Panchira by dw817 on deviantart.com
Panchira is a Japanese term for what is doubtless a universal practice; looking up the skirts of young women in the hope of glimpsing what perverts always like to term panties.
Because panchira is a well-established convention within comics, cartoons, and other aspects of popular culture, generations of Japanese men are reared to regard the fetishistic obsession with female undergarments as perfectly natural; they are normalised, in other words, into a pornified worldview that encourages the belief that it is an acceptable and harmless pastime to sneak a peek or take a snapshot up the skirt of any woman in a public space, with or without her consent.
Ironically for a practice that is often regarded as a national sport, the phenomenon of panchira in contemporary Japanese society can probably be traced back to its Westernization following American occupation at the end of the Second World War. As elsewhere, during the fifties and sixties there was a relaxing of taboos as new ideas and fashions began to circulate.
One crucial catalyst to the emerging craze of panchira seems to have been the release of the Billy Wilder movie The Seven Year Itch (1955). The iconic scene in which Marilyn Monroe has trouble with her skirt as she stands on a subway grate, excited the pornographic imagination of the Japanese public even more than the rest of the world. The practice of scoring a glimpse up young women's skirts became extremely popular at this time and many magazines ran articles advising men of the best places where they might view panties.
What, then, are we to think of this? Obviously, panchira can be analysed psychologically as a form of voyeurism and - from a feminist critical perspective - as an example of what is termed the imperial male gaze (an immobilizing glance by which a woman is both sexually objectified and fixed in place).
But could it not alternatively be argued that it is the male subject who is effectively seduced and made helpless (almost idiotic) before a panty-clad crotch: that panchira thus results in a revenge of the object ...?
Because panchira is a well-established convention within comics, cartoons, and other aspects of popular culture, generations of Japanese men are reared to regard the fetishistic obsession with female undergarments as perfectly natural; they are normalised, in other words, into a pornified worldview that encourages the belief that it is an acceptable and harmless pastime to sneak a peek or take a snapshot up the skirt of any woman in a public space, with or without her consent.
Ironically for a practice that is often regarded as a national sport, the phenomenon of panchira in contemporary Japanese society can probably be traced back to its Westernization following American occupation at the end of the Second World War. As elsewhere, during the fifties and sixties there was a relaxing of taboos as new ideas and fashions began to circulate.
One crucial catalyst to the emerging craze of panchira seems to have been the release of the Billy Wilder movie The Seven Year Itch (1955). The iconic scene in which Marilyn Monroe has trouble with her skirt as she stands on a subway grate, excited the pornographic imagination of the Japanese public even more than the rest of the world. The practice of scoring a glimpse up young women's skirts became extremely popular at this time and many magazines ran articles advising men of the best places where they might view panties.
What, then, are we to think of this? Obviously, panchira can be analysed psychologically as a form of voyeurism and - from a feminist critical perspective - as an example of what is termed the imperial male gaze (an immobilizing glance by which a woman is both sexually objectified and fixed in place).
But could it not alternatively be argued that it is the male subject who is effectively seduced and made helpless (almost idiotic) before a panty-clad crotch: that panchira thus results in a revenge of the object ...?
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