Panchira
According to Japanese sources, the convention probably started with Machiko Hasegawa's popular manga Sazae-san, whose character designs for Wakame Isono incorporated an improbably brief hemline.
[6] 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.
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".
[10] In 1969, the Japanese oil company Maruzen Sekiyū released a television commercial featuring Rosa Ogawa in a mini-skirt that gets blown up by the wind and her lips forming an 'O' in surprise.
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.
[14] In much the same vein, Jean-Marie 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 1960s Japan.
[17] 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.
[18] Similarly, Anne Cooper-Chen states that the endlessly repeated image "of a male gazing at a female's panty-clad crotch" represents an archetypal manga panel.
[19] 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.
