Panchira
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is a Japanese word referring to a brief glimpse of a woman's
underwear Underwear, underclothing, or undergarments are items of clothing worn beneath outer clothes, usually in direct contact with the skin, although they may comprise more than a single layer. They serve to keep outer clothing from being soiled ...
. The term carries
risqué Risqué may refer to: * Material deemed slightly indecent or liable to shock, especially sexual suggestiveness * ''Risqué'' (album), 1979 recording by American disco band Chic * Risque (comics), mutant character first appearing in Marvel Comic ...
connotations, similar to the word
upskirt Upskirting or upskirt photography is the practice of taking photographs or videos under a person's skirt or kilt, capturing an image or video of the crotch area, showing underwear such as panties, and sometimes genitalia. An "upskirt" is a photo ...
in English. In
anime is a Traditional animation, hand-drawn and computer animation, computer-generated animation originating from Japan. Outside Japan and in English, ''anime'' refers specifically to animation produced in Japan. However, , in Japan and in Ja ...
and
manga are comics or graphic novels originating from Japan. Most manga conform to a style developed in Japan in the late 19th century, and the form has a long history in earlier Japanese art. The term is used in Japan to refer to both comics ...
, ''panchira'' usually refers to a panty-shot, a visual convention used by Japanese artists and animators since the early 1960s. According to Japanese sources, the convention probably started with Machiko Hasegawa's popular manga '' Sazae-san'', whose character designs for Wakame Isono incorporated an improbably brief
hemline The hemline is the line formed by the lower edge of a garment, such as a skirt, dress or coat, measured from the floor. The hemline is perhaps the most variable style line in fashion, changing shape and ranging in height from hip-high to fl ...
. The practice was later transferred to animation when
Osamu Tezuka Osamu Tezuka (, born , ''Tezuka Osamu'', – 9 February 1989) was a Japanese manga artist, cartoonist and animator. Considered to be among the greatest and most influential cartoonists of all time, his prolific output, pioneering techniques an ...
's ''
Astro Boy ''Astro Boy'', known in Japan as , is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Osamu Tezuka. It was serialized in Kobunsha's ''Shōnen'' from 1952 to 1968. The 112 chapters were collected into 23 volumes by Akita Shoten. Da ...
'' was adapted for television in 1963. Confined mainly to harmless children's series throughout the remainder of the decade, panchira took on more overtly fetishistic elements during the early 1970s. From that point on, ''panchira'' became linked with sexual humor such as the kind found in many comedy-oriented ''
shōnen manga is an editorial category of Manga, Japanese comics targeting an audience of both adolescent boys and young men. It is, along with Shōjo manga, manga (targeting adolescent girls and young women), Seinen manga, manga (targeting young adults ...
''. The word is a
portmanteau In linguistics, a blend—also known as a blend word, lexical blend, or portmanteau—is a word formed by combining the meanings, and parts of the sounds, of two or more words together.
of and ', the
Japanese sound symbolism The Japanese language has a large inventory of sound symbolic or mimetic words, known in linguistics as ideophones. Such words are found in written as well as spoken Japanese. Known popularly as ''onomatopoeia'', these words do not just imitat ...
representing a glance or glimpse. While the more general term "upskirt" doesn't say anything about what the skirt (un)covers, ''pan''chira specifies the presence of underpants. Without underpants, the term ; would be more accurate.


