Only two years after establishing a company in 2005, young entrepreneur Yujun Wakashin found himself in an unexpected predicament: his co-founder and employees ganged up on him, ousting him from his own firm.

Was there disagreement over management policies? No. It was because Wakashin, a self-declared nonconformist, refused to change his long, dyed-brown hair that his colleagues found unprofessional.

"I just couldn't take the pain of changing my fashion and distorting myself into somebody I wasn't," Wakashin said in a recent interview with The Japan Times.