Kamikiri (haircutting)

It is thought that they would appear out of nowhere and cut people's hair on their heads without them noticing.^[3]

The Shokoku rijindan (ja), a collection of stories (setsuwa) compiled in the Kanpō era (1741-1743) records strange paranormal incidents from early Genroku era (1688-1704) which allegedly happened at Matsusaka, Ise Province (now Matsusaka, Mie Prefecture), and at Konya, Edo, (now Chiyoda, Tokyo, Tokyo): people's hair, both male and female, would suddenly be cut off from their motoyui (元結, a hair-tying string) as they were walking along on roads at night. Those people would not notice this at all, and the cut-off hair would fall down on the road still tied up.^[4][5][2] Ōta Nanpo's essay Hannichi kanwa (半日閑話) also records similar happenings alleged to have taken place at Shitaya (now Taitō, Tokyo) and in Kohinata (now Bunkyō, Tokyo), where females servants employed at shops and residences were the victims.^[6][2][a]

In Utagawa Yoshifuji's painting Kamikiri no kidan (髪切りの奇談; "Queer tale of hair-cutting", 1868, cf. fig. right), the accompanying text explains that at a certain mansion in Banchō, Edo, a maidservant was going to the outhouse at night when "something completely black"^[b] drew near and seemed to strike her hair. When she recovered from her fainting spell, her bundle of hair (motodori^[c]) had been cut and lay 2, 3-gen's distance or 3.6–5.4 metres (12–18 ft) away. The all-black being was cat-like and velvety.^[d][8]

A similar incident had occurred in the lunar 4th month (May) of 1867 or 1868^[e] at the infantry station in Ogawamachi, Edo where a soldier going to the latrines encountered an "all-black thing" striking his head, and when he regained consciousness, found his bound clump of hair 2, 3-gen away.^[9][8]

In Meiji 7 (1874), in Hongō, Tokyo, on the 3rd street at the Suzuki residence, a female servant named "Gin" was a victim of this kamikiri phenomenon, and this was also reported in the newspaper (Tokyo Nichi Nichi Shimbun) at that time. On March 10, some time after 9PM, when Gin was going to the residence's lavatory, she felt a chilly presence and then suddenly had her tied up hair cut, making it very messy. Gin was so startled, she rushed to a nearby home and fainted. The people of that house looked after Gin and listened to what happened, and when they looked around that lavatory, they found the cut-off hair on the floor. Eventually, Gin fell into an illness, and was accepted back by her parents. It became rumored that "in that bathroom, a kamikiri appeared," and it is said that nobody ever tried to go in there ever since.^[10][5]

In the writings of Mizuki Shigeru, it is explained that it would appear when a human tries to marry an animal or ghost, and it would cut off that person's hair.^[11]

Summarize Timeline Fact Check

Although many documents state that its true identity is unknown, there are legends that can be roughly divided between ones that suppose it was the work of a fox (kitsune), and ones that suppose it is the work of an insect, the kamikiri-mushi (hair-cutting insect).^[12]

Madenokōji Tokifusa (ja)'s diary Kennaishi (ja) during the Muromachi period considers it the work of a fox. It quotes the Chinese reference book Taiping Guangji which also writes of a similar story about a fox which cuts hair off of the head.^[6][1]

In the Edo Period writing Mimibukuro (ja), volume 4 Onna no Kami wo Kuu Kitsune no Koto (About How a Fox Ate a Woman's Hair), there is a story about how a fox was captured at the place where someone fell victim to a kamikiri phenomenon, and when the fox's belly was cut open, a large amount of hair was found packed inside.^[1][12] In Asakawa Zen'an (ja)'s Zen'an zuihitsu (善庵随筆; pub. Kaei3/1850), there is written the explanation that a Taoist priest was manipulating a mystical fox to cut hair.^[6][5][13]

The folk encyclopedia Kiyū Shōran (ja) (Kan'ei 14/1637) explains kamikiri to be the work of an insect called the "kamikiri-mushi" ("hair-cutter bug").^[1] This kamikiri-mushi is thought to refer not to the actual kamikirimushi, but rather an imaginary insect^[14] with razor teeth and scissor hands that lurked under the roof.^[15] Paintings depicting this kamikiri-mushi would be sold as amulets to ward off evil spirits, and it became trendy to wear paper charms on one's person which had a poem written on it that read "If it be a fierce god the parishioner [worships], may his hair be an uncuttable jadeite wig".^[f][16]

There are also examples where people's head hair were cut by humans with special powers or by entities found to be human after being caught (or having their true identities revealed).

