Japanese culture
What does Panchira mean?
A brief glimpse of panties: the skirt lifts a second and the underwear shows.
Definition
In spoken Japanese, panchira is the instant the skirt lifts and the underwear enters the shot — and also a warning between friends: it's showing. Anime and manga fandom in English calls the same frame a panty shot.
Anyone looking up the gaze under a skirt meets upskirt; panchira stays with the flash of the pair. Japanese uses nōpan when there is no underwear. When the pair is fully on display, without the glimpse, the name is panmoro. Misepan is the piece made to be seen.
Hidden photos of a skirt on the street are voyeurism — in Japan, a crime.
Origin
Panchira is Japanese パンチラ, a blend of パンティー (panty) and チラリ / ちらっと (chira, a glance). Daijisen records パンちら: lingerie visible in a flash under a skirt. Jisho derives it from パンツをちらり. In the 1950s the slang チラリズム (chirarism) named the thrill of the instant; Inoue ties it to Mitsuyo Asaka's late-decade stage shows and, in 1955, Marilyn's skirt in The Seven Year Itch. The book パンツが見える。羞恥心の現代史 came out from Asahi Shimbun on 25 May 2002.
History
The Shirokiya fire legend of 16 December 1932 says staff without drawers would have fallen covering themselves on the way down; papers pushed ズロース, and Inoue treats the tale as a constructed legend. In manga, an improbably short hem already shows up in Sazae-san (Wakame). On TV, the 1963 Astro Boy (Uran) took the cut into animation. Go Nagai's Harenchi Gakuen ran in Weekly Shōnen Jump from 1 August 1968 to 25 September 1972 and set off a nationwide sukāto-mekuri craze — flipping a skirt. In 1969 Maruzen Sekiyū's ad with Rosa Ogawa (Oh! Mōretsu) ran the wind-up-the-miniskirt gag again. Through the 1960s the gag still fit children's series; by the early 1970s shōnen had glued the cut onto sexual humor.
How it emerged
Once Western panties were in the postwar wardrobe, the flash needed a short noun. Pan plus chira fit the instant. When boys' manga wanted newsstand heat, the skirt gag took the slot; Harenchi Gakuen showed Jump would print the glimpse.
Usage examples
Panchira, she muttered, and tugged the hem.
The tag on the cut is panchira.
Translations
- pt panchira / panty shot / vislumbre de calcinha
- en panchira / panty shot
- es panchira / panty shot / bragas al descubierto
Synonyms
- パンチラ
- パンちら
- panty shot
- upskirt