![]() Engaging the Other: 'Japan' and Its Alter-Egos, 1550-1850. Queue, the Qing-dynasty Chinese hairstyle also involving a shaved pate.Ji or touji, the traditional Chinese topknot.For most wrestlers who never reached a sekitori rank, his retirement ceremony will be the only time he wears the more elaborate ōichōmage. Dignitaries and other important people in a wrestler's life are invited to take one snip, with the final one taken by his trainer. The chonmage is of such symbolic importance in sumo that snipping it off is the centerpiece of a wrestler's retirement ceremony. Sumo wrestlers with sekitori status are required on certain occasions, such as during a honbasho, to wear their hair in a more elaborate form of topknot called an ōichō, where the end of the topknot is splayed out to form a semicircle, resembling a ginkgo leaf. Īll professional sumo wrestlers wear a chonmage as soon as their hair is long enough to do so. This is done around once every two months. However, the hair may be thinned in this region or the crown of the head shaved, called nakazori, to allow the topknot to sit more neatly. The sumo style of the chonmage is slightly different, in that the pate is no longer shaved. Given the uniqueness of the style in modern times, the Japan Sumo Association employs specialist hairdressers called tokoyama to cut and prepare sumo wrestlers' hair. In modern Japan, the only remaining wearers of the chonmage are sumo wrestlers and kabuki actors. : 149 Sumo Modern sumo wrestler Tochiazuma with an ōichō-style chonmage With the Dampatsurei Edict of 1871 issued by Emperor Meiji during the early Meiji Era, men of the samurai classes were forced to cut their hair short, effectively abandoning the chonmage. ![]() Under the Meiji Restoration, the practices of the samurai classes, deemed feudal and unsuitable for modern times following the end of sakoku in 1853, resulted in a number of edicts intended to 'modernise' the appearance of upper class Japanese men. This became an easy way to identify such men. Ronin, samurai who did not serve a Lord, were not required to shave their heads. : 222Ī shaven pate (the sakayaki) became required of the samurai classes by the early Edo period, and by the 1660s, all men, commoner or samurai, were forbidden from wearing beards, with the sakayaki deemed mandatory. : 217 This change was also enforced during the Japanese invasion of Joseon (1592–1598), where some Japanese commanders forced the submitted Koreans to shave their heads to this hairstyle, as a method of converting their identities to that of Japanese. īetween the 1580s (towards the end of the Warring States period, 1467–1615) and the 1630s (the beginning of the Edo period, 1603–1867), Japanese cultural attitudes to men's hair shifted where a full head of hair and a beard had been valued as a sign of manliness in the preceding militaristic era, in the ensuing period of peace, this gradually shifted until a beard and an unshaven pate were viewed as barbaric, and resistant of the peace that had resulted from two centuries of civil war. To secure the crown in place, the hair would be tied near the back of the head. ![]() During this period, aristocrats wore special cap-like crowns as part of their official clothing. The origins of the chonmage can be traced back to the Heian period. History A Japanese barbershop in the 19th century The remaining hair was oiled and waxed before being tied into a small tail folded onto the top of the head in the characteristic topknot. In a traditional Edo-period chonmage, the top of the head is shaved. It was originally a method of using hair to hold a samurai kabuto helmet steady atop the head in battle, and became a status symbol among Japanese society. It is most commonly associated with the Edo period (1603–1868) and samurai, and in recent times with sumo wrestlers. The chonmage ( 丁髷) is a type of traditional Japanese topknot haircut worn by men.
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