Words by Cory Ohlendorf | Photo illustration by Bandana

I was at my gym in Shibuya the other day, mid-stretch after my workout, when I realized I now know enough Japanese to understand that the guy next was complaining about the heat. And my next thought was this whole “shorts-at-the-office” thing everyone’s been arguing about online is playing out in real time, on real legs, here in Japan. So I did what any reasonable journalist would do. I prepared to embarrass myself and walked over to ask strangers about their leg hair.

First, a little background information, in case you’ve missed the discourse. Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike, the same official who invented Japan’s “Cool Biz” campaign (which finally let Japanese salarymen lose the requisite jacket and tie in summer months) decided this year that jackets and ties weren’t the only problem. So she recently expanded the policy to allow government workers, and by extension anyone whose company wanted to follow the capital’s lead, to wear shorts to the office. A look previously reserved for the weekends, now cleared for Tokyo’s notoriously buttoned-up office culture.

The reasoning is sound and, frankly, overdue. Tokyo summers are notoriously hot and humid. Energy costs are up thanks to instability tied to the war in the Middle East, and asking men to sweat through wool trousers in the name of professionalism was never a great trade. One 53-year-old environmental ministry official told the New York Times that after twenty-some years in a suit, he swapped in khaki shorts and got told he looked younger. “I feel I am helping relax the whole office,” he said, which is so adorably Japanese, isn’t it?

But not everyone’s so relaxed. A poll from Gorilla Clinic (a leading med-spa that specializes in laser hair removal) found that 53.5% of Japanese workers still oppose the shorts policy, versus 46.5% in favor—a genuine coin flip on a fairly low-stakes wardrobe question. The objection, for both men and women who dislike it, mostly comes down to body image and body hair. But it’s the online backlash from women specifically that’s given the whole debate its name: Sunehara, or “leg hair harassment”. What is it? Well, it’s the uneasy discomfort of being made to look at a male colleague’s bare, hairy shins in a professional setting.

One woman told the Times, more or less, that short sleeve shirts are fine but legs are a bridge too far—she can only picture “middle-aged men’s legs, you know, hairy ones.” A professor went further, arguing that if men get to show skin, they should be shaving it first. Meanwhile, women are still largely expected to wear tights if their own legs are visible—which is Japan’s patriarcal double standard buried under all the memes, if anyone wants to argue about the real thing.

Anyway … back to my gym bros in Shibuya. Let me introduce you to the panel.

Daiki, 29, was the first guy I approached. We often workout at the same time and had discussed sneakers previously, so I felt we had a friendly enough connection to broach this subject. Thankfully, he had strong and specific opinions, delivered while gesturing at his own calves. He trims—but only in summer. “I don’t like super hairy legs, they don’t look clean and you can’t see the muscles,” he told me. Then, a caveat that undercut the whole premise: “But I also don’t like them looking too clean and perfect.” There is, apparently, a narrow window of acceptable leg—groomed enough to show definition, not so groomed it looks like you tried.

This level of detail and dedication to getting it just right feels uniquely Japanese. Daiki then waved over his friend Kosuke, four years older and, according to Daiki, a target of constant ribbing for how much he spends on full-body laser hair removal. I asked how much, but they both just waved the question away with their hands.

Full-body, it turns out, was not a figure of speech. “Arms, legs, my beard, I’m even doing my toes,” Kosuke said, before Daiki cut in with the part he’d clearly been waiting to say: “Everything below his eyebrows!” Kosuke laughed and pointed at his shorts. He said the smooth legs (and body) are appreciated by the ladies he dates. This the kind of reporting you get in a Shibuya gym.

A third guy had overheard enough to wander over uninvited, which is how the best quotes always happen. Shota, a 34-year-old project manager, said he’s been wearing shorts to work for the past month. He pulled up his nylon pants and pointed to his legs, which didn’t have much hair on them at all. He said he didn’t worry much about leg hair, but he had a theory for why so many other Japanese men (and women) do. “Europeans often have lighter-colored brown or blonde hair, so body hair is less noticeable,” he said. “But Asian people have darker hair, and it’s patchy like mine so it doesn’t look as good—maybe that’s why more guys shave or trim it.”

None of this is scientific. It’s three guys at a gym in Shibuya, on a hot afternoon, being unexpectedly candid with a stranger holding a phone. But it’s a more honest cross-section of how Tokyo men actually think about this than anything in the poll numbers—somewhere between Daiki’s “not too hairy, not too smooth” Goldilocks zone and Kosuke’s scorched-earth approach is where most of this debate actually lives. Social media may be arguing about whether men should groom, but the guys in the gym make it pretty clear: Japanese guys care about aesthetics and so they’re going to tackle their body hair. They’re mostly just negotiating over how much. And hopefully the women near them won’t feel too harassed by the sight of it.

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