Kokusai International Barber & Beauty College, Tokyo

Kokusai is a designated barber training facility in Arakawa, Tokyo, five minutes’ walk from Nippori station, and its two-year riyō department is a genuine route to the national barber licence.

The barbering department takes 60 students a year, alongside a beauty department of 120 and a beauty artist course of 60. Correspondence courses in both barbering and beauty are also offered for people already working in a salon. First-year fees for the barbering course run to roughly 1.57 to 1.61 million yen, broken down into admission, tuition, practical training, facility and materials charges, substantial, but that is the cost of a licensed profession rather than a short course. The college operates its own financial support scheme covering approximately half of first-year tuition for students in need, which is worth asking about.

A note on Japanese credentials, because they matter more here than almost anywhere. Barbering, riyō, is a licensed profession in Japan. To practise you must graduate from a training facility designated by the Minister of Health, Labour and Welfare and then pass the national barber examination. A short private course confers nothing. All three Japanese providers listed here are designated colleges, which is why the list is short: in Japan there is essentially no other legitimate route.