Origins

The development of panchira in
Japanese popular culture Japanese popular culture includes Cinema of Japan, Japanese cinema, Japanese cuisine, cuisine, Television in Japan, television programs, anime, manga, Video gaming in Japan, video games, Music of Japan, music, and doujinshi, all of which retain ol ...
has been analyzed by a number of American and Japanese writers. Many observers link the phenomenon to the Westernization of Japan following
World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...
. During the occupation, fashions, ideas, and media previously unavailable were accessed by the local population, leading to a slight relaxing of earlier taboos. Western-style clothing (including women's underwear) gained popularity in the post-war period, reinforced through numerous media outlets—magazines, newspapers, films, journals, and
comics a Media (communication), medium used to express ideas with images, often combined with text or other visual information. It typically the form of a sequence of Panel (comics), panels of images. Textual devices such as speech balloons, Glo ...
. Traditionally, Japanese women did not wear underwear. On December 16, 1932, there was a fire in the Tokyo Shirokiya department store. Legend has it that some of the female staff tried to use their kimonos to cover their privates as they climbed down ropes from the higher floors, and accidentally fell to their deaths. Japanese newspapers began agitating for women to start wearing , but seemingly had little impact at the time. In a 1934 survey by a
Fukuoka is the List of Japanese cities by population, sixth-largest city in Japan and the capital city of Fukuoka Prefecture, Japan. The city is built along the shores of Hakata Bay, and has been a center of international commerce since ancient times. ...
newspaper, 90% of the women surveyed were still not wearing 'drawers' a year and a half after the fire. At least one Japanese source traces the beginnings of panchira to the release of ''
The Seven Year Itch ''The Seven Year Itch'' is a 1955 American romantic comedy film directed by Billy Wilder, who co-wrote the screenplay with George Axelrod. Based on Axelrod's 1952 The Seven Year Itch (play), play of the same name, the film stars Marilyn Monroe ...
'' in 1955. The
media Media may refer to: Communication * Means of communication, tools and channels used to deliver information or data ** Advertising media, various media, content, buying and placement for advertising ** Interactive media, media that is inter ...
coverage surrounding
Marilyn Monroe Marilyn Monroe ( ; born Norma Jeane Mortenson; June 1, 1926 August 4, 1962) was an American actress and model. Known for playing comic "Blonde stereotype#Blonde bombshell, blonde bombshell" characters, she became one of the most popular sex ...
's iconic scene fueled the emerging Japanese craze. According to architectural historian Shoichi Inoue, the practice of "scoring" a glimpse up young women's skirts became extremely popular around this period; "Magazines of the time have articles telling the best places where panties could be viewed". Inoue also writes that actress Mitsuyo Asaka spurred the popularity of the word (, the thrill of catching a brief glimpse of a woman's nether regions) by parting her kimono to show off her legs in her stage shows in the late 1950s. In 1969, the Japanese oil company Maruzen Sekiyū released a television commercial featuring Rosa Ogawa in a
mini-skirt A miniskirt (or mini-skirt, mini skirt, or mini) is a skirt with its hemline well above the knees, generally at mid-thigh level, normally no longer than below the buttocks; and a dress with such a hemline is called a minidress or a miniskirt ...
that gets blown up by the wind and her lips forming an 'O' in surprise. This led to children imitating her line "" ("", "too much, radical"), and a fad for (, flipping up of a girl's skirt). Ogawa subsequently appeared in a TV show, ' (, literally "look at that," but actually a pun on "", a Neapolitan song translating to "my sunshine"), that again featured scenes of her mini-skirt blowing up. By the late 1960s, panchira had spread to the mainstream comic industry, as fledgling manga artists such as
Go Nagai , better known by the pen name , is a Japanese manga artist and a prolific author of Japanese science fiction, science fiction, fantasy, Japanese horror, horror, and erotica. He made his professional debut in 1967 with ''Meakashi Polikichi'', b ...
began exploring sexual imagery in boys' comics (
shōnen manga is an editorial category of Manga, Japanese comics targeting an audience of both adolescent boys and young men. It is, along with Shōjo manga, manga (targeting adolescent girls and young women), Seinen manga, manga (targeting young adults ...
). Adult manga magazines had existed since 1956 (e.g. '' Weekly Manga Times''), but it is significant to note the introduction of sexual imagery into boys manga. Millegan argues that the ecchi genre of the 1970s rose to fill a void left by the decline of
Osaka is a Cities designated by government ordinance of Japan, designated city in the Kansai region of Honshu in Japan. It is the capital of and most populous city in Osaka Prefecture, and the List of cities in Japan, third-most populous city in J ...
's lending library network:
Japanese comics did not seriously begin exploring erotic themes until the sixties, with the collapse of the pay-library system (largely brought about by the unexpected success of cheap comic magazines such as Kodansha Publishing's Shōnen Magazine). Artists working for the pay-library system had already pioneered the depiction of graphic violence, and had proudly declared that they were drawing ("drama pictures"), not mere comics. In the search for realism (and readers), it was inevitable that sex would soon make an appearance. As the Japanese comics market diversified, sex spread beyond the to just about every conceivable niche in the marketplace. The continued their realistic and often violent depictions, but the other major divisions in the manga world developed their own approach. Boys' comics began to explore "cute" sex, mainly consisting of panchira ("panty shots") and girls in showers.


