Fear of stains weighed on players during their periods. Inspired by England's women's team, the champions switched to navy, and their play improved markedly.
Fujieda Junshin High School players smile after winning a match. They say their performance improved dramatically after switching their shorts from white to navy. June 20, Iwata, Shizuoka Prefecture. (©Sankei/Hayato Narita)
White is a traditional color for sports uniforms. It looks clean and reflects sunlight, helping athletes stay cool. But for female athletes, wearing white can also cause stress, especially during their periods.
One of Japan's top girls' high school soccer teams has switched from white shorts to navy blue.
Rino Takada, a third-year student and captain of the girls' soccer team at Fujieda Junshin High School in Shizuoka Prefecture, used to hesitate to slide-tackle during her period. She worried constantly about blood leaking through.
"I was especially afraid of getting up after falling down. I was also concerned that my underwear would show through when the shorts got wet from sweat or rain," she recalled.
The all-girls school, which offers both junior and senior high school education, has won the All-Japan High School Women's Soccer Championship three years in a row. The team's away kit consisted of a white shirt, shorts, and socks, and white was also the school's signature color.
Despite her concerns, Takada did not speak up. "The uniforms I wore in junior high school were also all white, so I thought that was just the way things were," she said.
According to Kyoko Raita, a professor of sports and gender studies at Chukyo University's graduate school, wearing white sportswear and keeping it spotless was once considered a mark of refinement befitting the upper classes in Britain, where many modern sports originated.
"In sports that developed primarily around men, including soccer, issues specific to women, such as menstruation, were not taken into account. White uniforms are symbolic of that," Raita explained.
Improved Performance
Fujieda Junshin High School began considering a uniform change in 2023. The turning point came when the manufacturer changed its specifications, and the new quick-drying material for the training clothes was even more see-through.
The team's coach, 37-year-old Sho Nakamura, came across an article about England's women's national soccer team, which had switched from its traditional white shorts to blue ones for the World Cup because of concerns about menstruation.
When he asked the players to complete a survey on the issue, their honest feelings came pouring out.
"I have to wear undershorts even in summer so nothing shows through."
"Everyone experiences periods differently, so it's hard to bring up the subject."
"I thought I just had to put up with it because it wasn't an injury."
Nakamura said, "It seems the players found it difficult to raise these issues with a male coach. It was only when I asked them directly that I learned about their specific concerns."
As a first step, the school changed the shorts worn for everyday training to navy blue. The players' performance improved markedly. Last year, the school also replaced the white shorts in its away kit with navy blue ones, bidding farewell to its traditional white.
Survey Reveals Widespread Concerns
In a survey conducted in November last year by insurance group SOMPO Holdings, 413 female high school students across Japan who participate in sports responded. The survey was part of a joint project with the WE League, Japan's professional women's soccer league.
It found that 48.7% of respondents had experienced problems with white sports uniforms. Students cited concerns such as their underwear showing through and stains that would not come out. Meanwhile, 28.5% said such concerns had made them feel anxious about continuing to participate in sports.
SOMPO Holdings runs a project called "Our Stories," which aims to improve the sporting environment for female athletes. As part of the initiative, the company has held discussion sessions involving students from Fujieda Junshin High School.
Takumi Onishi, a senior staff member in the company's public relations department, said, "Quite a few women give up sports in their teens. There must still be many areas for improvement that only become apparent when we listen to the people directly affected, whether the issue is the color or the material of their uniforms."
Raita stressed that bringing these issues to light starts with making it easier for people to speak up when something considered "normal" makes them uncomfortable.
"Sports teams, where people work together toward a common goal, are also an ideal setting for reexamining long-held assumptions," she said. "If coaches and others listen to athletes and take action, that can eventually lead to a movement that changes society as a whole."
Voyeurism Plagues Sports
Uniform design is also being rethought in response to another concern: female athletes being secretly photographed in compromising ways. Cases of athletes being secretly photographed and the images distributed continue unabated.
Even when athletes wear thick, dark-colored uniforms, their skin can sometimes appear visible through the fabric in images taken with infrared cameras.
Mizuno, a major sporting goods manufacturer, has developed a new material designed to prevent this.
Infrared rays can pass through clothing and reflect off the skin, making the skin appear visible in images taken with modified cameras that detect infrared light. The new fabric absorbs infrared rays reflected from the skin, preventing it from showing through in such images.
Previous fabrics designed to prevent such photography had a significant drawback: they lacked the breathability and stretch required for sportswear.
Kazumi Tajima, who led the development, and his colleagues revisited their choice of yarn and knitting techniques. After more than 20 years of development, Mizuno succeeded in creating a new material that also helps protect athletes from heat.
The material was adopted for the uniforms of Japanese national teams in volleyball, table tennis, hockey and other sports at the 2024 Paris Olympics. Athletes responded positively, saying they could "focus on competing without worrying about cameras."
Mizuno plans to expand its use to student sports and corporate-sponsored teams.
"We will continue developing materials that can protect athletes while also raising public awareness of how deeply rooted the problem of voyeuristic photography is," Tajima said.
(Read the article in Japanese.)
Author: Momoka Nagare, The Sankei Shimbun