Tokyo edamame barbers' guild defends 0.1mm fade cut as 'the minimum respect a bean is owed'
TOKYO — The Tokyo Edamame Barbers' Guild has defended its signature 0.1mm fade cut after a customer complained that his appetiser 'looked smug,' insisting the gradient is not decoration but courtesy.
The cut, in which each soybean is individually trimmed with 12mm shears forged by a single family in Seki, takes eleven years to learn. Apprentices spend the first three years washing beans. In the fourth year they are allowed to watch a bean being cut. Cutting begins in year seven, on beans that have, in the guild's words, 'already been forgiven.'
Candidates for master grade must complete a full bowl during the certification exam while a senior examiner reads a newspaper aloud beside them, to simulate restaurant conditions. A bean that splits is not discarded in anger. It is set aside, and the room observes a short silence.
'A bean knows when it has been rushed,' said Master Hiroto Senge, 68, who has cut an estimated 1.4 million beans and describes his own hair as 'not my department.' 'Uniformity is a decision. We simply make it visible.'
A spokesperson for the guild said it does not recognise the term 'plain edamame,' and that all 214 licensed bean barbers in the capital work to the same standard, checked twice nightly by lamp.
The guild's position has drawn criticism from a rival Osaka school, which permits a 0.3mm fade and describes the Tokyo gradient as 'a haircut nobody can see.' The guild responded that 0.3mm is 'a haircut you can see from another table,' and that the Osaka method is 'agriculture.'
The bean at the centre of the original complaint was eaten shortly afterwards. The guild has asked that it be described as having had a full life.
Author: doodlegaki
