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Hair in Japanese culture has long been associated with beauty, health, spirituality and even superstition. Some of these beliefs are ancient, while others are modern or region-specific.
Here's a breakdown of notable Japanese superstitions and cultural beliefs regarding hair:
If you pluck a white hair, three more will grow.
Two or more hair whorls on a baby’s head means they will become a troublemaking child, or possibly one who will leave home early.
In the Edo period, it wasn’t uncommon for lovers to exchange locks of hair as a sign of deep affection and commitment.
But if the love ended badly or tragically, that same lock of hair might be seen as cursed or spiritually bound.
After a breakup or heartbreak, cutting one’s hair is believed to symbolise a fresh start or letting go of the past. This belief is so widespread that it’s commonly depicted in anime, drama and manga. When a character chops off their long hair, it usually signals an emotional turning point or personal growth.
There are traditional superstitions advising against combing or washing hair at night.
Spirits are more active at night, and combing your hair invites them into your home, or worse, into your body.
Washing your hair late at night weakens your spiritual energy. This belief stems from the cold and damp conditions of living environments in the past, leading to colds and poor health, which later evolved into spiritual beliefs.
Ghosts are often depicted with long, unkempt black hair, hanging over their faces. This image is iconic in Japanese horror.
The hair symbolises unresolved emotions or a soul unable to rest, particularly for women who died in distress, especially due to love or betrayal.
This association made long, dishevelled hair an omen of death or haunting in some superstitions.
The style is popular with yokai-inspired gothic cosplayers, where every day is Halloween.
In ancient and traditional Japanese (and broader East Asian) thought, hair was considered to carry life energy or spiritual essence.
Cutting hair unnecessarily could be seen as reducing one's vital energy (ki), especially in Shinto contexts. Long, healthy hair was a sign of good health, strong ki and femininity.
In some Buddhist practices, shaving the head symbolises the rejection of material attachment and worldly desires.
Fashion changes so frequently, and the hard man Bruce-Willis look comes and goes. This applies to sportsmen (think shaved head of high-school baseball players, and long-haired football players).
As with the Buddhist practice mentioned in the previous item, shaving your head can symbolise penance observed by disgraced celebrities whose sheen of fame has been stripped to scandalous bone.
Finding a hair in your food is universally unpleasant, but in Japan, it also has an extra layer of superstition.
If you find someone’s hair in your meal, especially a long black strand, it's sometimes believed to be a bad omen, potentially signalling jealousy, betrayal, or even a curse.
In extreme folk beliefs, hair in food could be connected to onmyōdō (Japanese esoteric cosmology) where hair was used in curses or spiritual rituals.
Hair growing on haunted dolls is thought to stem from the idea of hair storing emotional or spiritual energy, as mentioned above.
Haunted doll stories (like the Okiku Doll) are mostly urban legends passed down and embellished over time.
There's a lingering urban legend in Japan that hair (and nails) continue growing after death.
The supposed phenomenon is linked to ghost stories and horror, reinforcing the mystery or fear around the dead.
Superstitions about hair - like many cultural beliefs - often arise from historical context, misunderstood science, or attempts to explain the unknown. Here we debunk some Japanese hair superstitions, using science, logic and psychology.
If you pluck a white hair, three more will grow. That's a comforting thought for older folk, but sadly, hair follicles don’t talk to each other.
Each hair grows out of its own individual follicle, and follicles aren't connected in a way that would allow one pluck to “warn” the others. Plucking one hair does not influence neighbouring follicles to suddenly start producing white hairs.
White hair is caused by melanin loss. Hair turns white (or grey) when melanocytes - the cells that produce pigment - stop producing melanin. This is usually due to ageing, genetics, and stress (to a degree, but not instantly). Plucking doesn’t reactivate or damage these pigment cells elsewhere. It simply temporarily removes a hair.
So plucking won’t increase the white hair count, but it might cause damage. Repeated plucking can cause irritation, scarring, follicle damage and eventually even permanent hair loss in that spot. So while three more won’t sprout, you might end up with none!
Often, people notice their first white hair, pluck it, then weeks later spot a few more and assume they multiplied because of the pluck. In reality, more were always coming, but that first one just made you start looking closer.
Plucking a white hair doesn’t cause more to grow. White hairs appear as a natural part of ageing and genetics, not hair-based revenge.
A cowlick is just a section of hair that grows in a different direction from the rest, often in a spiral or swirl pattern. Most common at the crown of the head or near the hairline. It’s genetic, totally harmless, and not a sign of your future personality.
