Today I am happy to tell you about one of this column's most successful accomplishments. It began last October when I received a heartfelt letter from Chip Bozek, a teacher in Hokkaido. He wanted to find someone who could give him a "chonmage" haircut like the old-time samurai wore. He had asked his Japanese friends to try to find a samurai barber, with no luck. People suggested a wig, but that wasn't what he wanted. It must be his own hair, now well below his shoulders. I asked him why he wanted it. (There is always a price to pay for such special services.) It was for a friend's wedding, he said. At another wedding, he had the couple's initials in a heart "carved" into his short clipped hair at the back of his head.
First I checked sumo contacts and finally found a hair arranger, but the sumo topknot is a far different style from the samurai shaved pate. I tried other logical sources with no luck. The recommendation was always the same: Get a wig. And then I thought of Samurai Joe Okada. I have known Joe by his good works for many years. In earlier days, the exchange rate made Japan a bargain destination and the tourists who came were curious about everything Japanese. Joe, who operated his own Kyoto travel agency, created culture tours. In one show, there could be tea ceremony, Japanese dance, flower arranging, karate (I have a picture of an assistant breaking the tiles with his FACE!), a Japanese wedding with a foreigner from the audience as groom, ninja and more, depending on time and budget. He used Momoyama Castle as his stage and usually concluded with Joe himself dressed as a samurai demonstrating his skill as a swordsman. He would call for a volunteer from the audience who would then lie on a mat on the stage. Joe would put a watermelon on the person's stomach and raising his sword high in the air, bring it down in a great arc to slice the melon cleanly in two. It was a great show and he did it 1,700 times for more than 130,000 foreign visitors until the high yen put him out of business. He has appeared on 46 TV programs and countless times in magazines and newspapers, including this column. Once, uninvited, he performed on a U.S. destroyer. There were demonstrators in the streets but Samurai Joe felt that since he had made a living for 35 years through speaking English, he would entertain the crew with a sword show. But he still has a dream, to be on Larry King Live -- and he should be. I don't know if he still does the melon.
So I called Joe, now living in Maizuru. Could he help? Of course. He gave me the name of a friend in Kyoto. But it wasn't that easy. The friend was not eager to take on the job. He had never done a foreigner's hair before and wasn't sure it would work. The front of the man's head would have to be shaved; would that be all right? Actually, these days he usually works on wigs; they are now his specialty. But we kept at it and eventually the master said yes. Then I reminded the "haircutee" to be polite and appreciative, to take along a gift of some kind, perhaps some specialty from Hokkaido, and of course an interpreter.