Gion geishas' guy

[Taro Toporific]

Letter From Japan
The Geisha Stylist Who Let His Hair DownBy Anthony Faiola / Washington Post Foreign Service / Tuesday, August 17, 2004; Page C01
KYOTO, Japan -- Here in the Gion geisha district of Japan's ancient capital, even one bad hair day can cost a girl her career. So it is no wonder that Tetsuo Ishihara is the man with the most popular hands in town.
The only man among Kyoto's last five keppatsu-shi, or hairdressers to the geisha, Ishihara is the coiffeur king of the most celebrated of the pleasure quarters surviving from old Japan. But his willingness to blab the secrets of his trade, as he has done in four TV documentaries, three books and his own DVD, has not sat well with many of the people who practice the ancient art of crafting hairstyles that to many Japanese are loaded with sexual suggestion.

[gkanai]

The Geisha Stylist Who Let His Hair Down

By Anthony Faiola
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, August 17, 2004; Page C01

KYOTO -- Here in the Gion geisha district of Japan's ancient capital, even one bad hair day can cost a girl her career. So it is no wonder that Tetsuo Ishihara is the man with the most popular hands in town.

The only man among Kyoto's last five keppatsu-shi, or hairdressers to the geisha, Ishihara is the coiffeur king of the most celebrated of the pleasure quarters surviving from old Japan. But his willingness to blab the secrets of his trade, as he has done in four TV documentaries, three books and his own DVD, has not sat well with many of the people who practice the ancient art of crafting hairstyles that to many Japanese are loaded with sexual suggestion.

For centuries, geisha hairsetting was the preserve of female stylists. For some of them, the fact that a loose-lipped man has become the most renowned of the keppatsu-shi has added insult to injury. These days, peers often turn up their noses when passing Ishihara along the willow-lined streets and Zen bridges of Gion, where the famous painted ladies of the East still entertain behind sliding paper screens.

Once doleful over the shunning, the dapper 57-year-old who started as a common hairdresser in the 1970s now wears his status of male upstart among female hairsetters as a badge of honor. "They would all be happy to take their secrets to their graves," he huffed one recent afternoon in his cozy corner salon. "It is that attitude that made me more persistent to learn."

Geisha hair "is an important part of Japanese history," he said, "and I did not want its secrets to die out."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A6563-2004Aug16?language=printer