It seems that WaiWai is a little bit slow in picking up on new trends. Today’s column claims that panty peeping is a “new” thing in Japan.

Japan’s new national pastime? Panty peeking

Over the past few years, the careers of some of Japan’s best and brightest young talents have been squandered as they were caught trying to catch sneaky glances at women’s panties, Weekly Playboy (6/12) notes.

At times it can seem as though panty watching is almost a national pastime and many men openly admit that they’d prefer to see a woman in her undergarments than totally bereft of clothes.

“The lure of women’s panties runs very deep,” T, a self-professed panty pioneer having traded and smelled hundreds of thousands of pairs of women’s knickers, tells Weekly Playboy. “That single piece of cloth covers up a woman’s most intimate areas. That changes the mere piece of cloth into a mysterious garment. A woman’s private parts are the part of her furthest away from a man, which makes them the most interesting part of her as far as men are concerned. And it’s those panties offering the woman’s most interesting part, its last line of defense against the outside world. That’s why panties are romantic.”

There are other opinions about the allure of undies.

“There’s nothing romantic about the way some men see women’s panties. Those types who commit criminal acts just to get a glimpse up a woman’s skirt are the ultimate masochistic-narcissists. They’re screaming out to the world that they’re incorrigibly kinky,” Hayama, a writer of erotica also well versed in psychology, tells Weekly Playboy. “Recently, there’s been a huge upsurge of masochistic narcissists who revel in the fact that women find them repulsive. The growth is particularly noticeable among intellectuals and academics.”

Japan’s briefs buffs generally hate skirts more than anything else. Shrinks say they’re not surprised.

“Being able to catch a glimpse of something that you can’t normally see provides an incredible amount of pleasure. If women always went around dressed only in their panties, nobody would ever get excited, right?” psychologist Hideki Wada tells Weekly Playboy. “Men are animals with an extraordinarily strong sense of curiosity. If something is hidden, or they are forbidden from seeing it, they only want to get their hands on it even more.” (By Ryann Connell)

May 31, 2006