Twenty years ago, all Japanese had black hair. No kidding. Everyone. Imagine the innocent shock of someone coming from "Planet Everyone and Everything" (otherwise known as New York City), being confronted with a sea of black on the heads of a homogenous population. And it was all straight, thick, black hair. Most women wore their hair long and hanging straight from the crown of the head to the shoulder-or well past-interrupted only by a clip here, or a ribbon there. Men's styles were basically of 4 types. Your average guy-something like 70 percent of the male population-wore his hair parted on one side "Western" style. Because the thickness and straightness of Japanese hair precluded it lying flat on the head, copious amounts of grease were needed to keep it in place. This did the job of preserving the "do" from morning to night, shinny and black as a new Cadillac straight off the lot. However it required that all the seating in the country have the headrests covered with a lacy white cloth in order to keep from being stained-not that it always helped.

The second most popular style was a somewhat school-boyish, somewhat athletic affair, which went anywhere from tight crewcut to a kind of long crew cut in which the hair sprung naturally from the crown, downward and outward in all directions. Both styles required no grease and no combing; quick, convenient and probably the most suited to the Japanese head.

A third style was less a haircut than an identity. The "punch perm" probably got its name from the so-called "punch carpet", which is a carpet with about as short a nap as you can get and still call it a carpet. The organic equivalent was a short-cropped, tightly curled affair worn almost exclusively by "Yakuza" and those who often needed to deal with them such as truck drivers, various building tradesmen and Enka singers.

The fourth style had as equally narrow and emblematic a following as the Punch perm. Long hair, which had no home in hippiedom, was the exclusive domain of college professors and designers. The distinction was made thus: designers always wore their long hair pulled back tight into a ponytail; professors wore theirs wild and gray.

There was one other subgroup in which every imaginable hairstyle was in evidence: entertainers. Two cases in point, Seiko Matsuda (A.K.A. Seiko chan), whose bobbed and bowed hair spawned a following among young ladies, and a group of three young men called "The Alfee" whose 3 male members were basically a living catalog of hair styles - albeit, all black.

There were perhaps only two exceptions to the no hair die rule. One was women over the age of 65 who all died their locks fluorescent purple. The other was the "Yankee", meaning one who was somehow not Japanese, or "chapatsu", a derogatory term simply meaning tea-colored head.

Today, hair dye is the only growth business in Japan. Hair dying is now so pervasive that most people have been self-hypnotized into believing that they can actually give birth to blond children. It is a little know fact that the demand for hair dying of infants has been such that hospitals have begun new departments expressly to deal with baby dying. It is not as yet, however, covered under the national insurance scheme. Rumor has it that our present prime minister, himself no stranger to the beauty parlor, will propose a bill in parliament...

It is no exaggeration to say that the amazement felt by the foreigner confronted with that sea of black heads holds not a candle to the sense of awe felt when confronted with the now amazing array of colors, shades, tints and hues. It began slowly as temporary colorings that could be washed out, easily converting last night's punk rocker into today's nondescript student. At that time, brilliant greens, reds, blues and yellows were the colors of choice. What began to gain steam with the "Sunday in Harajuku" and "X-Japan" crowd, (those "visual-kei" rockers with the huge, swishing red and yellow wigs), broke into a headlong rush with the relaxation of strict rules governing the appearance of students. Those rules included no long hair on men, no short skirts on young ladies and absolutely no hair color for anyone. Some time later, (and my personal favorite) a trend developed in which vast numbers of young men and women, seemingly became overnight sexagenarians, through the auspices of bleaching their hair completely white. Having once attempted this myself I can report, in all sincerity, that it is no mean feat. In my own case, beginning from dark brown, I gave up after one solid hour in the beautician's chair. This produced something that could just barely be called blond. White, I was told, would take an additional thirty minutes to one hour. Most of the white wearers, it should be noted, went in for an additional tinting - usually of a purplish or bluish hue - which gave it that air of authenticity you just had to admire. These days though, hair color has settled into as permanent a fixture as modern technology will allow and a rather narrow color band between blond and red, with a kind of rust color as the average.

A related trend to dyeing is that of wig wearing, hair implants, and the latest, "Propia Hair Contact" - a method of gluing hair to the body in small clumps. Twenty years ago the only people who wore wigs were samurai and samurettes in "jidai geki" - a kind of Japanese Western - and the staff of "Okama pubs" where men dress as woman, dance, sing and generally carry on 'till the wee hours. The intervening years has seen an explosion of wig wearing that I calculate peaked as a fashion around the year 2000. The bulk of the market is young women between the ages of 16 and 25. The majority of the wig work is the so-called "piece" or partial wig. This often takes the form of long, curly tresses attached from slightly behind the crown of the head, flowing over the shoulders and down the back, like some soft ice-cream machine left open, full throttle.

Hair implants on the other hand naturally attracted more men than women. One well known men's rug maker got into this business in a big way, selling hair shafts in lots of 1, 5 or the big 10,000 plants. The idea was to implant the hair gradually so as not to appear too obvious. This was similar to their strategy with a previous product. In the former case, the customer was sold a series of hairpieces (about five as I recall), starting with a thinnish affair and working up to a full wooly-bully. I for one thought this was sheer genius. The essence of the thing being that with personal appearance it is not so much how others see you - everybody knows, for example, that you're wearing a wig - but how you see yourself.

As I mentioned previously, today, birth to death color branding is the name of the game. But along with hair replacement, hair weaving, etc., the new game in town is hair health, which begins with a cute thing in a short lab coat, surveying the customer's scalp with a macro lens video camera, and displaying the grotesque result on a large color monitor. In the exaggerated lens of the camera the scalp appears like a sea of upended Titanics, crashing into horribly fractured ice, splattered with unmentionable debris, blood and lymph-like substances. So absolutely appalling is this sight that anyone who sees it is immediately willing to surrender their wallet to the perpetrators in the sincere hope that 1. they will never be shown such a horrible sight again and 2. the mess of dead epidermis, dandruff and reddened pores will be removed forthwith.

For the future, as with most everything else, technology is likely to play a big part. Hair regeneration chemicals will continue to improve and probably combine features such as straight or curly growth and color of choice. Hair which is chemically treated to glow in black light for the raver, or blink when a call is received on one's cell phone for the hard-of-hearing. Hair may be treated to change color in sunlight or shade, perhaps revealing hidden messages or images in the process. Iridescent, Pearl tone, even transparent hair will all have their day. And of course the ultimate scientific trip: engineering the DNA so that today's self-hypnosis is tomorrow's walk in the park. Or should I say jungle.