Origins of Cosplay
Over the years cosplay has grown to become quite the world wide phenomenon. Cosplayers are a common sight at just about every fan centric convention so much so that many conventions celebrate cosplay with special events such as a masquerade or cosplay contest as part of their regularly scheduled programming. More over, internationally speaking, the World Cosplay Summit has hosted a cosplay stage performance competition called ‘Cosplay Championship’ every year in Japan since 2005. It’s no exaggeration to say… Cosplay is kind of a big deal! That said, in light of cosplay’s current popularity, I became curious to know about how it all began. After a little research I discovered that, in a nutshell, back in the day it was mostly science fiction characters that helped trigger the initial spark but it wasn’t until Japan stepped in and fanned the flames, so to speak, that cosplay would explode in popularity. Outlined below may very well be some of the people and events that helped to create and shape cosplay as we know it today.
A Century Of Cosplay
What we call cosplay today was known as costuming years ago. In 1908 Mr. and Mrs. William Fell of Cincinnati, Ohio USA are reported to have attended a masquerade dressed as Mr. Skygack and Miss Dillpickles, characters based off of A.D. Condo’s science fiction comic strip ‘Mr. Skygack, from Mars’ effectively making the practice of cosplay over 100 years old!
First Convention Cosplayers
In 1939, Myrtle R. Douglas and Forrest J. Ackerman attended the 1st World Science Fiction Convention (WorldCon) in Caravan Hall, New York, USA dressed up in futuristic garments. Myrtle Douglas both designed and created their outfits which were based on the science fiction pulp magazine artwork of American illustrator Frank R. Paul and a 1936 black and white sci-fi film called ‘Things to Come’. The costuming trend quickly caught on as the following year WorldCon hosted an official (and an unofficial) masquerade with many attendees participating in the costuming celebration.
Cosplay Coined In Japan
In 1984, Studio Hard’s founder, Nobuyuki Takahashi, traveled from Japan to Los Angeles to attend the 42nd WorldCon. He was impressed by the masquerade where he saw con attendees dressed up and role playing as their favourite sci-fi characters. Upon returning to Japan he reported about the masquerade in My Anime and coined the term ‘kosupure’, which is where the word ‘cosplay’ is derived from, and encouraged Japanese fans to adopt the practice in their own fan conventions.
Shojo Helped Bring About Cosplay
In Japan, Junichi Nakahara laid the groundwork for cosplay by steering character design in shojo manga towards full-body fashion illustrations and providing fans access to products such as clothing and accessories based on the characters in his stories. While manga artist Yumeji Takehisa pioneered this trend of allowing fans to buy clothes based on his manga characters, it was Nakahara who took it a step further by providing the full-body illustrations of his shojo characters. Shojo manga, which is essentially comics intended for young women, thus became a form of fashion magazine enabling fans to purchase garments similar to the ones worn by their favourite characters.
Bonus Clip: check out Yaya Han’s video The Evolution Of Cosplay for deeper insight into how Cosplay has evolved.
The Evolution Of Cosplay
Photo Credit: The featured image at the top of this post is derived from an original photograph which is of August Olson of Monroe, Washington dressed up as Mr. Skygack from A.D. Condo’s “Mister Skygack, from Mars” comic strip and was first published in the Tacoma Times in May 24, 1912.
