An old internal memo from the bookstore chain Kinokuniya has been making the rounds on Japanese social media again, and people are still stunned by how openly it spelled out who not to hire.
Back in the early 1980s, the company’s union got hold of a secret list of do’s and don’ts for recruiting female employees and took it to the Labor Ministry. On March 5, 1983, lawmaker Doi Takako read the whole thing into the official Diet record. The eight-point “do not hire” section opened with a line that still jumps off the page: ugly women, absolutely avoid.
The rest of the list was just as blunt. Short women (under about 140 cm) were out. Country bumpkins were out. Women who wore glasses were out. So were anyone labeled “dumb,” anyone too argumentative (especially if they’d been in a school newspaper club), anyone who showed interest in the law, and anyone with a history of chronic illness. Other notes flagged women involved in certain political or religious groups, those without Japanese family registry, and a few other categories the company preferred to treat with caution.
Almost no one defended the document once it went public. The outrage helped push Japan toward its first equal-employment law a couple of years later. Today Kinokuniya, like most Japanese companies, publicly stresses fair hiring practices. Looking back at the old memo is a reminder of how casually some businesses once treated appearance, height, personality, and even family background as legitimate reasons to turn women away.
The list has resurfaced online more than once, and the reaction is usually the same: people can’t believe how explicit it was. Forty years later, it still reads like a time capsule of workplace attitudes that have become hard to defend out loud.