The Girl with the Horse-Dung Hairdo and Other Precocious Moderns in Mid-Meiji Japan

Modernity is a haircut. Or so one might conclude by looking at East Asia in the latter part of the nineteenth century. In Japan, Korea, and China men marked the onset of Western-style modernity by cutting off their topknots and queues. Some did this as a daring statement of their political and civilizational convictions. Others did it only under duress. Whatever the circumstances, all understood the importance of hairstyle as a symbol of participation in traditional society, and hence the significance of the departure from tradition that the haircut represented.

In Japan, the regime that came to power in 1868 encouraged men to wear their hair in a “cropped” (jangiri) style. Although officials were initially careful to distinguish between “cropped” and “Western” hairstyles, in fact by the late 1870s Western-style haircuts became the standard for men throughout the country. The transformation of men’s hairstyles was intimately connected to the dismantling of the Tokugawa social status system. In the early modern period hairstyle had served as a general indicator of men’s status: mainstream participants in society—samurai and most commoners—wore their hair in a topknot with the pate shaved; subtle variations helped to distinguish samurai from commoners. Men who fell outside the mainstream generally wore distinctive hairstyles: Buddhist clerics and many doctors shaved their heads; masterless samurai (ronin) did not shave their pates; and many outcastes did not bind their hair at all. The discrediting of the early modern status system after the Meiji Restoration simultaneously discredited the system of signification embodied by men’s hairstyles. The promotion of the “cropped” haircut, which was presented as much as a return to ancient Japanese practice as an adoption of Western style, was a response to the collapse of the status order.

Women’s hairstyles are another story. In the Tokugawa period women’s hairstyles reflected their wearers’ age and marital status, with variations within general categories to accommodate changing fashions, individual taste, and economic means. In other words, in contrast to men’s hairstyles, women’s coifs did not serve principally to signal their wearer’s social status. Accordingly, the dismantling of the Tokugawa status system did not require a reorientation of women’s hairstyles. At the same time, however, public debate about the proper state of women’s hair did occur in the context of diverse calls for “enlightenment” (kaika).

During the years immediately following the Restoration there was a brief and widely excoriated fad among some women to cut their hair. The authorities and many commentators were particularly alarmed by the presence of young women in Tokyo—mostly students—who cut their hair and wore items of men’s clothing. Newspapers interpreted the young women’s activities as either a symbol of their embrace of “enlightenment” or an attempt to desexualize (iro o saru) themselves. Apparently much more numerous than the daring young students, however, were women who cut their hair either as a sign of Buddhist piety on the deaths of their husbands or because they preferred not to bother with—or could not afford—the considerable trouble, expense, and physical hardship of wearing the elaborate coifs popular at the time (most of which were adapted from styles pioneered by courtesans and kabuki actors). In any case, although at least one newspaper applauded the fashion as a commendable sign of economy and rationality, the government issued a prohibition against short hair on women in 1872. There the issue remained until the mid-1880s.

In 1885, a group of enthusiasts of enlightenment, most of them men, founded the Women’s Upswept Hair Society (Fujin Sokuhatsukai) to promote the adoption of “Western” hairstyles (actually a mix of Western and Japanese elements) for women. The group, led by a twenty-seven-year-old army doctor named Watanabe Kanae, advocated the adoption of the relatively simple upswept style as an antidote to the uncomfortable, unhygienic, and uneconomical hairstyles that then prevailed. Watanabe himself came up with a variety of designs—the Number One Watanabe Wrap, the Fork, the Soirée, and whatnot—which he and his associates promoted with the help of elite women, including eventually the Meiji empress. In addition to enlisting elite women to lead by example, the Women’s Upswept Hair Society spread its message through the expanding popular press, particularly magazines aimed at well-to-do young women, such as Jogaku zasshi.

The initial reception of the new hairstyles was not favorable. Students in the women’s division of the Tokyo Normal School were required to wear their hair in the upswept style in the summer of 1885. Local children responded to the girls’ “horse dung” hairdos with peals of laughter and volleys of rocks. Eventually, however, the upswept style became an emblem of middle-class respectability, and it remained the standard well into the twentieth century.

In this paper I will trace the origins and development of the movement to promote upswept hairstyles for women. I will connect the movement to earlier concerns about hair as a marker of status and civilization and to mid-Meiji debates about hygiene and modernity. My main emphasis will be on the reformers who wanted women to “look modern,” but the gaze of observers will be important as well, for they ultimately decided whether the girls in the upswept ’dos looked modern or just stupid.