School getting ready for its 80th birthday makes a modern addition to its uniform options.

Tanabe Junior High School in the town of Kyotanabe, Kyoto Prefecture, is going to be marking the 80th anniversary of its founding next year. That’s definitely a good opportunity to look back on its history and celebrate its traditions, but the school has no intent of having its thinking be stuck in the past, as shown by its plans to be the first public junior high school in Japan to have a hoodie as its uniform.

Currently, the standard uniform for boys at Tanabe is a gakuran, a straight-collared button-up jacket-like garment worn with slacks, and for girls it’s a sailor suit blouse-and-skirt combo. These are both considered pretty traditional outfits in the Japanese school system these days, as it’s becoming increasingly common for school uniforms to have blazers instead.

▼ Gakuran

Tanabe does allow female students who don’t want to wear the sailor suit to opt for gakuran or dress shirt and slacks instead, but the old-school uniforms aren’t necessarily unpopular. For the last three years, the school has polled students on whether they want to keep the current uniforms or switch to a more modern blazer, and for three years in a row, the students have voted to keep the gakuran and sailor suits. However, later this year they’ll have another option, a zip-up gray hoodie, with black trim and the school’s emblem on the left side of the chest. The design, which was decided on by the students, can be seen on the school’s website here.

“We came to the decision [to introduce a hoodie uniform] taking into consideration that we are in a diverse and genderless era,” said the school in a statement. To be clear, the hoodie isn’t just for use while commuting to school or extracurricular events, either. Not only can students wear it in class, it can also be worn to such important occasions as the school’s graduation ceremony and welcome ceremony for newly enrolled students.

Aside from being comfortable and modern, the hoodie uniform also has the advantage of being machine washable (most conventional school uniforms require dry cleaning), and though at 9,000 yen (US$58) it’s not a particularly inexpensive hoodie, that’s still about half the price that students currently have to pay for gakuran or sailor suit tops. Students aren’t required to commit to just one style of uniform, either, so if they want to purchase both the hoodie and the pre-existing option, and wear whichever they feel like on that day, that’s OK too.

The hoodie uniform will be available starting in November.

Source: Jiji, Yomiuri Shimbun, Tanabe Junior High School
Top image: Pakutaso
Insert image: Wikipedia/Nesnad
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