The “troublemaker” myth is pure superstition which comes from old wives' tales and cultural sayings, kind of like how redheads were once said to have fiery tempers, or how being left-handed used to be “suspicious.” The cowlick was just another physical quirk people attached meaning to.
In cartoons or literature, a messy cowlick was often used to visually show a mischievous or rebellious character (think Dennis the Menace). That’s stylistic shorthand, not a scientific truth. There's zero evidence that a cowlick influences personality, behaviour or emotional tendencies. Your hair swirl isn’t wired to your moral compass. If it were, a barber could change your destiny.
That said, I have a cowlick, and my wife will attest that I'm a troublemaker! But I'd be just as much a troublemaker if I shaved my head.
Hair keeps well over time, so old locks may look eerily “alive”.
Emotional projection can lead to confirmation bias; if something goes wrong, people blame the hair.
Cutting hair after a breakup is a way to "start over", and while emotionally meaningful, there’s no spiritual force involved.
It's quite normal to seek control after emotional trauma, and changing your hairstyle is a tangible way to signal change and reclaim agency.
It certainly helps to redirect your energy towards personal growth and well-being, helps to rediscover who you are outside of the relationship and rebuild your identity.
It’s a way to fill the void left by the relationship with positive and forward-moving experiences.
Cutting hair after a breakup is a coping mechanism, not a magical transformation.
Be assured that combing or washing hair at night will not attract spirits.
The superstition likely came from practical hygiene advice in pre-modern Japan, when bathing at night in cold conditions could lead to illness.
This trope became popular through kabuki theatre and Edo-period ghost stories, where long, flowing black hair visually symbolised grief or vengeance.
It’s an artistic convention, not a supernatural trait. Long hair was common for women at the time, so it naturally became associated with their spirit forms in folklore.
It’s cinema and theatre aesthetics, not evidence of haunting.
The concept that hair carries vital energy (ki) is easy to debunk. Hair is made of keratin, a protein. Once it leaves the follicle, it’s dead tissue—no nerves, no blood, no life energy.
Cutting hair has zero impact on health, unless it harbours disease. And in that case, cutting hair is beneficial to health.
Cutting hair has zero impact on spiritual force or energy levels. That idea likely came from Shinto and Buddhist symbolism, where external appearance was tied to internal purity or discipline (like shaving one's head to show devotion).
Hair doesn’t store your soul. It's just fancy protein strands.
Yes indeed, changing or adopting a certain hairstyle can make you feel different, and that's not a superstition - just basic psychology.
Social feedback plays a huge role. When you receive compliments or validation about your hairstyle, it can boost your self-esteem and affect your overall mood. On the flip side, if you get negative reactions, you might feel self-conscious or uncomfortable in your own skin.
(The same applies to tattoos, clothing, facial hair, etc.)
At the risk of sounding woke, the shaved-head fashion of trying to look cool is disrespectful to military personnel who are tied to military discipline, and especially disrespectful to those with involuntary hair loss due to chemotherapy.
A hair in your food is just... poor hygiene. Gross? Sure. Supernatural? Not even close.
The discomfort can make people feel "unlucky", but that’s psychology, not spirits. It’s bacteria, not a curse.
In rare spiritual traditions, hair might be used in rituals, but that’s more about symbolic intent, not random hair strands.
Haunted doll stories (like the Okiku Doll) are mostly urban legends passed down and embellished over time.
The only thing growing is the story, not the hair.
Scientifically false. Hair does not grow after death.
The skin shrinks as the body dehydrates, making hair and nails appear longer. It's an optical illusion due to skin drying. Nothing spooky.
This myth probably arose from observing corpses and misinterpreting natural decomposition.
When someone dies, not everything in the body ceases to function immediately. Death is a process, and the exact moment when death occurs is complex, involving various physiological changes.
Circulation stops: The heart ceases to beat, leading to a lack of blood circulation. This stops the delivery of oxygen and nutrients to tissues and organs.
Brain activity ceases: Brain death occurs when there is no electrical activity in the brain. However, some basic reflexes (like muscle spasms) can occur for a few moments after brain death.
Cell function: After circulation stops, cells in the body can survive for a short time, but without oxygen, they begin to break down. Some cells, like those in the cornea or skin, may remain viable for a bit longer.
Decomposition begins: After death, the body starts to decompose due to bacterial activity, which can happen within hours, starting with the digestive system.
In summary, while the body’s main functions cease immediately after death, there is still a brief period of cellular activity and minor functions occurring.
But it is a very brief period, far too short for something such as hair to grow.