As Halloween revellers prepare to take to the streets of Japan in nurse uniforms and other costumes, the Japanese Red Cross Society is warning that using the red cross emblem without authorisation is against the law, even as a costume accessory.
The emblem, often mistaken for a general symbol of medical care, is protected under international and domestic law and is reserved for specific humanitarian purposes, the Japan Times reported in an article translated by the paper.
It was established under the Geneva Conventions to identify people and facilities that must not be attacked. Japan's own law on the emblem prohibits anyone other than the Japanese Red Cross Society, and those it authorises, from using the symbol without permission. Violators face up to six months in prison or a fine of up to 300,000 yen, about $1,900.
"The Red Cross emblem is not a symbol of medical care. It is a last lifeline in times of emergency," said Akihiko Saito, an official at the Japanese Red Cross Society. The organisation warns that casual use of the emblem in peacetime could undermine its significance when it is needed most.
Since 2022 it has issued annual reminders on social media around Halloween, urging people not to put the symbol on costumes or accessories.
The protection is deliberately broad. The emblem is not limited to a specific colour or to a specific shape of cross, so that nobody is left unprotected merely because they could not reproduce the exact design. Similar symbols are covered too, including crosses in shades of red such as pink, and crosses of varying shapes.
The society also cautions that the emblem should be kept off nurse uniforms, caps and even medicine boxes.
Costume retailers have adapted. MalyMoon, a cosplay company with stores in Tokyo's Akihabara district and in Shanghai, offers 40 types of nurse costume for this year's Halloween, using heart motifs and accessories such as toy syringes to evoke the look without the emblem. "We were aware that using the red cross emblem was prohibited, but the Japanese Red Cross Society's warning has reminded us to be even more careful," an official at a company operating the store said.
The society's central point is easy to miss because it is stated so plainly. The red cross is not a medical symbol. It never was one. For more than a century and a half it has been something else entirely, and the medical association is a misunderstanding the rest of the world arrived at unassisted.
That leaves a vacancy, and the vacancy has been filled commercially. If the cross is not the sign of medicine, then the signs of medicine on the streets of Tokyo tonight are a heart and a plastic syringe, because those are what forty costumes have settled on.
The emblem's legal perimeter is more interesting still. It is defined not by a design but by resemblance: any shade of red, any shape of cross. A costume is therefore in breach not when it copies the emblem, but when it comes close enough to be taken for it, which is a standard that depends on the person looking.
Our analysts have worked through the consequence. The only way to be certain of not wearing the Red Cross emblem is to wear something that is not a cross. Japan's costume industry reached that conclusion first and acted on it, which is why the country's nurses will be identified tonight by a shape associated with affection and a piece of moulded plastic.
The Department of Unnecessary Research has one outstanding query for the bathroom cabinet. The society advises that the emblem should not appear on medicine boxes, which are, by definition, boxes of medicine.
That is the whole of the rule, and it is entirely coherent. The red cross means help in the worst circumstances imaginable, and for that reason it may not be used to mean anything as small as a nurse.