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kinds of hair with the onset of puberty and sexual maturation. Then,
as we grow older, our hair turns grey or white, signifying the approach
of death. Ebersole writes about many popular practices and taboos.
Kami—numinous spirits with supernatural power who can be both
benevolent and malevolent—are believed to be attracted to the long
hair of young women, into which they descend to reside temporarily.
Mentioning the plague in the presence of a woman combing her long
hair might therefore attract the kami of the plague and bring disease.
Even today some Japanese fear the possibility of another person or an
animal coming to possess a clipping of one’s hair and thus gaining
control over one’s vital essence.
On the other hand, human hair is also popularly believed to have
positive powers. As the site of the life force and fertility, human hair
can repel evil demons and spirits and is sometimes worked into amu-
lets. Fishermen caught in a storm often throw tufts of their hair into
the sea, offering this as a substitute gift to the kami of the sea so that
their lives may be spared. Women have offered locks of hair to shrines
and temples as amulets to protect men sent away to war because it is
believed that hair has the power to attract the spirits of absent loved
ones. Ropes made of female human hair were used for construction
purposes (for example, at Higashi Honganji in Kyōto), but
they also symbolized women’s contribution of the life force to the reli-
gious institution. The donation of hair created merit and acted as a
kind of symbolic taking of the tonsure. Ebersole writes,
The ancient Japanese seem to have been struck by the fact that even after
the rest of one’s body had ceased to grow, one’s hair, like fingernails and
toenails, continued to grow by itself, outside one’s conscious control.
This may be one reason why hair was associated positively with life force
and energy, but at the same time had the negative valence of wild or
untamed energy. (Ebersole 1998, 77–78)Hair and nails do not, of course, grow after death; metabolic energy is
required for the growth of any tissue, and that energy is not available
once blood circulation stops. Biologists have documented shrinkage
of the scalp or skin, which gives the appearance of the growth of the
hair or nails. The assumption that hair continues to grow after death,
however, must have contributed to the association between hair and
skeletons or ghosts in Japan. Many images from Japanese art depict
skeletons or ghosts with hair. Color plate 8, a detail from the outer-
most court of a thirteenth-century Womb World Mandala, shows six
“hungry ghosts” (preta; gaki ), creatures that occupy one of the