Getting Dressed: Hair

Before I do the actual dressing, I shower. Oils from skin are not good for silk and since kimono are not washed after each wearing, one needs to be clean. One should be clean anyway. Duh.

I then do my hair. Traditionally, when one wears a kimono, one should have their hair up. This is true for even the informal yukata, although the updo's worn with a yukata tend to be funky and informal. Nowadays a lot of women have shorter hair, which cannot be put up. For short hair, you can use a hairpiece. At the very least, a barrette or comb should be put in the hair, thusly short hair, like long, is always decorated with something, be it silk flowers, tortoiseshell combs, or hairpins of plastic, wood, jade, lacquer, etc.

Brides have a elaborate hairdo (to go with the elaborate kimono), which requires them to wear a katsura (wig). The wig is blended into the natural hair. In the last ten years or so, it has become more common for Japanese women to dye their hair, so now the wigs, which used to come only in black, now are being made in various shades.The wig, which is fairly heavy, can be made of synthetic or human hair, and is waxed and pulled up into a particular shape, and decorated with combs and hairsticks, called kanzashi. Over the wig is worn the headdress, called tsuno kakushi (literally "horn hider" -- to cover the "horns" of such unwomanly emotions as stubborness, jealousy, etc) the gorgeous kanzashi remain visible, as the tsuno kakushi only covers part of the head.

Geisha wear variations of the shimada hairstyle, meaning their hair is pulled back in one section. There are four major types of the shimada: Taka Shimada, a high chignon for usually worn by young, single women; Tsubushi shimada, a more flattened chignon generally worn by older women; Uiwata, a chignon that is usually bound up with a piece of color cotton crepe; and a style that ends up looking like a divided peach, typically worn by maiko. These hairstyles were decorated with elaborate hair-combs and hairpins, which often symbolized status. Combs and pins for the hair became much smaller during the Meijii restoration. Prior to that, combs could be quite large and showy and could often be considered an indicator of status.

Pictures of geisha and maiko (geisha apprentices) hairstyles at howstuffworks.