Summary: Japanese schools have many unreasonable rules. I’ll tell the reason why they have many unreasonable rules.
The way to think of school rules.
Schools don’t want to shoulder responsibility but avoid risks.
If any troubles happen at schools, teachers need to cope with them. Without handling, parents sometimes protest. In the worst case, the school principal apologizes to the parents or public and he/she gets fired. Not to happen them, schools keep avoiding any risks. Eventually, many unreasonable school rules were born.
Students must not bring unnecessary items to schools.
Many schools say that students must not bring unnecessary items to schools. This is because school would like to avoid any problems. If students bring an electronic dictionary and broke it accidently, parents sometimes complain against the school. In addition, if students bring items like watches or mobile games and someone stole them, teachers must try to find criminals.
Around 1980, bad children increased. Students fought each other, young students smoked and break school equipment. Bullying and prostitution increased and many people took illegal drugs. Some students killed teachers, some teachers killed students. Without saying, like the accidents teachers kill students is unacceptable. However, behind the scene of these accidents, if teachers hadn’t killed students, students would have killed teachers. To work as teachers, schools needed to make school rules strict.
To avoid any problems, schools say to students not to bring extra items to schools. Schools usually show that extra items are smartphones, money, snacks, hobbies, portable audio players, earphones and so on.
Not to grow up bad boys
To avoid growing up bad students and dangerous situations, many school rules were born. Students must not mimic like bad boys. Many bad boys had regent hairstyle, so schools made harsh rules about hair style and so on. Students must not go to gaming centers or amusement arcades (when gaming centers and amusement arcade were born, many bad boys hanged out. Not to happen troubles, many schools forced students not to go there). Girls made up and behaved like adults. Mature girls tended to get caught in prostitutions and so on.
Trend of “The stake that sticks gets out hammered in”
Japanese hate “heresy”, “abnormal”, “geek”. Japanese love equality and harmony. In Japan, there is a famous proverb “The stake that sticks gets out hammered in”. It is a trend in Japan. Even if heresy and abnormal and geek children are talented, Japanese usually force them to be normal. If students can’t work in group or obey the rules, teachers punish them severely.
Anyway, schools in Japan restrict students who do things differently than others. Students who make up, wear short skirts, dye their hair, have long bangs, are penalized. From these things, school rules were made.