Seifuku

I know this is going to make me sound like a Otaku, so bear with me here. Are seifuku still being used by schools in Japan?Saw an article before that it was being phased out. But on a trip to Chiba, I saw some girls wearing them. Although Iam not sure if it is one of those "costume cafe" things.

Mikhail,

All junior high schools and 99% of senior high schools have compulsory uniform. I haven't heard of any recent trend to phase out school uniforms.

Well, I wouldn't say that "all junior high schools and 99% of senior high schools have compulsory uniform" but a lot of them do, and most of them have some kind of a uniform in which you are free to wear.

True, uniforms are decreasing, but that's been going on for decades. Probably ever since you were born. In particular, most of the private jr/sr highs are proud to have their traditional uniforms.

Basically there are more JH and SH schools with uniforms than those without uniforms, so the people you saw would most likely have been wearing their compulsory school uniform. It's the same in my country- fewer schools have uniforms than before, but it's still a majority. The difference between Japan and my home country is that many of the girls in particular actually like their uniforms! We hated ours.

During say the 70s to the 90s, most students in Japan hated uniforms. Jeans and T-shirt was the "uniform for the youth," and that was when a lot of the public schools made it free for their students to wear anything. My friends and neighbors in public jr/sr highs in Greater Tokyo would wear torn jeans and skimpy tank tops to school in those days.

To begin with, at a lot of public schools, uniforms weren't actually "compulsory" in the first place. They have been called "hyojunfuku (standard clothes)" instead of "seifuku (uniform)," and you usually have a choice in how you arrange them. Also, even today, a lot of schools both private and public have no uniforms at all. At these schools, It's totally up top the students to buy and decide what to wear.

That's probably the reason the OP has the impression that there aren't many uniforms any more. But you always saw a great deal of school uniforms even throughout those decades, because quite a large number of schools always had compulsory uniforms.

But today, as a trend, jr/sr high school students, particularly girls, prefer to wear navy blue jackets, pleated skirts, white shirt and high socks (loose socks are out of fashion) be it a uniform or not. So if the school has that kind of uniform, they would gladly wear them, and if not, they would buy something along that line.

On a related note, the sailor style uniform for girls (seira-fuku) aren't at all common today as it used to be a few decades ago. Especially in Tokyo area, they are rarely seen, with the exception of several traditional private schools. Perhaps that's what the OP meant.