are going all out and breaking with longstanding tradition to allow shorts, because doing otherwise could jeopardize the well-being of employees.

But with these relaxed dress codes comes a new issue, with some people questioning whether men coming to the office with shaggy leg hair could constitute harassment.

▼ It’s hard to view all workplaces equally. Some feel leg hair is inappropriate, while others wouldn’t bat an eye at a topless coworker with an egg taped to his armpit.

While lawyers commenting on the issue have said it likely isn’t harassment, mainly because feelings of discomfort caused by such hair are due to the personal preferences of the offended party, rather than something that would be universally deemed offensive behavior, it does bring up an interesting question of what is or isn’t harassment in the workplace. As we’ve seen before, Japan has a uniquely large collection of harassment terms, such as power harassment, maternity harassment, and customer harassment. Some of them are casual terms for annoying behavior by coworkers that most people endure, such as “Ohtani harassment” (talking too much about Shohei Ohtani), while others are serious actions that have profound effects on people’s mental and physical well-being.

When legal action is considered in these wildly differing forms of harassment, it is important to know where that line between everyday annoyances and abuse falls. Since it comes in many forms, most people would struggle to make a clear-cut definition of real “harassment” and consider it one of those things where you just kind of know it if you see it.

Even Japanese law tends to steer clear of the H-word. “Sexual harassment” was mentioned in the law books back in the ’70s, but was never specifically defined. In 2019, the Act on Comprehensively Advancing Labor Measures, and Stabilizing the Employment of Workers, and Enriching Workers’ Vocational Lives was updated, making it informally known as the “Power Harassment Prevention Act.” However, this act never even uses the word “harassment,” let alone “power harassment.”

That being said, it does lay out actionable behavior that would generally be considered the definition of power harassment in a court of law:

“In order for an employer to preclude any behavior that is based on behavior that constitutes bullying in the workplace which exceeds the scope necessary and reasonable in the course of business from damaging the work environment of the employer’s workers, the employer must provide consultation to those workers and take measures necessary in terms of employment management, such as developing a necessary system for appropriately handling such behavior.”

That legalese might be hard to parse, but it’s basically saying that it’s the employer’s responsibility to ensure that superior-subordinate relationships do not exceed that needed to conduct business and that no behavior that harms employees or their working environment occurs.

By this definition and its very crucial use of the word “and,” you could argue that a man with intense leg hair could be accused of power harassment on the condition he was a superior to the person who was offended because he was disrupting the work environment and could not be rebuked because of his status. On the other hand, if the hairy-legged man was an equal or subordinate, there is no law that covers his abundance of sub-waist follicles and their effect on those around him.

Interestingly, that section of the Power Harassment Prevention Act could also potentially support the employer in demanding that the man shave his legs in the spirit of protecting the work environment, provided he was a superior to other employees who felt offended by them. But such a demand would probably also be seen as violating the man’s constitutional rights, as has happened in numerous cases of overly strict policies in Japan regarding personal appearance, like train operators being forbidden to grow beards.

▼ Especially since most affordable leg-hair removal methods are quite painful

So, to answer the titular question of whether highly visible leg hair is a form of harassment… Possibly?

As we’ve just seen, there are no rules or definitions regarding what generally actionable harassment is exactly in Japan, so it’s really anyone’s guess and dependent on individual circumstances. Nevertheless, society here has been very actively exploring the topic of harassment both seriously and playfully in recent years, and as a result, may develop a keener sense of the concept down the road by continuing to ask questions and talking more about it openly.

Source: Bengoshi.com, Act on Comprehensively Advancing Labor Measures, and Stabilizing the Employment of Workers, and Enriching Workers’ Vocational Lives,  Act on Equal Opportunity and Treatment between Men and Women in Employment
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