Modern-Day Panty Raid

Hiroshima police dropped a bomb a few weeks ago-- they had found more than 4,000 pieces of lingerie in a raid of the home of a Japanese construction worker who used climbing skills developed on his job to steal women's underwear. Authorities believe that Shigeo Kodama, 54, amassed the 3,977 panties, 355 bras and 10 pairs of stockings over a six-year period.

"Since he was a construction worker, as long as he had a place to put his feet he was able to climb, so he had no trouble getting up to the second floor of apartment buildings," a police spokesman in the western Japanese city of Hiroshima said. "He didn't steal any other kinds of clothing. But as long as it was underwear, apparently anything would do," the spokesman added.

Japan is home to a thriving bura-sera industry, of which traffic in the soiled panties of young girls represents only one part ("bura-sera" is the term for the male fascination relating to that country's schoolgirls). "Buru" is anglicized Japanese for "bloomers" and "sera" for "sailor" (the term refers to the sailor suit, the predominant style of girls' junior and high school uniforms). Dozens, if not hundreds, of magazines are exclusively devoted to bura-sera photographs, pictures that feature girls clad in school garb, holding up their skirts to display their panties.

Girlish youth and innocence are considered sexy in Japan, a culture with a long history of regarding women more as sex toys than as people. This obsession with untouched adolescence results in the sad sight of women in their thirties emitting girlish giggles and clutching teddy bears in an effort to maintain their appeal to the opposite sex. Although it can be said that Western society also prizes youth in a woman, there the fascination has to do more with the looks of a girl than it does with her immaturity and presumed sexual innocence.

For a price, girls supplying bura-sera items for resale will don a new pair of panties at a porn shop in the morning on their way to school, then change back into their own underwear at the end of the day at the same shop, leaving its proprietor with a saleable item. Girls can also turn a profit on their own used undies by offloading them to the same people. Generally, the more worn the item, the higher the price it will fetch. If you want to indulge while visiting Tokyo, you can obtain detailed directions to a shop here.