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Ehime Prefecture abolishes necktie dress code for government employees

13 Comments
By Casey Baseel, SoraNews24

Spring is the start of the business, academic, and political year in Japan, so it’s when organizations roll out new rules and policies. For example, Ehime Prefecture just announced a new dress code for civil servants, and it includes a very big change: no more neckties.

In recent years, many Japanese offices have started “cool biz” programs, allowing workers to wear cooler, more casual attire during the warmer parts of the year so air conditioners can be turned down to reduce energy consumption and help the environment. In Ehime, the cool biz period last year ran from May to October, but as of this month, it’s a year-long program, meaning that prefectural employees are no longer required to wear neckties.

With civil service having a particularly strong aura of earnestness within Japan’s already earnest work culture, this is a big deal. Walk into just about any government office in Japan, and you’ll see legions of clerks dressed in white dress shirts buttoned firmly at the collar with a likewise firmly tied tie around their necks. Ehime figures it’s time to change that, though, with the prefectural personnel division issuing a statement that “In Ehime, work styles have been evolving with greater implementation of telework, staggered start times, and flex time systems, so we have introduced a new clothing policy to fit with the current times.”

Reactions on Twitter have been overwhelmingly positive.

“Come to think of it, what’s the point of a necktie in the first place?”

“A necktie is just a fashion accessory, but you don’t really wear accessories while working, right? It just gets in the way.”

“It’s feeling less and less weird to see people working without neckties, so I hope other companies do this too.”

“Very smart move by Ehime.”

“The whole country, no, the whole world, should have no-necktie dress codes!”

Ties aren’t going to completely disappear from the necks of civil servants, as they’ll still be required at formal reception and ceremonies. For day-to-day work, though, they’ll be optional, and odds are the vast majority of workers aren’t going to miss them.

Sources: Nankai Hoso via Yahoo! Japan News, Twitter, Nihon Keizai Shimbun via Jin

Read more stories from SoraNews24.

-- Sayonara, suits! One of Japan’s biggest companies ditches suit-and-tie dress code

-- East Japan Railway abolishes skirts, ribbons in women’s uniforms to “eliminate gender difference”

-- Automatic tie tier ties ties for tie tying-impaired

© SoraNews24

©2024 GPlusMedia Inc.

13 Comments
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Welcome to the 21st Century!

-2 ( +5 / -7 )

More cancelling - what will I wear around my head at the izakaya tonight?

1 ( +6 / -5 )

I applaud them for evolving and trying something new.

3 ( +6 / -3 )

K3POToday  08:08 am JST

More cancelling - what will I wear around my head at the izakaya tonight?

Whatever your heart desires. The old textbooks of 'tradition' and conformity will not do anymore. Change and evolution is good.

0 ( +3 / -3 )

Ehime is 50 years ahead than the rest of Japan!

4 ( +8 / -4 )

Now that's out of the way, maybe they can start streamlining the endless pointless paperwork and train public servants to use a bit of commonsense when dealing with simple problems.

1 ( +4 / -3 )

Hopefully this leads to companies shifting to casual work attire in the future. There is no point in wearing a suit at all if it is a cheap Aoki suit, not impressing any clients or co-workers at all there. Might as well wear any other clothing.

2 ( +5 / -3 )

I suspect that the majority and eventually 99% will continue to wear neckties. Unless neckties are banned, then the prevailing tradition will always win out over any changes in written rules. Oral procedures/rules tended to override written / official rules/procedures in most workplaces.

3 ( +4 / -1 )

Good. They can do the same with suits now too.

2 ( +5 / -3 )

University students don't have to wear Uniforms but why office workers need to wear uniforms.

Plus when will these officer workers can able to wear their fashion when they have like very few day off/holiday.

Neckties also choke your neck and is not good if you have symptom of gerd or ibs.

1 ( +2 / -1 )

Scruffy bums ! ;)

-1 ( +0 / -1 )

Maybe they’ll start using computers b soon as well….gee they are ahead of the times….

0 ( +0 / -0 )

SDCAToday  11:55 am JST

Hopefully this leads to companies shifting to casual work attire in the future. There is no point in wearing a suit at all if it is a cheap Aoki suit, not impressing any clients or co-workers at all there. Might as well wear any other clothing.

The clothes do not make the man (or woman). It's your qualifications that should matter. Do have them or not? Do you have a good work ethic to do what needs to be done or not? That's what more important.

When you go to see a doctor, you don't look under the white coats, do ya?

1 ( +1 / -0 )

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