Panchira
Encyclopedia
Slip (clothing)
Slip is a woman's undergarment worn beneath a dress or skirt to help it hang smoothly and to prevent chafing of the skin from coarse fabrics such as wool...
is showing" in English usage. The word is a portmanteau of and chira, the Japanese sound symbolism
Japanese sound symbolism
This article describes sound symbolic or mimetic words in the Japanese language. Most languages have such words; for example, "bang", "zap", "ding", "slither", "pop", etc. in English. Sound symbolic words occur more often in Japanese than in English—they are found in formal as well as vernacular...
representing a glance or glimpse. It differs from the more general term "upskirt" in that panchira specifies the presence of underpants (the absence of which would more accurately be described as ノーパン; nōpan
No-pan kissa
No-pan kissa is a Japanese term for cafes where the waitresses wear short skirts with no underwear. The floors, or sections of the floor, are often mirrored.-Concept:...
).
In anime
Anime
is the Japanese abbreviated pronunciation of "animation". The definition sometimes changes depending on the context. In English-speaking countries, the term most commonly refers to Japanese animated cartoons....
and manga
Manga
Manga is the Japanese word for "comics" and consists of comics and print cartoons . In the West, the term "manga" has been appropriated to refer specifically to comics created in Japan, or by Japanese authors, in the Japanese language and conforming to the style developed in Japan in the late 19th...
, panchira usually refers to a panty-shot, a visual convention used extensively by Japanese artists and animators since the early sixties. According to Japanese sources, the convention probably started with Machiko Hasegawa
Machiko Hasegawa
, January 30, 1920 – May 27, 1992, in Taku, Saga Prefecture) was one of the first female manga artists.She started her own comic strip, Sazae-san, in 1946. It reached national circulation via the Asahi Shimbun in 1949, and ran daily until Hasegawa decided to retire in February 1974...
's popular comic strip Sazae-san
Sazae-san
is a Japanese comic strip created by Machiko Hasegawa. It was first published in Hasegawa's local paper, the , on April 22, 1946. When the wished to have Hasegawa draw the comic strip for their paper, she moved to Tokyo in 1949 with the explanation that the main characters had moved from Kyūshū to...
, whose character designs for Wakame Isono incorporated an improbably brief hemline. The practice was later transferred to animation when Osamu Tezuka
Osamu Tezuka
was a Japanese cartoonist, manga artist, animator, producer, activist and medical doctor, although he never practiced medicine. Born in Osaka Prefecture, he is best known as the creator of Astro Boy, Kimba the White Lion and Black Jack...
's Astro Boy was adapted for television in 1963. Confined mainly to harmless children's series throughout the remainder of the decade, panchira took on more overtly fetish
Fetish
Fetish may refer to:* Fetishism, the attribution of religious or mystical qualities to inanimate objects* Sexual fetishism, sexual attraction to objects, body parts, or situations not conventionally viewed as being sexual in nature....
istic elements during the early seventies. From that point on, panchira became linked with sexual humor. It is particularly prevalent in so-called shōnen manga.
Origins
As noted below, the development of panchira in Japanese popular cultureJapanese popular culture
Japanese popular culture not only reflects the attitudes and concerns of the present but also provides a link to the past. Japanese cinema, cuisine, television programs, manga, and music all developed from older artistic and literary traditions, and many of their themes and styles of presentation...
has been analyzed by a number of American and Japanese writers. Many observers link the phenonemon to the Westernization of Japan following World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
. 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
Comics
Comics denotes a hybrid medium having verbal side of its vocabulary tightly tied to its visual side in order to convey narrative or information only, the latter in case of non-fiction comics, seeking synergy by using both visual and verbal side in...
.
At least one Japanese source traces the beginnings of panchira to the release of The Seven Year Itch
The Seven Year Itch
The Seven Year Itch is a 1955 American film based on a three-act play with the same name by George Axelrod. The film was co-written and directed by Billy Wilder, and starred Marilyn Monroe and Tom Ewell, reprising his Broadway role...
in 1955. The media coverage surrounding Marilyn Monroe
Marilyn Monroe
Marilyn Monroe was an American actress, singer, model and showgirl who became a major sex symbol, starring in a number of commercially successful motion pictures during the 1950s....
'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 (sic) articles telling the best places where panties could be viewed".
