Monthly Classy Magazine is a Japanese women's magazine published by Kobunsha

Kobunsha

Kobunsha is a Japanese publishing company. It publishes literature, manga novels, and women's magazines.Kobunsha was first established on October 1, 1945 and belongs to the Kodansha group....

. Its title Classy is derived from the English

English language

English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

 adjective

Adjective

In grammar, an adjective is a 'describing' word; the main syntactic role of which is to qualify a noun or noun phrase, giving more information about the object signified....

 classy. It is a sister magazine of JJ

JJ (magazine)

JJ is a Japanese fashion and lifestyle magazine published by Kobunsha. It was established in 1975 as an extra issue of Weekly Josei Jishin, and was the first women's magazine for college students in Japan. Most readers of JJ are females between the ages of 17 and 26, and range from college students...

, and has been published since 1984 by the same company. The two magazines are closely linked, and often, models who posed for JJ magazine in their youth will return a few years later to model for Classy.

It is estimated that the average reader of Classy magazine is between the age of 24 and 28. The magazine is known to be popular with office ladies (widely known as OL

Office lady

An office lady, often abbreviated OL , is a female office worker in Japan who performs generally pink collar tasks such as serving tea and secretarial or clerical work. Like many unmarried Japanese, OLs often live with their parents well into early adulthood...

 in Japan). It is also famous among university students as a magazine for fashion.

History

Classy was first published in 1984 targeting women in their 20s. In the beginning, most of the models were American supermodels, however changes in the policy led to the inclusion of more and more local models. Famous Japanese supermodels, namely and started their modeling careers by appearing as cover girl

Cover girl

A cover girl is a woman whose photograph features on the front cover of a magazine. She may be a model, celebrity or entertainer. The term would generally not be used to describe a casual, once-off appearance by a person on the cover of a magazine....

s in the magazine.

Models

Several well known models are working for the magazine. Hiroko Hatano

Hiroko Hatano

is a Japanese model and actress. As an 18-year-old, she made her model debut on Japanese fashion magazine JJ in March 1994. She was one of the top models for the magazine until 2001, when she temporarily quit modeling to concentrate on her acting career...

, who used to work for JJ magazine, started to work as a model here in 2005. Jessica Michibata, Sayo Aizawa

Sayo Aizawa

is a Japanese model and a TV personality.-Biography:She was born in Hiroshima, Japan and started her modeling career after her high school graduation. She is presently working exclusively for the fashion magazine Classy. She has also appeared in several dramas and TV commercials. She is fluent in 5...

 and Ryoko Tanami

Ryoko Tanami

Ryoko Tanami is a Japanese model.Ryoko started her model career in 1997 and has since appeared in various Japanese fashion magazines such as JJ and Monthly Classy Magazine.Her nickname is Ryo-chan....

 are also popular.

External links

• http://www.kobunsha.com - Publishers website (in Japanese
  Japanese language
  is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...
  
  )