Japanese Hair Styles 2012

Japanese Hair Styles 2012 : Hip colors are ruling hair styles as Japanese shun natural hues

   TOKYO— Caramel mocha, mocha tea, jasmine tea, pink ash, sugar pink — it could be a beverage list off the table of one of Tokyo's groovy Shibuya district cafes. Except that if you were to drink any one of these concoctions, you would probably meet an untimely end. For these are hair colorings and they are some of the hottest hues among Japanese women right now.

"It is not just the colors but also their names which appeal to my customers. They're easy to visualize and they sound fashionable," said Ayame Tamada, 35, a hair stylist and owner of the Lovely Jubbly hair studio, located in the western Honshu city of Himeji.

                     Before opening her shop in 1999, she trained for two years at the Vidal Sassoon Academy in London and boasts that she can now create any color her customer demands. But "teddy bear" and "nudy ash"? "They're shades of brown and gray," she explained, pointing out the hair samples in her encyclopaedia-sized menu.

                   Twenty years ago, if you had stood at Tokyo's busiest pedestrian crossing, where Bunkamura-dori intersects Dogenzaka-dori in Shibuya, a bobbing sea of black hair would have swirled around you. Now, every tone, tint and tinge imaginable is on parade as increasing numbers of Japanese women shun their natural black hair for a lighter, less serious look. Put simply, Western-style hair colors are in, traditional black is out. So says Masahiro Suehira, a stylist at Shibuya's Neolive hair studio, which handles 30 to 40 customers a day and offers a front-row seat view over Dogenzaka-dori's hectic sidewalks.

                    "I think the expression 'nai-mono nedari' best sums up the growing demand for modern, Western-looking hair styles in Japan," she said. "It means to want something you don't have."
And with roughly 900 hair salons operating in Shibuya and its neighboring Harajuku, Aoyama and Daikanyama districts — all reachable by a three-minute subway ride — there's no shortage of stylists offering to help women attain that "something."

                   Masami Hamada, a 32-year-old travel agent from Himeji, explained: "It's a psychological thing. Lighter colors make me feel happier and more optimistic in my daily life."
She visits her favorite salon, Sister Golden Hair, once every two months to chat with her stylist, sip cafe latte, read the latest hair magazines, while having her mocha orange tint refreshed — a process that takes up to four hours and costs ¥12,000, or $110.

                   It is a far cry from Japan's Edo period (1600-1867), which saw women imitating the towering, rounded coiffures of popular kabuki performers and which eventually became the geisha class's standard hairstyle — the Nihon-gami.

                  Traditional values have dictated that women wear their hair naturally black, from high school to corporate positions, an approach which Hamada called outdated. "It doesn't fit the image of the independent, modern Japanese woman," she said. On the other hand, fear of being left behind on Japan's fashion superhighway sees many simply following the leader. Thousands of trend-conscious women look to idols like pop singer Ayumi Hamasaki, as a barometer of what's hot and what's not in the hair world. "If Ayumi changes her hair color from chocolate blonde to teddy bear brown, you can bet there will be a rush the next day," said Tamada.

                  For hair stylists, other factors can mean long hours on the end of a comb: high school graduations in March see students dyeing their hair from "regulation" black to hip brown, and then in April, the process is reversed as many new employees revert to natural black to appear less conspicuous during their first year with the company.

                  Cold, dry Japanese winters also bring on a surge in demand for deep treatments and scalp care sessions, according to Suehira. Conversely, straight perms are all the rage just before the rainy season hits in July.

                   While big city salons keep cooking up new colors, shapes and cutting techniques, out among the rice paddies of Honshu's valley lands, rural salons are also doing their best to keep pace. "Our customers bring in hair photos from Japanese Vogue magazine. They don't want to be left behind, but they don't want anything too radical," said Hideyo Naito, a 26-year-old stylist who works at the Agung Sari salon in Mizoguchi, a village nestled in the lush river lands of Hyogo prefecture.

                    Ninety percent of Naito's clients are female, mainly between the ages of 20 and 40 who visit once a month to update their hairstyle — slightly. "The only times our clients make drastic changes are when they split with their boyfriend, get married or get divorced. New hairstyle, new life, you could say."
Rural Japan may lag in the radical stakes, but in terms of salon numbers, villages like Mizoguchi do not come up short. Agung Sari shares the street with five other salons, and there are 15 more hair businesses within a one-kilometer radius of the train station — plenty of choice for the population of 2,614.

                     To contemporary women, however, the hair salon is more than simply a place to have their locks shampooed, snipped and shaped. "Atmosphere, staff personality and staff fashion sense, even the kind of tea or coffee you serve, are all important to my customers," said Tamada. "They want to relax and have fun. And they want transformation."