I see, on tv, a lot of people wearing caps like these. They’re not hardhats, they fit too close to the head. They look like the “bump caps” employees wore in the Rockwell airplane factory in Los Angeles where I had to go once in a while when I worked for that conpany.
I was in Japan in the late '70s and I remember seeing people wearing such caps back then. I didn’t ask back then, but a lot od the people I met were really into symbolism.
I’m wondering what the function is. Is it cultural? Do they signify authority? I dunno.
Peace,
mangeorge
Looks like a hardhat to me. That’s what I’ve seen on construction workers, there.
American hardhats just might be more loosely fitted or more sturdy, more likely the latter. Japan doesn’t have the lawsuit culture, nor do they have much in the way of nanny-stateism (yet).
They’re hardhats, just like construction workers wear. In the newsroom it’s just an affectation to play up the drama. “Oooh, we might have another major earthquake and a klieg light might fall on our heads!” The police wear similar helmets when they go around the neighborhood in their cars at about 15 mph, top-lights spinning. It’s equally absurd in that context.
It’s also partially the Japanese cultural love of playing dress-up. You dress the part you want to play. The other day I just had to sit through another seminar about how a professional appearance is mirrored in your actions and mindset, making you a more effective worker/student/blahblahblah.
That said, I still haven’t figured out what the fuck is up with all the cross dressing in the entertainment industry. I guess because it’s slightly transgressive it’s an automatic comedic boost or something. Seems like every other show has a segment with guys in drag. Almost never women, though.
Those look a lot like the ballistic nylon liners of old-school steel military helmets to me.
Women in drag would just equate to Takarazuka (melodramatic musicals) instead of comedy. Plus poking fun at women, in either Japanese or American culture, is seen as being mean, not funny (in general).
funniest thing when I was in Japan was watching the grounds crew at our office building, working on the landscaping with your typical weed-whippers and power edgers.
Wearing hard-hats.
And not wearing safety glasses.
One of the guys with our group (american, but spoke Japanese) asked one of the landscapers why he wasn’t wearing safety glasses. Best answer he could get was “because we don’t wear them.”
The question has already been answered, but you do see them a lot on construction sites and even set up for trade shows.
Walking home after the Big One last month, I saw a number of people wearing them.
Having the TV announcers wear them is pretty silly, though. Most of the studios are new enough that they will be reasonably safe in an earthquake. If you aren’t under a really sturdy desk then if something does fall on you in a studio, having that hat isn’t going to help that much.
I am happy now that all the top government officials are back to wearing suits and not those silly workman uniforms in snazzy matching blues. Good god, the PM isn’t going to be of any use in the field so dressing up like a member of YMCA isn’t going to make the country a safer place.
The picture I linked to wasn’t a very good example. Watching the news last night I saw crews directing traffic. They were wearing hardhats that fit close to their heads, touching their hair. They also had chin straps that split above the chin, with one above and the other below. I swear, they look more decorative than anything else.
I remember in Hong Kong watching workers on tall buildings climbing around on bamboo scaffolding and wearing nothing but loincloths. I asked a cop how many fell on these jobs. He said “a lot”.
They are obviously hard hats. The article calls them hard hats. They are the same white hard hats in almost every construction or destruction scene from Japan for many years.
US media do the same stupid routine here to match the weather or events.
I work in a factory in Canada that employs around 200 people, and everybody wears bump caps. They are basically way less sturdy than hard hats, only designed to protect you from minor bumps (imagine that!) The thing is, there are lots of pieces of overhanging steel around that factory that hurt like hell to bump your head on, even its just a little tap. Without the caps, these incidents would probably lead to lots of little injuries and trips to the nurse’s office which is not good for an assembly line’s productivity. It is very practical to have everyone wearing these considering how light and cheap they are. Plus you can colour-code them so that you can pick out a foreman in a crowd of 40 people.
In terms of cultural significance, there’s a lot of camaraderie or team spirit, whatever you want to call it among labourers in a large plant like this. The bump cap (along with a coat and boots) is an instantly recognizable part of the uniform showing that you belong to the group. I’d say that if people are wearing these for fashion reasons, it would be to show that you identify positively with the working class, and that you are probably some sort of hipster. Reporters wear them for the same reason that they do cover stories on skateboarding dogs.
Yeah, all that posturing was starting to grate on me. Especially after reading about the quality of suits used by the actual workers which apparently tear very easily.
My appreciation for Fumiko Hayashi in Yokohama increased slightly because she did not join the charade. (Or is it because she was a woman, gah too hard to tell!)
And here is a nice link about this topic:
http://www.japanprobe.com/2011/03/21/why-do-japanese-politicians-dress-up-like-workmen-after-natural-disasters/
I was at a site once that gave their maintenance guys one of those big grandma tricycles to carry their tools around. However, they weren’t allowed to ride the bikes unless they had a helmet with a chin strap, so they used a stretchy chin strap to get around this rule. The strap had all the structural integrity of those bands that you use to keep your pant cuffs from getting caught in the chain of your bike. The helmet was a regular hard-hat.
The really funny thing about that site was that it was a really small site. You could walk from one fence to another in about 15 min, and they still gave their maintenance guys a bike. In a potash mill you will end up climbing fifty bajillion flights of stairs every day, and the maintenance guys’ tool kits weigh at least fifty pounds.
They’d look cooler wearing cranials 
Women politicians did as well, Renho, the Minister for Administrative Reforms had her blue workmen clothes.
DELETE YHIS POST!
It might start sonething. :eek:
They’re just like hardhats, only more efficient and honourable.
Yeah, but Renho can reform my administration any day of the week.
Are they made by reclusive master craftsmen who fold the plastic 10.000 times according to long lost ancestral techniques known only to himself, so that a Japanese hard hat would just effortlessly cut a Western hard hat in half like it were hot butter ? 
Don’t mean to nix your metaphor, but isn’t it supposed to be the hard hat that’s hot?
No disrespect to the master craftsmen.
Hot butter is pretty easy to cut through, so the metaphor works either way.