Burusera

A Japanese vending machine selling used panties for fetish purposes

Burusera (ブルセラ) is a Japanese word, coined by combining burumā (ブルマー), meaning bloomers, as in the bottoms of gym suits, and sērā-fuku (セーラー服), meaning sailor suit, the traditional Japanese school uniforms for schoolgirls. Burusera shops sell girls' used school uniforms, panties and other fetish items.

History

In the 1990s gravure magazines started to feature photos of girls wearing bloomers and school uniforms, some magazines featuring exclusively those types of clothes. Fetish shops selling these types of clothes also started appearing in Japan. Along with loose socks they became the symbol of high school girls in the 1990s. They are also sometimes worn as cosplay.

Burusera shops

Burusera shops sell used girls' gym suits and school uniforms, including Catholic school uniforms. They also sell other goods procured from schoolgirls, e.g. undergarments, school swimsuits for physical education, socks, stationery, sanitary napkins, tampons and saliva.

The clothes are often accompanied by ostensibly genuine photos of the girls wearing them. The clients are men who smell or otherwise experience the items for sexual stimulation.

Schoolgirls once openly participated in the sale of their used garments, either through burusera shops or using mobile phone sites to sell directly to clients. When laws banning the purchase of used underwear from minors were introduced in Tokyo in 2004, it was reported that some underage girls were instead allowing their clients (called kagaseya (嗅がせ屋) or sniffers) to sniff their underwear from directly between their legs.

Legal restrictions

In August 1994, a burusera shop manager who made a schoolgirl sell her used underwear was arrested by the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department on suspicion of violation of article 34 of the Child Welfare Act and article 175 of the Criminal Code. The police alleged violations of the Secondhand Articles Dealer Act which bans the purchase of secondhand goods without authorization.

Child pornography laws imposed legal control over the burusera industry in 1999. However, burusera goods in themselves are not child pornography, and selling burusera goods is an easy way for schoolgirls to gain extra income. This has been viewed with suspicion as child sexual abuse.

Prefectures in Japan began enforcing regulations in 2004 that restricted purchases and sales of used underwear and saliva of people under 18.

References in media

• In the Shin Kimagure Orange Road novel Summer's Beginning, main character Kyosuke Kasuga is disgusted when he finds out that his now highschool-aged younger sister Kurumi intends to sell her used leotards to a burusera shop.
• In the visual novel True Love, a key part to Mayumi Kamijou's route involves the Player Character, Daisuke, finding out that she intends to sell a pair of her panties in the local burusera shop. If Daisuke finds said panties, keeps them and gives them back to Mayumi when she asks him for it, he will gain relationship points with her.

See also

• Clothing fetish
• Uniform fetishism
• Panty fetishism
• Shoe fetishism
• Child pornography laws in Japan
• Panchira
• Zettai ryōiki
• AV idol
• JK business
• Cosplay restaurant
• Host and hostess clubs
• Maid café
• Hentai
• Kogal
• Gyaru

External links

• DNA India report