The Truth Behind Miho Fujiwara’s Fast Growing Hair, and Why She Never Cut It

WARNING: This article contains spoilers from Touhou Kichouden ~ Mythos of Phantasmagoria 2. We do not recommend reading this article until you have completed the postgame.

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Miho Fujiwara is one of the playable characters in Touhou Kichouden ~ Mythos of Phantasmagoria 2. She is based on the typical Edo-period towngirl (spelled one word in the game) and hails from an elite family in Kozankyo. She specializes in swiftness and evasion, even though she doesn’t have the same level of offensive power as her childhood friend Crown Prince Kichou.

Miho herself was born on October 13, 1703, exactly two weeks after her childhood friend and future husband Crown Prince Kichou was born. After her birth, her parents quickly came up with the idea of bringing the Fujiwara Clan’s influence into the Kirisame Dynasty, and decided to marry her into the royal family on her 18th birthday. During an official visit to the Kozankyo Imperial Palace a few days after her birth, Queen Marisa approved that her marriage would take place at that time, given if she built a healthy and stable relationship with Crown Prince Kichou, which she did. This was furthered by having her enroll in the same terakoya (temple school) as Kichou, where they were both educated.

Another thing that helped her eligibility was her hair. Her mother, Mokou Fujiwara, already had very long hair that was the length of her body. She was ordered not to have a haircut by any means, and Miho respected that promise after she learned that women in Gensokyo grew their hair out for their entire lives without cutting it. It also grew rapidly at a rate of 15 centimeters (6 in) per year, it was a third of her height when she was two, more than half her height at four, over three-quarters by six, and to her height at eight! It started trailing on the ground when she was ten and right when she became a teenager at age 13, it had already produced a 30-centimeter (one-foot) train.

If a woman in Gensokyo had hair that extended down to their thighs, they often wore it up as a way to ensure no malicious individual would ensnare them. As a samurai who helped Kichou, Miho often wore her hair in the shimada style, which was once worn by late teenage and adult women in Japan during the Edo Period and nowadays only worn by actresses and models. Heck, she even wore it in school.

As her eighteenth birthday and wedding with Crown Prince Kichou drew closer, Queen Marisa and Mokou Fujiwara were in a pinch as at the time, the train had already grown to 120 centimeters (four feet). As such, her wedding gown, which was the exact one her mother-in-law wore upon her marriage to King Kourin, had to be tweaked with the skirt layer holding all of the hair, and her veil was placed on top. It sure makes for some interesting and unique scenarios, but a lot to accomplish. For you cosplayers out there, it is very difficult to find wigs that will go down to the floor, unless you to go to Japan, where they exist for kabuki and other forms of theatre.