History of cosplay

Abstract

Currently cosplay is a little known phenomenon associated with popular culture. Despite that, the history of cosplay is currently more than one hundred and ten years old, during which there have been some slow changes related to fashion and the perception of popular culture and its development. The term „cosplay” itself is newer and comes from the ’80 of the XXth century, however narrowing this phenomenon to the last forty years would not have described its characteristics properly. Only at the start of the XXth century costumes have began to be modeled on the popular culture, which is one of the cosplay’s determinants, though just wearing a costume and acting out the assumed role is not new or unrecognised. Therefore, and for the purposes of the following article, I view cosplay as “activity, which involves mosty incorporating a chosen character from popular culture, often mimicking mentioned characters behavior and character, identifying with it. The foundation here is the costume and makeup, which make us look like the character and creates an illusion where others can interact with it. Often, it is also a statement of ones membership to a particular group or fandom”84.

In the article below I concentrate mostly on the events associated with the cosplay phenomenon in the United States and Japan. This phenomenon is not limited to these two countries. but it is there where it developed the most and has been distributed to other countries. For this reason, cosplay is now a component of many other national cultures. This text also includes facts that don’t belong directly to the discussed phenomenon (information about cosplay in mass communication). This information have been included because, contributing to the dissemination of cosplay and its history, I found it mandatory.