AMONG the earliest innovations after the Restoration to which the Japanese people took kindly was the clipping of their queues. In the old days men had little queues on the top of their heads. For this purpose they shaved the crown and gathering the hair around, tied it at the top with a piece of paper string; then, they bent the queue and bringing it down forward over the forehead, fastened it with the ends of the same string so that the queue was tied tightly to the first knot. The end of the queue was cut straight. Fashion often changed in the making of the queue, though its general form remained unaltered. The bend, for instance, between the two knots might vary in size and shape, and the queue itself in length and thickness, its girth being regulated by the extent of the tonsure at the crown. Or the hair might be full or tight at the sides and the back. The front was usually shaved. In short, there was a wide scope for taste in the dressing of the queue.
These queues were untied and remade every second or third day, and the head was shaved at the same time. Hair-dressing was therefore a troublesome business, especially as one had generally to get assistance for it. Consequently, when the cropping of the hair came into vogue, people eagerly adopted it as it saved them time and expense. At first they cut the hair long, letting it half hide the ears and come down to the neck behind; but it became shorter by degrees until now the fashion is to crop it to about a quarter of an inch, presenting a head which is appropriately known as “chestnut-bur.”
QUEUES.
Although pictures of old Japanese warriors represent them with moustaches, the custom seems to have been under the Tokugawa rule to be clean shaven about the mouth; only aged men indulged in beards, while whiskers grown by themselves were almost unknown. After the Restoration government officials began to grow moustaches, and for a long time the favourite way of mimicking an official was to twirl an imaginary moustache. But professional men of all sorts now let them grow, so that they have ceased to be characteristic of officials. Tradesmen, artisans, and coolies, however, are still clean shaven, or at most have bristles of a few days’ growth.
Japanese barbers shave not only the lips, cheeks, and chin, and the borders of the hair, but they also pass their razors over the whole face, not sparing the forehead, the eyelids between the eyelashes and the eyebrows, the cheek-bones, the nose, and the ear-lobes, and unless their victim objects, they will insert a small narrow razor into his nostrils and ears and twirl it rapidly round with great dexterity. The shaving of the nostrils is easier in a Japanese than it would be in a European on account of their greater width, and another advantage arising from the shortness of the nose is that the Japanese barber does not offer an indignity to his client by tweaking his nose when he shaves his upper lip.
THE “203-METRE HILL” AND “PENTHOUSE.”
Troublesome as was the man’s queue in the old days, it was a trifle compared with the woman’s coiffure. In the early days of the present regime when men began to cut their hair, many women followed suit and cropped theirs as short. The government, however, interfered and prohibited the cutting of the hair by women other than widows and grandames with whom it was a time-honoured custom. In 1887 when the pro-European craze was at its height, many women tied their hair in European style; but it was subsequently abandoned by those who found that by tying the hair in this manner, they spoilt it for the Japanese coiffure; for having been accustomed to oil it well for their native style, they discovered that the hair, when bound without any pomade, became very brittle and snapped short. Still, the European style is now largely adopted because it does not require expert assistance and the services of the professional hair-dresser can be dispensed with. Various styles are in vogue. Soon after the fall of Port Arthur in 1905, a high knot came into fashion under the formidable title of “203-metre hill knot,” in celebration of the capture of that famous hill which was practically the key to the great fortress. The favourite at present with our women is a low pompadour known as the “penthouse style.” But though the European way of dressing the hair has become very popular, it is not likely so long as the kimono remains unchanged that the Japanese coiffure, awkward as it is compared with the European, will be entirely superseded by the other.