"this hair style probably got its name from 'needle punch carpeting,' a type of floor covering with a short and tightly curled nap"

Way back I used to cry that I hated my hair. My parents assured me that I was lucky to have the kind of hair that "people paid hundreds of dollars for." When you're seven and don't believe something both your parents tell you it has to be untrue. I had no doubt people paid for the wide curly and wavy hair growing on my brother and my cousin, but I knew for sure nobody was paying hundreds of dollars to turn perfectly good Brady Bunch hair into naps an peas. Given that I did not see the inside of a barber shop until I was 14 and that my mom cut my 'fro with scissors, its safe to say naps and peas are what I was sporting.





Mom, dad. You were right and I was wrong. People were indeed paying money for afro alchemy, turning straight hair kinky. Just not in Philadelphia. This was happening far, far away in the land where Johnny Socko lived with his flying robot and from which it was rumored that Speed Racer came too.

Its called the punch perm and first gained popularity in Japan in the 1960's, about the time black people in the States were taking clothing irons and lye to their heads in a quest to have straight hair or go bald trying.

"These days it is extremely rare to find anyone with a punch perm, regardless of their affiliations," assures wikipedia, meaning the author of this article has never been to Okayama Station where at any hour a pride of definitely "affiliated" oyaji (middle aged men) will roll by mini man-purses clutched in pinky ringed hands, punch perms jet black to blonde streaked to Malcom X red. Even in Tokyo you will see the odd punch perm, and in fact a regular salaryman looking guy in my building has one. I confess I want to ask him how much and how often for care and frankly, why? I have this feeling he read Spiderman comics as a kid and his favorite villain was Harry Osborn, who boasted the original punch perm.

There is another reason punch perms are still in the hairdresser's repertoire all over Japan, especially in fashion hubs such as Tokyo's Harajuku. The punch perm is done first so that typical Japanese hair can be knitted into firm dreadlocks.

So, I take it in stride when I am asked, even by a professional 'do master, how many years I have had my punch perm. '37.' I say proudly, remembering to subtract my first,bald, year.