Hair as a medium for communication

by Jennifer Ball

Ones hairstyle projects ones status. Female

hair telegraphs availability. Certain styles indicate not yet: this wearer is too young to bear
children. Early communication was often about
a females ability to carry offspring.
Hair as a medium for communication - Page 1 - Jennifer Ball, www.OriginofAlphabet.com

Momoware
Hair as a medium for communication - Page 2 - Jennifer Ball, www.OriginofAlphabet.com

A chaste look, nothing dangly.

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Yuiwata

Only slightly suggestive.

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Shimada

What do you suppose well

matured means?

Hair as a medium for communication - Page 6 - Jennifer Ball, www.OriginofAlphabet.com

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No particular age...

Marumage

Once married, her age appears

to be immaterial: shes taken.
Hair as a medium for communication - Page 8 - Jennifer Ball, www.OriginofAlphabet.com

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Shitajimage
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Men in womens clothing and

people falling down: the underpinnings of comedy.
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Tekomai

Very suggestive, phallic-esque

hair.
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original
rice
paper

Inside of the lid of the box

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I have had this doll since I was 6 (1964). It made a lasting impression upon me. It also suggests a coherence in my life that I
still have some of the original rice paper even though the doll is
at least 41 years old.
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Topknot is cut as a prelude to deflowering

Mizuage
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:
Mizuage (?, lit. hoisting from water) was a ceremony undergone by a Japanese maiko
(apprentice geisha) to signify her coming of age. When the older geisha (in charge of the maikos
training) considered the young maiko ready to come of age, the topknot of her hair was symbolically cut.
During the Edo period, courtesans undergoing mizuage were sponsored by a patron who had
the right of taking their virginity.[1] Mizuage has also historically been connected with loss of
virginity of maiko,[2][3] but this practice became illegal in 1959.[4] Afterward, a party would be
held for the maiko.
According to anthropologist Liza Dalby, mizuage was an important initiation to womanhood
and the geisha world. Mizuage gave way to the next stage of training, the senior maiko. Once
the mizuage patrons function (of deflowering the young maiko) was served, he was to have no
further relations with the girl.[5]
The money acquired for a maikos mizuage was a great sum and it was used to promote her
debut as a geisha,[6] but this was not considered by geisha to be an act of prostitution.[citation
needed]
Mineko Iwasaki, a geisha that Arthur Golden met while writing Memoirs of a Geisha described
mizuage in her autobiography as being an initiation party, symbolized on the geisha-to-be by a
change in hairstyle rather than the loss of virginity.[7] It is a celebration of the passage of girl
(maiko) to woman (geisha).

Similar Japanese wig dolls found on

the internet.

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References[edit]
1 Seigle, Cecilia Segawa (1993). Yoshiwara: the glittering world of the Japanese courtesan.
[Honolulu]: University of Hawaii Press. ISBN 0-8248-1488-6.page 179.
2 Melissa Hope Ditmore (2006). Encyclopedia of prostitution and sex work. Westport, Conn:
Greenwood Press. ISBN 0-313-32969-9., page 184 [1]
3 Japan encyclopedia. Belknap Pr of Harvard U. 2005. ISBN 0-674-01753-6.page 234
4 Reynolds, Wayne; Gallagher, John (2003). Geisha : A Unique World of Tradition, Elegance and
Art. PRC Publishing. ISBN 1-85648-697-4. page 135
5 Liza Crihfield Dalby. Geisha. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998
6 Lesley Downer. Geisha: The Secret History of a Vanishing World. (London: Headline Book
Publishing, 2000) pages 256-266.
7 Mineko Iwasaki. Geisha, A Life. (New York: Washington Square Press, 2002) page 206-210.

Hair as a medium for communication - Page 17 - Jennifer Ball, www.OriginofAlphabet.com

I preferred my
geisha with a
sword, which I
bought in San
Francisco in
1970, when I
was 12 and in
seventh grade.

Hair as a medium for communication - Page 18 - Jennifer Ball, www.OriginofAlphabet.com