What hair is used for the lions in Renjishi and Kagami-jishi?

The shakkyō-mono lion whirling its long mane across the stage — the passage called kefuri — is among the great sights of kabuki dance. The head rotates so the hair sweeps a wide circle, or drives down and back, sometimes for tens of seconds together, and applause rises of itself.

What that hair is: yak tail, it is said. The yak is a bovine of the Tibetan plateau and elsewhere, and its tail hair is long, strong and supple. Human hair gives neither the spring nor the length. Because the kefuri is such violent movement, a weak material would tangle or break. To sweep a clean circle on stage, each strand needs body while the whole must move pliantly — and yak hair meets that condition. For the same reason it is also used in parts of wigs.

A word on the plays. Shunkyō Kagami-jishi, first danced in 1893 by Danjūrō IX, is one of the Shin Kabuki Jūhachiban. The page-girl Yayoi is transformed into the spirit of a lion and swings a white mane, and the piece turns on the gap between the onnagata dance of its first half and the wildness of its second. Renjishi sets a parent and child lion swinging together, and is often taken by actors who are themselves father and son. The white-maned lion spirit is deeply tied to the Ichikawa stage.