1. What Does Japan's Barber Law Say a Barber Does?
Japan's Barber Law (Riyoshi-ho) was issued in 1947. Article 1-2 says that "barbering" means tidying a person's appearance by methods such as cutting hair and shaving the face [1]. That is unusual to read if you grew up in the United States or Britain, where many barbers also offer shaves. Japan's law, though, writes face shaving into the definition of the job itself.
The law does not explain why it picked those two examples, and none of the sources we read say what the lawmakers were thinking. So the reason has to be pieced together from history. The encyclopedia entry on the Japanese word for a barbershop, tokoya, gives the best clue: before modern haircuts, shaving and hairdressing already happened in the same shop [3].
2. How Did Edo-Period Hair Shops Combine Shaving and Hairdressing?
In the Edo period (1603 to 1868), Japanese men wore a topknot called a mage, and many shaved the crown of the head in a patch called sakayaki. The hair shops that served them were called kamiyui-doko, meaning "hair-tying stalls." According to a Japanese encyclopedia, a typical shop had a master and one to three apprentices. The apprentice combed the customer's hair, shaved the crown and the face with a razor, and had the customer wash. Then the master took over, finished the shave, oiled and combed the hair, and tied the topknot into whatever style the customer liked [3].
In other words, a razor was part of the same sequence as the comb and the cord. The encyclopedia also quotes a writer of 1850 who praised Edo shops for their carefulness, even shaving from the nape of the neck to the ear canal with a thin razor [3]. Shaving was not an add-on. It was a normal step in getting your hair done.
3. What Happened to the Hair Shops When Topknots Went Out of Style?
In 1871 (Meiji 4), the new government issued the haircut-and-sword-removal edict, often called the danpatsu-rei. Its wording left cutting the hair up to each man, but people often took it as half an order. In March 1873, the emperor cut his own hair as an example, and a popular song joked that a newly cropped head, when tapped, sounded like "civilization and enlightenment." Cropped hair had already started with people who had traveled abroad and with soldiers drilling in Western style near Yokohama [3].
The old hair shops were replaced by shops for cropped hair that used signs like "Western-style shop." The same encyclopedia says that one of these, Kawana-doko in Tokyo, set up a twisting red-and-blue pole on a white ground, and it counts this as the first barber pole in Japan [3]. The topknot and the crown shave disappeared, but the trade of working on hair and face with sharp tools did not. That continuity is the most likely reason the law of 1947 still lists face shaving. It is an inference from the history, not a sentence from any lawmaker.
4. Why Does Using a Razor on Someone's Face Require a License?
Under the Barber Law, a barber must have a license from the Minister of Health, Labour and Welfare. To take the national exam you must first finish training at a school approved by the prefectural governor [1]. The ministry's own page says the regular daytime or evening course lasts at least two years (at least three by correspondence), followed by the national exam and then registration to receive the license [2].
Why so strict? The law's first article states its purpose: to set the qualifications of barbers and regulate the work so that it is done properly, "contributing to public health" [1]. A razor touching skin can spread infection if tools are not kept clean. Hygiene rules were already part of the picture early on: a Tokyo police ordinance of 1901 told barbers to disinfect their equipment and required them to register with the police [3]. The 1947 law then set up a system built on training schools and a license [3]. Public health is a stated purpose of that system, so it is a reasonable explanation for why a razor comes with a license. The law itself does not spell out that link.
5. Is the Barber Pole Part of the Same Story?
Partly, but it comes from Europe. According to HISTORY, in the Middle Ages bloodletting was a common treatment, and after Pope Alexander III banned clergy from doing it in 1163, barbers, who were good with sharp tools, added it to their work. These barber-surgeons also pulled teeth and treated wounds. The article says red stands for blood, white for the bandages, and the pole for the stick a patient gripped to make the veins stand out. Blue is explained differently by different people, as veins or as American patriotism [4]. A medical history from Hektoen International agrees that barbers were known as barber-surgeons until the nineteenth century and offered services such as pulling teeth and setting fractures [5].
These explanations are the usual stories, not proven facts about every pole. And nothing we read shows that Japanese barbers ever did surgery. What the story does show is that, in several places, the person with the sharpest tools and the steadiest hand was trusted with more than hair. Japan's version of that trust is a razor on the face, and a license to go with it.
6. How Many Barbers Are Left Today, and How Can You Check It Yourself?
The Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare reports that at the end of March 2024 there were 199,467 working barbers in Japan, 5,416 fewer than the year before, and 110,297 barbershops, 1.9% fewer than the previous year [6]. The ministry describes the trade as one that is fairly easy to enter, hard to make stand out from other shops, and hard to speed up because it is done by hand [6].
You can check the percentage yourself without leaving home. Last year's count was 199,467 + 5,416 = 204,883, so compared with last year the drop is 5,416 ÷ 204,883, about 2.6%. That is larger than the 1.9% drop in shops. Next time you pass a barbershop, in Japan or anywhere else, look at the pole from a safe place, with an adult. Is it red and white, red, white, and blue, or something else entirely? And you can read Article 1-2 of the Barber Law in an official database such as e-Gov, since our link is to a site that reprints the text.