How many hairstyles were there during the 'Edo period' in Japan?

Answer 1

For men and women hairstyles varied widely depending on age, occupation/rank, fashion, and personal preference. Infinite variations mean that there can be no "accurate" count.

For men, there was the basic chonmage (translates to something like "comma hair"). In the warring states period, what was popular for samurais, was to shave the hair above their ears, and tie the rest into a ponytail. When the states stopped warring, what became popular was to oil up your ponytail and slap it on top of your artificially bald pate! Commoners would poof up the sideburns into a touroubin (lantern hair) while samurais would tie it tight up to their heads. The chon part of the mage could be oiled up and slapped down, or tied up with a lot of little ropes, or made to stand up. Commoners (especially city-dwellers) liked to make their lantern-'burns sag and twist their chon to their right (our left) and it could even be split in half. Boychildren could get all their hair shaved, sometimes leaving little poofs of hair on the forehead, sides of the head, and back of the head. Sometimes their hair was let to grow out, and they got comical tiny ponytails. Aging up, they would grow out their forelock and back-lock and tie them together into a kind of kid-mage. (Samurais would do this too: among other things, it showed they were of the appropriate age to be macked on by other samurais.) Young shop-assistants and apprentices would do this and grow out the sides of the forelock to let it kid of hang down like a 'stache for their forehead. When they went through the rites of passage and became adults they were allowed to shave off their forelock and just have a normal chonmage. Monks shaved their heads bald, and ronins and doctors (actually, ronins were often doctors) liked to grow the bald part back out and slap their chonmage right on top of their hair again! Lady actresses were too sexy, and theater-goers would fight over their romantic/sexy favors, so ladies were banned, and soon after all theater was banned, because the dudes crossdressing as ladies were also too sexy. However dude-only kabuki was soon allowed with the provision they shaved off their forelocks and had a proper chonmage, so actors would wear a little purple hat to hide their bald (not technically a hairstyle, but hair-related and hair-larious).

Girls wouldn't get their heads shaved when they were little (unless their parents were reeeeally eccentric). They'd usually get their hair tied back with a ribbon into a bun, like your grandma, because if they added a lot of elaborate hair pins and stuff those would totally get lost. Average city-dwellers would tie their hair up into a shimada (how to do: 1. tie hair into ponytail, puffing up sideburns into a kind of upside-down bowl shape. 2. Stick comb behind your forelock 'cause it's cool, and so the bun doesn't try to creep up on your eyebrows. 3. Fashion ponytail into bun, hiding loose end of hair inside. 4. If desired, add hairpins and decorations. 5. ??? 6. Profit!!!) Fashionable young ladies could have a geisha-like pointier hairstyle with lost of accessories. If they were sold into prostitution (or committed a crime and were sentenced to serve a sentence in the walled red-light district - yes, this was actually a sentence that could be given) they would do their hair up gigantic with elaborate hair pins and paper flowers (though if they were secret, unlicensed prostitutes like "arrow girls" or "bath-house girls" they wouldn't, to keep the fuzz off their trail, see?) The highest-ranked 'hos were called "oiran" and they would not only tie their belts backwards ('cause it was sexy) and have platform shoes about like a foot high, but they would take their shimada, grow it out like three times the length, and when they made their bun, they would split it in half, and stretch it vertically so it looked like a bow or a butterfly (yoko-hyougo), and their decorations were so elaborate, it is a wonder their necks weren't beefy like Ahnold.

The shimada originated from a place called - shocker - Shimada, and was allegedly created by prostitutes there - the original version is much less simple, and involves greasing your hair, tying it into a loopie, and wrapping it in rope so it like stands up.

In the later Edo period, the mitsumawage became popular - it looks like the shimada picture, but less standing up, and you stick what looks like a decorated Vienna sausage in the loopie. Samurai ladies wore a similar but slightly different version called the osafune, written "long ship". Some hairstyles took the hair from the forelock, brushed it back, and split it in half sideways to kind of wrap around the loopie bun. Lots of hairstyles were variations on the "change the height of the shimada and/or stick something in the loop" and so you may or may not want to count these as separate. For example the popular maru-mage (circle hair) is like a standing shimada expanded sideways to look, no surprise, like a circle. The katsuya-mage, invented by a prostitute called Katsuya, is like the Shimada without the big sideburns, instead having a comically-diametred look.

Then there was the Heian-like hairstyle of letting it all down, with one variation being to make it swoop over the head and then be loose (imagine a docile sting-ray sitting on one's head). A wari was taking the shimada ponytail, then wrapping it around a stick...