Foreign media decries “leg hair harassment” from shorts-wearing men in Tokyo offices

It’s summer in Tokyo, which means temperatures in the high thirties and insane levels of humidity.

For decades, the government has encouraged corporations to allow their employees to dress down for the hotter weeks of the year, leading to the “Cool Biz” campaign that inspired a buzzword. Cool Biz usually means a loose shirt and no tie or jacket.

But as the summers grow hotter and longer, people are finally starting to wear shorts to work. A very sensible thing, most would agree, but it has apparently led to something called “leg hair harassment.”

We say apparently, because the whole thing is possibly a media invention to provide news content for the silly season, now that the major summer sporting tournaments are over.

Leg hair harassment joins a growing list of harassment buzzwords that exist in Japan and elsewhere: sexual, academic, power, customer, etc.

According to the BBC’s Japan correspondent (whose article is at the center of recent mainstream media reporting on the issue):

Some commentators enjoy the relaxed rules, helping them work more comfortably. Others say the policy is unfair to women since they are still expected to wear tights when showing a part of their legs, while men can now opt for shorts.

And a few women describe the experience of “leg hair harassment” or a term coined online “sunehara”, referring to the discomfort of being forced to see their colleague’s leg hair.

We expect these Japanese office ladies are referring not to the younger guys in the office who might well go to the gym, but to the middle-aged guys who may well be the managers.

But not all your male colleagues are bad guys. Some “have been feeling self-conscious about their leg hair.” So much so that the laser hair removal is increasing among men, according to a doctor at a hair removal clinic.

If your Japanese co-worker is wearing shorts and showing off his glabrous legs, he may have got some help from a laser.

Of course, most Japanese men have relatively little leg hair compared to foreign men, especially white guys, and then there is the even more pressing issue of body odor, which (in the Japanese mind) is more chronic among people not from East Asia. (And just in case you wondered, yes, there is such a term as “smell harassment” in Japan.)

While the issue of male leg hair in the office is also being reported by domestic media, it is inevitably the non-Japanese media’s attention that has irked some men in Japan and wounded their pride.

Does sunehara actually exist? Do large numbers of women really feel this way? The jury’s still out, though the blistering summer heat is most definitely still in.