Feudal haircuts - baldy fashion in Japan

[Jock Armstrong]

"Garrison samurai" in the castle towns were most likely to sport the shaved style. especially if their lord insisted. Access to barbers and time to spend on appearance would be big factors. Local townsmen also wore the shaved/chommage style. It wasn't limited to the samurai class- by the same token it wasn't compulsory [as a class thing]. Also, samurai or ronin who didn't go in for the oiled, tightly pulled back look wore the hair more loosly to the front and had a simple pony tail arrangement. The baldy look came in in the sixteenth century. Some have attributed its popularity to its adoption by Tokugawa Iyasu and the copying of it by his warriors and allies. That may well not be the reason but it fits the time frame......of course fashion plays its part too. We tend to see Edo period styles in most movies, but just as clothing and weaponry changed over time, so did hairstyles. During the 13th C when the mongols invaded, the baldy style was unknown, unless you were naturally bald.

[David T Anderson]

My understanding [gleaned from I know not where] was that the samurai hairstyle originated in making it more comfortable to wear kabuto. Gradually, of course, it became another untouchable tradition...

In the extras of the recent Takeshi Kitano Zatoichi movie, Takeshi talks about the problems with actors doing the samurai hairstyle. Only a few actors were willing to actually shave their heads, so the baldy wigs were used...usually looking pretty bad. But worse were the actors who actually _were_ bald and wore toupees as a usual thing, and then insisted on wearing baldy wigs over their toupees, so the fraud would be undiscovered. Naturally, Takeshi jokes, they wound up with huge misshapen heads that look terrible in the final filming.

[Tripitaka of AA]

...worse were the actors who actually _were_ bald and wore toupees as a usual thing, and then insisted on wearing baldy wigs over their toupees, so the fraud would be undiscovered. Naturally, Takeshi jokes, they wound up with huge misshapen heads that look terrible in the final filming.

Priceless image, thanks David.

[timtak]

The Japanese are pretty into looks and are shy about personal, negative non-conformity (on the positive side there are plenty of zany hairstyles) so I think that covering male pattern baldness was a partial motive for the chonmage.

Now that the chonmage has gone, it has become extremely popular to wear some sort of toupee or weaved in hair to conceal baldness despite the expense of such measures. Male pattern baldness is generally described in regular television weave ads at lease, as a disease, and cause for anxiety. It seems to me that at least one of the mass stabbings in Japan was perpetrated by a bald person that went postal. He claimed that it was because he was, and was called ugly that he did it.
Here is what he actually looked like
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_5uQfWW-7JV...iro%2BKato.jpg
Here is what he could have looked like had he had the money for a weave.
http://livedoor.blogimg.jp/joshisoku...5/d573314c.jpg

That said, I am happy with my bald, shaven dome　.

So the copying of a lord that was bald to make the lord and everyone else feel okay with baldness theory above, sounds very plausible thought I should imagine that the chonmage bit at the top was for practice reasons.

Incidentally, the reason why arrived here is because this is one of the few places where the Cossack hairstyle and the chonmage are mentioned on the same page. They look similar.
Cossacks https://goo.gl/RW8Ybo
Chonmage https://goo.gl/NA2XOJ

I wondered if a shame culture might be prevalent in the Ukraine but the last section here suggests otherwise
http://www.day.kiev.ua/en/article/so...ral-dimentions

BTW I attempt to do karate.

Tim