Hair Style

There are various hairstyles in the world. A crew cut, a bobbed hair and etc. Many Japanese people call them by a characteristic name in Japan.

In the early Showa era, most of the Japanese children had the same hair style. Many girls had bobbed hair, Okappa. The name of Okappa seems to come from the Kappa.

A crew cut, Sport gari was a standard hair style for boys in 80s. But boys higher than middle class in the city preferred Botchan gari to Sport gari. A Botcyan gari is a boy’s hair style, which has long hair but not longer than the ears. (Botchan means a rich boy in Japanese.)

The typical hair style of a salaryman is to part his hair on the side, which is called shichi sann (7:3) in Japan. We call the hair style Shichi sann because the ratio of right part hair to left part (or left to right) hair is 3 to 7.Incidentally, Mr. Kenichi Takemura, a Japanese political commentator is famous for his hair style, Ichi Kyuu (1:9). His part is unique and highly original to me.