80s Hair Cards: Sadaaki Yoshimura (Giants) vs Ken Hirano (Dragons)

Photography on some of the Calbee sets from the 1980s suffered from the same problem that Topps sets in the US from the 1960s suffered from: too many pictures of players without hats.

While this makes for some awful-looking cards (1961 Topps Willie Mays, that is directed at you) in Calbee`s case it had the benefit of creating, time-capsule-like, an excellent repository of 1980s hairstyles that were popular during Japan`s bubble era.

So I`ll be doing a series of posts on here comparing some of the better ones, contest like.  Today`s contenders are Ken Hirano of the Dragons (left) and Sadaaki Yoshimura of Kyoujin (right).  Both of these cards are from the 1987 Calbee set, which has some great 80s hair.

I think I have to give a hands down victory to Hirano on this one.  Yoshimura`s is a decent effort, daringly teased for effect, but Hirano`s is superb.  It literally looks like he went into a novelty store like the Loft, bought one of those sculpted plastic fake-hair pieces that they make for halloween costumes (usually samurai style) with an unusually specific name like `middle infielder, Central League, 1986` and just decided that was going to be his look.