Academic perspectives


Generalized perspective

A generalized perspective is provided by Mio Bryce's analysis of classroom imagery in Japanese comics. Using Go Nagai's as a prime example, Bryce says that Nagai's storylines challenged long-standing social values by ridiculing traditional authority figures. Teachers in Nagai's manga were portrayed as deviants and perverts, engaging in various forms of aggressively voyeuristic behavior towards their female students. In this regard, panchira was employed as a form of social satire, voicing a general mistrust of authoritarian regimes. In much the same vein, Jean-Marie Bouissou states that "smashed" the Japanese taboo against eroticism in children's comics, indicative of the rapidly changing cultural attitudes endemic to late 1960s Japan. Although the eroticism was confined mainly to panchira and soft-core cartoon nudity, the manga's impact was felt all across the country. Bouissou says the publication of sparked a "nationwide boom of ' (to flip up a girl's skirt)". Jonathan Abel's work on the unmentionables of Japanese film argues that the cultivation of the underwear fetish through '' Roman Porno'' films after a police seizure may have first been evidence of covering up, but rapidly became a signifier of that which could never be attained. Abel's psychoanalytical approach then calls for the use of "panchira" as a term for eroticization of the invisible.


Male gaze

There are few academic studies dealing ''specifically'' with panchira; the subject has been touched on by several writers under the broader context of the male gaze. From the Western perspective, panchira is characterized by the sexual stereotyping inherent in patriarchal culture. Anne Allison makes reference to the convention in ''Permitted and Prohibited Desires'', theorizing that the exposure of women's (or girls') underwear in ero-manga is constructed as an "immobilizing glance", in the sense that panchira is usually presented as a tableau in which the (female) object of desire is 'petrified' by the male gaze. She further postulates that this 'glance' is generally depicted as transgressive: the audience is permitted a glimpse of the female body (partially) unclothed, but it is always framed as a forbidden action. This prohibitive tableau permeates the entire genre, as virtually all ero-manga follow the same formula of transgression and immobilization. Similarly, Anne Cooper-Chen states that the endlessly repeated image "of a male gazing at a female's panty-clad crotch" represents an archetypal manga panel. She supports Allison's view that women/girls portrayed in their underwear (or naked) is a common motif in Japanese comics, and is most frequently accompanied by a masculine "viewer" whose voyeuristic presence is indicative of the male gaze. However, in contrast to Allison, Cooper-Chen's observations are not confined only to the ''ero'' market. Rather, she argues that the dominant trope of frustrated desire and sexual violence may be extended to the manga mainstream.Cooper-Chen, p. 105.


See also

* Burusera *
Gyaru (, ) is a Japanese street fashion, Japanese fashion subculture for young women, often associated with gaudy fashion styles and dyed hair. The term is a Japanese transliteration of the English slang word . In Japan, it is used to refer to you ...
*
Kogal In Culture of Japan, Japanese culture, refers to the members of the Gyaru subculture who are still in high school and who incorporate their School uniforms in Japan, school uniforms into their dress style. These high school girls are characte ...
* Underwear fetishism * Zettai ryōiki


References

{{paraphilia Japanese sex terms Undergarments