hello! i hope you're doing well! i wanted to ask if there's any kind of historical precedent for those double bun hairstyles a lot of chinese characters in anime/manga wear? characters like chun li from street fighter; i know they're called odango hair in japanese and supposedly 牛角头 in chinese, but when i tried to look it up on baidu they didn't come up. i'm especially curious about those bun covers they seem to have sometimes?
Hi, this question is super interesting thanks for asking. I think they were partially inspired by children’s hairstyles from the Qing and early 20th century, though the children were usually bald with the exception of the little buns, which isn’t the case with most Chinese anime/manga characters who sport the hairstyle. I looked up odango and I think the Chinese for it is 丸子头, which basically means any kind of bun.
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年画 illustration from 杨柳青 Yangliuqing, presumably late Qing Dynasty.
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Chun Li in Street Fighter V. Her bun covers are very interesting but I don’t think any historical precedent exists for them. They sort of look like 18th century European caps worn underneath bonnets/hats? Not really Chinese to be honest.
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Ca. 1750 painting showing a cap.
Little buns were also only worn by children though, grownup women would wear their hair up in whatever hairstyle was fashionable in their time while teenage girls were allowed to wear bangs or loose hair at the back.
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Another 杨柳青 print from the 1850s or 60s showing grownup women in the fashionable hairstyle with the pointy sides.
I honestly have no idea when this hairstyle became a thing in anime and manga and why it’s so commonly associated with Chinese girls. I’m not very knowledgeable in ACG history so it would be very helpful if anyone could share with me earlier examples of Chinese characters with this hairstyle. Like, Chun Li’s first appearance in Street Fighter was apparently in 1991 so I’m pretty sure she wasn’t the first one. It probably originated in one character which then influenced another and that one influenced another and so on, until it became standard practice to use this hairstyle to represent Chinese girls.
I think the double bun hairstyle (shuang ya ji/双丫髻) became the defining feature of Chinese female characters in Japanese anime/manga just because it’s so unique, iconic, and easily recognizable. It’s basically a shorthand for showing that a particular character is Chinese (or is related to China in some way).
Below - Miaka from Fushigi Yuugi, Shampoo from Ranma ½, Meiling from Cardcaptor Sakura, Meirin from Ask Dr. Rin!:
I wrote a bit on the history of double bun hairstyles for girls & unmarried women in my post here (it was worn by young boys too). Below are examples of various types of Chinese double bun hairstyles for girls/women as seen on historical artifacts (1,2,3,4):
This hairstyle also shows up a lot on Chinese New Year decorations:
As for the bun covers, I haven’t yet seen any historical evidence of girls wearing those, but since commoner men covered their buns with cloth covers, it’s not too far-fetched to assume that girls may have done so as well (x):
There’s also this double bun-like hairstyle from the 1920s that may have also contributed to the image of the double bun worn with decorative ornaments (x):
The niu jiao tou/牛角头 (“ox horn head”) hairstyle can be considered a type of double bun hairstyle, but its shape is slightly different (more angular and pointed). Here are examples of the niujiaotou hairstyle in Chinese dramas:
Interestingly enough, I have found one example of the more pointed niujiaotou hairstyle depicted in anime/manga - Lady Aska from Magic Knight Rayearth, which makes sense given her role as princess of Fahren (essentially fantasy China in this universe):
My favorite babe girl, Kagura(神乐shenle) from Gintama lol