I was having trouble sleeping, and I was thinking about panties.
Why are anime and manga so obsessed with underwear? In America we don’t have that kind of fascination. (Or at least… not such a public fascination?) Underwear is seen as gross and dirty. It’s just one step removed from poop.
I was reading this book a few months ago, “The Book of Youkai” by Michael Foster. Great book. One of the majors themes of the book is that youkai appear in “in-between” places, like the twilight or early morning, or the bank of a river. One of the quotes I remember most described Hanako-san, the ghost girl who haunts the toilet on the third floor of the school:
…A toilet— with its hole leading to somewhere else— can be thought of as a kind of portal to another world.
It’s kind of the same thing with panties. They’re a portal to another world.
Perhaps that explains part of the fascination.
We see a number of cases where youkai inhabit panties as well— like the chapter of Youkai Shoujo I just read which made me think about this in the first place, or Sora no Otoshimono.
It’s also well known that by placing a pair of panties on one’s head, one can transform into a hero. Again, their key function is retained as a portal to another world.
I feel pretty confident I’m going to wake up tomorrow and feel really dumb for writing this. Oh well.
I think I read somewhere that panties (and ocidental underwear in general) weren’t common in post-war Japan, and were associated with prostitutes, prostitution and those sort of things.
The fascination with panties came from the American Occupation of Japan after World War II. I wrote a short article about this if you are interested. http://www.japanpowered.com/japan-culture/the-historical-origin-of-panty-fan-service
Thank you! Very interesting!
“Hanako-san, the ghost girl who haunts the toilet on the third floor of the school”
Moaning Myrtle anyone?
Yup lol I wonder if that is an instance of cross-cultural exchange…
Also, remember that male underwear (which is obviously disgusting, I don’t think there’s any fetishes for this) is a far cry from female panties (which is one step removed from thaat).
True. (Although I’m sure somebody must have that fetish.)