According to Kaibara Ekken's Chōya zassai (朝野雑載), a fad for hair-cutting started in the Fukuoka area in Enpō 5/1677, and a samurai named Ōoto Rokuzaemon (大音六左衛門) felt his topknot tugged, but didn't realize until his hair had been cut until arriving home. He subsequently had recurrent dreams of yamabushi ascetics cutting his hair.^[17]

That kami-kiri or strange hair-cutting became on-going in Edo was already described with examples in the § Concept section. According to Sugita Genpaku's Nochimi gusa (ja), the hair-cutting fad also arose in the year Meiwa 8 (1771) and consequently a yamabushi (practitioner of izuna magic) named Daizenin (大善院) dwelling in the daikon fields of Yushima (ja) in Edo performed prayers to ward off the hair-cutting and also sold protective paper charms (fuda) for tidy profit, leading to rumors accusing this yamabushi of using magic to cause the hair loss in the first place. He and other similar practitioners were arrested by the machi-bugyō magistrate, but eventually released as unfounded.^[g][19][20]

Besides the shugenja ascetics (i.e. yamabushi) in Edo, there were also wig shopkeepers in Osaka who were punished in Osaka on accusation they were trafficking in the hair obtained from "kamikiri". Again, this might have been a case of scapegoating in order to quell the unrest.^[16]

In psychiatry, Zopfabschneider (de) ("hair cutter") is a term for hair fetishists who feel pleasure from cutting off women's hair with a blade, so at least some of the kamikiri legends were conceivably perpetrated by humans. One reason to support this interpretation is that anecdotes tend to name women as victims whose head hairs were targeted.^[5][2] Engyo Mitamura (ja), a researcher on Edo Period culture and customs, stated in his writings that there have been several examples of people getting caught for the crime of cutting off a person's hair.^[13]

In April 1931 (Shōwa 6), a 22 year-old youth named Taue (田植) was arrested for cut off a girl's hair, opportuning on the throng of people out for the ennichi at the Konpira shrine (ja) at Shiba, Tokyo. He testified "if I cut the hair of a hundred girls and offer them at a shrine, my feeble body will certainly become healthy," thus providing a superstition as the reason for committing kamikiri.^[5]

It is also supposed that rather than being cut by someone or something, that it is simply an illness that results in hair falling off.^[14]

The kamikiri is illustrated in such picture scrolls (emakimono) as the Bakemono no e and Sawaki Sūshi (ja)'s Hyakkai zukan ("Illustrated scroll of a hundred mysteries", 1737) from the Edo Period whhich depict the "kamikiri" as a birdlike yōkai with a long beak and scissor- or pincer-like hands.^[12][1] Although there is no explanatory text accompanying the paintings in these picture scrolls, some of the paintings also show locks of hair next to the creatures suggesting they were cut off.^[1]

Kamikiri no Kidan (1868), a nishiki-e by Utagawa Yoshifuji, also depicts a "kamikiri," but in contrast to the depictions in the aforementioned emakimono, it is depicted as completely black, based on a story of having actually encountered it^[8] (cf. image above).

These Bakemonozukushi Emaki (化け物尽し絵巻) (from the Edo Period, now in private possession and entrusted to a museum of the Fukuoka Prefecture), considered to be a yōkai emakimono that was made for putting captions on previously existing yōkai pictures seen in picture scrolls, introduces the "kamikiri" under the name of tobioni (鳶鬼; "kite ogre")^[h] In the accompanying caption, they are said to be found around the seaside of Izumo Province, and they are considered to eat the meat of small fish, birds, and mice.^[21]

A kamikiri (traditional depiction) appears as a hair stylist in the manga Hozuki's Coolheadedness (Hōzuki no reitetsu) vol. 14.^[22]