By the late 1960s, panchira had spread to the mainstream comic industry, as fledgling manga artists
Mangaka
is the Japanese word for a comic artist or cartoonist. Outside of Japan, manga usually refers to a Japanese comic book and mangaka refers to the author of the manga, who is usually Japanese...
such as Go Nagai
Go Nagai
, better known by the penname , is a Japanese manga artist and a prolific author of science fiction, fantasy, horror and erotica. He made his professional debut in 1967 with Meakashi Polikichi, but is best known for creating Cutie Honey, Devilman, and Mazinger Z in the 1970s. In 2005, he became a...
began exploring sexual imagery in boy's comics (shōnen manga). It is significant to note the emergence of adult themes in what was then considered a juvenile medium. Millegan argues that the ecchi
Ecchi
is an often used slang term in the Japanese language for erotic fantasy and sexual innuendoes. As an adjective it is used with the meaning of "dirty", "naughty", "frivolous"; as a verb , with the meaning to do something dirty, naughty, frivolous or to sleep together; or as a noun, to describe...
genre of the 1970s rose to fill a void left by the decline of Osaka
Osaka
is a city in the Kansai region of Japan's main island of Honshu, a designated city under the Local Autonomy Law, the capital city of Osaka Prefecture and also the biggest part of Keihanshin area, which is represented by three major cities of Japan, Kyoto, Osaka and Kobe...
'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 PublishingKodansha, the largest Japanese publisher, produces the manga magazines Nakayoshi, Afternoon, Evening, and Weekly Shonen Magazine, as well as more literary magazines such as Gunzō, Shūkan Gendai, and the Japanese dictionary Nihongo Daijiten. The company has its headquarters in Bunkyō, Tokyo...
's Shōnen MagazineWeekly Shonen Magazine, also known as Shōnen Magazine, is a shōnen manga magazine published by Kodansha, first published on 17 March 1959. Despite some unusual censorship policies , it's mainly read by an older audience, with a large portion of its readership falling under the male high school or college...
). Artists working for the pay-library system had already pioneered the depiction of graphic violence, and had proudly declared that they were drawing gekigaGekigais Japanese for "dramatic pictures." The term was coined by Yoshihiro Tatsumi and adopted by other more serious Japanese cartoonists who did not want their trade to be known as manga or "irresponsible pictures." It's akin to Will Eisner who started calling his comics "graphic novels" as opposed...
("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 gekiga to just about every conceivable niche in the marketplace. The gekiga continued their realistic and often violent depictions, but the other major divisions in the manga world developed their own approach. Boy's comics began to explore "cute" sex, mainly consisting of panchira ("panty shots") and girls in showers.
Academic perspectives
Although 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 AllisonAnne Allison
Anne Allison is a professor of cultural anthropology at Duke University in the United States, specializing in contemporary Japanese society. She wrote the book Nightwork on hostess clubs and Japanese corporate culture after having worked at a hostess club in Tokyo.She received her BA from the...
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 follows the same formula of trangression and immobilization.
Similarly, Anne Cooper-Chen states that the endlessly repeated image "of a male gazing at a female's panty clad crotch" represent 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.
A more generalized perspective is provided by Mio Bryce's analysis of classroom imagery in Japanese comics. Using Go Nagai
Go Nagai
, better known by the penname , is a Japanese manga artist and a prolific author of science fiction, fantasy, horror and erotica. He made his professional debut in 1967 with Meakashi Polikichi, but is best known for creating Cutie Honey, Devilman, and Mazinger Z in the 1970s. In 2005, he became a...
's Harenchi Gakuen
Harenchi Gakuen
is a Japanese media franchise created by Go Nagai. Harenchi Gakuen was one of the manga serialized in the very first issue of Shueisha's manga magazine Weekly Shōnen Jump. The series was the first big success for Go Nagai...
as a prime example, Bryce notes 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, Bouissou states that Harenchi Gakuen 'smashed' the Japanese taboo against eroticism in children's comics, indicative of the rapidly changing cultural attitudes endemic to late 60s Japan. Although the eroticism was confined mainly to panchira and soft-core cartoon nudity, the manga's impact was felt all across the country. As Bouissou points out, the publication of Harenchi Gakuen sparked a "nationwide boom of skato meguri (to roll up the girl's skirt)".
Jonathan Abel's work on the unmentionables of Japanese film argues that the cultivation of the underwear fetish through roman poruno 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.