The Rule of Male Aesthetics: My Tireless Efforts to Halt Male-Pattern Baldness

Shortly after founding Sound House, I was exhausted both physically and mentally from the daily hard work of the company. I was in my late thirties, and I was as tireless then as I am now, always working at full speed with full energy. However, I heard a shocking comment at the barbershop.

“Sir, if you don't take care of your scalp, your hair is going to continue thinning,” said a young barber. I had never taken care of my hair before, nor had I ever given a thought about it. “Are you serious?! I’m going bald?” When I asked him about it, he told me that for now I should use a hair growth spray like "Success" and massage my scalp. From that day on, I would be occasionally invaded by the delusion that one day I would become bald.

The most important factor that causes baldness in the first place is DNA. My late father used to say, "When deciding who to marry, look at the father first! He used to say, "If your father was bald, your children will be bald.” His father, who passed away at the age of 75, had indeed begun to thin considerably from the time he was 60, and he was always concerned about his own head, buying various hair-growing products. In my father's case, his entire head was thinning and he covered it well with his natural hair. This would then mean that there was a good chance that I would end up like that too.

Wait a minute! DNA is not the only reason for baldness. The worst thing we see is stress. The direct cause of baldness is poor blood circulation. Essentially, the scalp is soft, and nutrients are carried through the blood to the skin in an ever-expanding stream, allowing hair to grow. However, when the neck and shoulders become stiff due to overwork and lack of sleep, the blood circulation becomes sluggish all at once. If left unchecked, the head will become stiff and the scalp will become tense. Once that happens, of course, there is no way for hair follicles to grow. Like a tree planted on dry land with no fertilizer, it will become a dead tree and decay.

I finally began to understand such obvious things when I was in my fifties. Until then, I only had the easy idea that I could get by, and would occasionally spray and massage the area. However, the damaged area gradually increased. Then one day, I thought to myself, "If I don't do something about it, it will never get better!” I took the plunge and went to "LEAVE 21" in Ikebukuro for initial counseling, but for some reason they still charged me 10,000 yen. There was only one thing I learned there. After shampooing my hair properly, I used cold water to cool my head down.They probably intended to stimulate my scalp by using both warm and cold water. However, when I heard about the crazy high price of "LEAVE 21," I got fed up and walked away.

Later, I saw a TV commercial advertising "RiUP". Apparently, hair-growth products containing the ingredient minoxidil really works. Believing that this would work for me, I decided to buy it. Despite how expensive it was, it contained only a little bit of minoxidil. The pharmaceutical companies are making a profit from this crowd of men who don't want to become bald. It may be good business, but it is still too expensive.

Then one day, I looked at minoxidil on Amazon.com in the U.S. and saw how inexpensive it was! Even if I got a half-year supply and used it daily in abundance, it would not cost me more than 10,000 yen. So, I decided to buy it from Amazon USA and started using American-made minoxidil right away. However, since I did not always take care of my hair meticulously on a daily basis, I saw little effect. In the meantime, I became increasingly concerned that the back of my head was thinning even more. The aesthetics of men! Having full, lush hair! I don't want to lose this.

Then one day, as I was getting my hair cut at a barbershop in Ajiki near my office, the barber said, "This is not good..." He also suggested that I take some medication because I would become bald if I didn't. I had never thought about drugs before. I had spent half a century without spending any money or time on physical care, so the idea of medication seemed novel to me. I then did a little research on the Internet and learned that there were several standard remedies, including Propecia.

What concerns me is the side effects. No way, is this what you mean: we know that a side effect of AGA (male pattern baldness) drugs is the risk of a man becoming impotent. Since no more than 10% of people are affected by these side effects, I naturally assumed that I was safe, but what turned out to be the case? Ta-da! My trusted dermatologist told me that Zagarlo would work well, so I immediately bought some and started taking it to see if it would work. And what do you know, it worked like a lightning bolt from out of the blue. After a month of taking it, I could not see any effect on my hair, and to my surprise, it really stopped standing up. Seriously? So one day, I went to the female doctor to confess. “I'm sorry, my hair won’t stand up anymore, so I'm going to stop! I'm sorry!”

