The first time I used it was before a bath.
Pressing my palm against the bristles, they felt firmer and springier than I'd expected. I worried it might hurt against my scalp.
Until then I'd always used a cheap plastic brush. I wasn't particularly attached to it, and mornings often meant just running my fingers through my hair. I'd never had a habit of brushing before a bath.
But when I actually ran Edoya's premium black pig-bristle brush through my hair, it glided smoothly from root to tip. There was pressure against my scalp, but no pain — if anything, it felt good.
I bought the brush at Edoya, a brush specialist in Nihonbashi Ōdenma-chō, Tokyo. The shop, a five-minute walk from Kodenmachō subway station, occupies a building put up in the Taishō era and registered as a national Tangible Cultural Property. Inside were rows of brushes of every kind.
A gentle-mannered older man greeted me at the door. He seemed able to tell the thickness and volume of someone's hair at a glance — he read mine accurately and picked out brushes he thought would suit it.
After trying the feel and glide of a few different brushes in the shop, I decided on the one he recommended: the Six-Row S-Type Hairbrush, Premium Black Pig Bristle.
I have a lot of hair. With softer brushes, the bristles never seemed to reach my scalp — it often felt like I was just stroking the surface. At the shop I was told that reaching the roots properly takes a certain firmness, and once I actually ran the premium black pig-bristle brush through my hair, I felt that for myself.
Edoya is a brush specialist founded in 1718. Its first generation served as a brushmaker to the shogunate, making brushes for folding screens and sliding doors, and the shop has kept making brushes — from everyday tools to industrial ones — as the times changed.
Today, the shop says it carries more than 3,000 kinds of brushes.
Many of Edoya's products use traditional techniques and natural materials, and are made by hand, one at a time. Hand-tufting — guided by a craftsperson's touch — is one of the techniques the shop has carried forward.
The shelves at the Nihonbashi shop hold paint brushes, cooking brushes, clothes brushes, hairbrushes, toothbrushes, body brushes, cleaning brushes, and scrub brushes, in every size, shape, and material — some sold only in the shop, not online.
Being able to feel the weight, texture, and material of a brush in person is, more than anything, what makes visiting worthwhile. These days, the shop says, it sees many visitors from abroad too.
I've used this natural bristle brush ever since I bought it. In the morning, before heading out, to fix my bedhead. At night, before a bath, I run it through my hair.
I've heard that in Japan, brushing one's hair is said to carry the meaning of clearing away impurity and bad energy that's gathered in it. When I brush at night now, I find myself picturing the day's tiredness and bad mood washing away along with it. Brushing, which I used to forget about, has become something that shifts not just my hair but my mood.
Touching my hair after a thorough brushing, it seems to have a little more shine to it — or so it feels.
Even now, before a bath at night, I reach for this brush. I check for the feeling of the bristles reaching my roots, while picturing the day's tiredness and bad mood washing away with it.