Newly-born infants are shaven; but as they grow up, a little circle at the crown is left untouched. At first the circle is small, but it grows larger with years; and at six or seven, boys let all their hair grow and crop them when too long, just like their elders. Girls, before they leave this “poppy-head” stage as it is called, have little queues on the crown, tied less closely than men’s in the old days. Next, at ten or more, they have their hair done in a more complicated manner; sometimes the tresses are tied together at the crown and made into bows, and sometimes the hair is gathered at the top and parted into two tresses, right and left, which are made into vertical loops, joined together at the side, the joint being covered with a piece of ornamental paper. It has of late become an almost universal custom with school-girls to tie their hair with a ribbon and let it down loose or plaited on their backs.
From fifteen to well over forty, the favourite style is that known as “inverted maidenhair.” The hair is in this coiffure first combed into one bundle, except a triangular tuft over the forehead. It is tied at the root and divided into two equal tresses, right and left, which are then looped, the end of either tress being combed into the root of the other; and the two loops are turned down and brought behind the crown, and kept in place by being tied together to the first knot. The hair at the sides and the back is swollen out by a dexterous jerk of a comb or hairpin from underneath when it is first gathered. That at the sides is further combed with a rough comb, while the hair at the back is held in place by a spring hairpin. This is the lightest coiffure as false hair is not generally required; but it is not the formal way of dressing the hair.
[Illustration: THE “INVERTED MAIDENHAIR.”]
For young women the formal coiffure is the _shimada_, so called from the name of the town on the high road between Tokyo and Kyoto, where it first came into fashion. In this the hair is gathered and tied tightly at or near the crown together with a large tuft of false hair. The tip is folded in forward; the hair is then folded twice in the same direction as the tip so that the edge of the fold is half an inch or less behind the knot; and the whole is turned over the knot in such a way that the edge of the second fold is forward of the crown. Then, by a string passing over the knot the fold is tied down. The chignon is formed by spreading out the hair; sometimes a piece of paper, of the size of the chignon, is well pomaded and put under the surface of the chignon to help it to keep in place. The size of the chignon varies with the wearer’s taste; but, generally speaking, a young woman’s is larger than her elder sister’s. Its position too varies, as it depends upon that of the first knot, whether over or behind the crown. In the formal coiffure of a young lady of social standing it is close to the crown; but girls in a lower station of life or anxious to be thought _chic_ prefer the chignon to be more to the back of the head.