For the next several years, I could not help but notice that as I sat on my hands, the top of my hair began to thin out more and more. The TV commercials such as Art Nature are really famous, but upon closer examination, I found that this is not a hair growing method, but merely a contrivance to make it look like you have hair by tying it in knots. That is not my intention. I want my own hair. So, once again, I had a change of heart and I became determined to work on hair growth methods.

The bottom line is that in order to increase natural hair and grow hair, the land must first be fertilized. In a field, the land must be plowed, fertilized, watered, and planted properly. The exact same thing can be said. First, it is important to massage the scalp daily and stimulate it anyway. In the past, when I was ignorant, I used to think that it was better to leave it alone and not touch it so that my hair would not fall out. Quite the opposite. To prevent hair from falling out, we need to stimulate the skin, massage it, and improve blood circulation. Daily shampooing is also important for this purpose. This is why daily bathing and time to relax and massage is important. And then to fertilize with minoxidil.

Many days I have trouble finding the time to do so. Therefore, I sometimes feel like giving up. Moreover, sleep is the most important time for nourishment of the scalp, but if I sleep only four hours a night instead of the seven hours I should be getting. So, my scalp is paralyzed and my hair has become limp. Therefore, the battle for hair growth is a daily battle to secure sleep and bathing time. Only those who can win can march on. For me, it is a world of ups and downs, but I have no choice but to keep going and never give up.

On top of that, I would apply minoxidil to my head daily and massage it for three minutes. Recently, I saw a scalp massage machine which was used at a barbershop, and I immediately decided to buy one myself and use it daily. It feels good as it rubs my head with the bumps on my three fingers. This was a good decision. And, there is one more important thing that I do. That is neck stretching. When I am working hard, my neck still gets stiff and cannot turn. The stresses of today's PCs are not half as bad as they used to be. If your neck muscles become so stiff that you think you will die of overwork, your blood circulation will naturally be impeded. I have to do everything I can to fix this problem, so I try to stretch my neck every day. By stretching my neck, I feel the blood flowing into my scalp again. In fact, I find that it works wonders.

And as a last resort, of course, I have medication. After trying several drugs to see if there was something else that would work for me if Zagarro did not, I found that a certain version of Propecia did not have the side effects I had experienced! I therefore decided to buy this drug and take one pill every day. Of course, I was allowed to buy it at a discount from a direct import store. And guess what, the hair loss did indeed stop. It works! It has some good points! By taking these measures on a daily basis, I found that I could manage to protect my hair.

Still, there are some major enemies. The number one is lack of sleep; after three days of it, even with all these measures, I’m out of it. Next is my stiff neck. If you work too much, blood can't get to your head. If this is not done in moderation, too, the natural hair will still disappear. The biggest enemy is traveling abroad with time differences. The time difference disrupts the body's rhythm, causing sleep deprivation, fatigue, and stress. Thus, every time you go abroad, you will lose 1,000 hairs each time. Ah. Next week I’m going to the US. This is what I call a terrifying trip abroad. When I return to Japan, I will be completely bald. I am writing this manuscript to free myself from such a nightmare.

Then it occurred to me; I thought that nurturing employees is exactly the same as raising hair. If you take great care of your employees and leave them to grow, you will notice that they will ‘lose their hair’, in other words, they will quit without growing. In order to nurture employees, we must take good care of them. You have to be involved with them on a daily basis. Until they are able to fulfill their responsibilities as members of society, take a firm stand in their work, and handle everything with confidence, they must continue to go through a variety of training and trial-and-error. Sometimes it takes a special medicine like medication, and effective tools must be used to promote awareness, which is both tedious and time-consuming. However, if we don't take the time to do this, we may eventually flounder and everyone will leave, let alone enlighten our employees. So at any rate, it is important to take care every day. In order to prevent the company organization from becoming a shaved head, the secret to a fuller company is to take care of each and every employee, just as you would put care into every single strand of hair.