Origins
As noted below, the development of panchira in Japanese popular culture 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. 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.
At least one Japanese source traces the beginnings of panchira to the release of The Seven Year Itch in 1955. The media coverage surrounding Marilyn Monroe'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".
By the late 1960s, panchira had spread to the mainstream comic industry, as fledgling manga artists such as Go Nagai 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 genre of the 1970s rose to fill a void left by the decline of Osaka'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 gekiga ("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.
Read more about this topic: Panchira
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