ASAKUSA Underground > Race Queens - economy and swimsuit fetishism
I was quite confused when I was asked to write about race queens.
It is because nobody has truly defined what race queens are.
The subject is very vast and diverse.
To begin with, I have to tell the readers that race queens are girls in bikini accompanying a racing car or a racer at an automobile or motorbike competition.
Japan enjoys a long history of the race queens.
It was in the late '80s when people became aware of the presence of those race queens.
I saw those girls for the first time while I was watching a TV program called "Doki! Marugoto Mizugi, Onna darake no Suiei Taikai (Gosh! Just Bikinis! The Girls Only swimming race)". It was a stupid show with a bad taste. In the program, young female pop singers and actresses (some of them are called Aidoru [Idols]) competed in a swimming competition.
(Good old Masashi Tashiro used to be its host. He was arrested a few years ago for secretly video-taping the inside of girls' skirts in public places. I wonder what he is doing now.)
Its best attraction was "mock cavalry battles in water".
During the battle, sometimes a pop idol in bikini got her top taken off and her breasts exposed.
I was about ten years old, and, of course, my parents didn't allow me to watch the program, but still I did behind their back.
It was very exciting to see a girl’s chest exposed.
(In this sense, I feel sorry for the kids these days because they have such an easy access to lecherous contents on Internet that uncovered breasts do not excite them any more. They are exciting because they are rare. We enjoy them secretly. Lately we are losing this peculiar joy of Eros.)
In this bizarre swimming competition, they had a swimsuit fashion show. TV screen showed race queens posing on the catwalk by the swimming pool.
This was the very first time I saw them.
I was so moved that, even now, twenty years later, I still remember the moment.
They were not completely undressed.
They were walking in swimwear.
It was just an exposition of the trendy bathing suits of those days.
Nevertheless, I was completely captured by the race queens.
When I look back at it, I don't know what my pre-teen self was thinking about them.
I might have already made a fetish of swimsuits and leotards.
I can at least say that the human instinct of reproduction was undeniably there in my infantile body.
Why did it have to be a race queen?
You could see other girls in swimwear than race queens.
If leotards had been so important, someone like a rhythmic gymnast could have fascinated me.
Why does a race queen attract me?
It is because a good-looking girl who might live in your neighbourhood or go to your school wear such a scanty and provocative swimsuit.
Some men like beautiful pop stars or famous Aidoru (idols), but they don't excite me at all.
After all, those girls live in a world with which I have nothing to do.
I prefer race queens because they might possibly live in my world.
It is my infinite pleasure to see a girl covered with a tiny patch of cloth faking a smile with a parasol in her hand.
-There are two types of race queen fans.
All the fans go to a racecourse with their cameras.
Some of them have a video camera, and others have a digital camera.
Although they look the same, they have fundamental differences in the way they shoot a race queen.
1, the fans who want to shoot beautiful photos or videos of a race queen genuinely for artistic purposes.
2, the fans who want to shoot some particular body parts of a race queen, i.e. her bottoms, breasts, or legs for the purpose of fetishism.
People make a fetish of the various parts of their bodies.
There are some race queen videos shot with an incredible obsession.
In one of these, the camera just follows the buttocks of race queens and shoots them from lower angles, right beneath them or slant ways or whatever.
You can see the video photographer following the bottoms of a race queen without mercy and eventually being shouted at by the queen herself and a security officer. He kept shooting the video. How tenacious!
Fortunately or unfortunately, those days are gone.
The videos of this kind sold well, and some collectors bought many in the nineties. One was able to buy such a video with remarkable quality at a mail order Internet site. It is a pity that now one cannot. A guy ran the site, and he may have closed it. It no longer exists. Shame.
-After the burst of Japan's bubble economy, the race queens wear costumes that are more conservative.
At the height of the booming economy induced by the skyrocketing land prices in the late '80s, the race queens wore an arousing and lecherous swimsuit.
All of them wore a G-string. The cloth of their high leg cut bikinis barely covered the private part.
Retrospectively, we were a little insane in the economic bubbles.
It was the era when everything was golden and everyone had Midas' touch.
All the Japanese had an anything-goes mentality and they didn't care no matter how provoking their swimsuits were.
After the collapse of the bubble economy, the costumes of the race queens have become less and less provocative. The skirts got longer and race queens in a mini-skirt got rarer.
These days the situation has got so deteriorated that you can see a race queen in a G-string once every three or four years, if any.
The conservative tendency of Japanese TV programs continues and we hardly see any wanton shows.
The burst of the bubble economy created frustration in Japanese society and you can feel it everywhere, even on the well-covered body of a race queen.
Does the sluggish economy of a nation affect the creativity of its libidinous culture?
Race Queens - economy and swimsuit fetishism
I was quite confused when I was asked to write about race queens.It is because nobody has truly defined what race queens are.
The subject is very vast and diverse.
To begin with, I have to tell the readers that race queens are girls in bikini accompanying a racing car or a racer at an automobile or motorbike competition.
Japan enjoys a long history of the race queens.
It was in the late '80s when people became aware of the presence of those race queens.
I saw those girls for the first time while I was watching a TV program called "Doki! Marugoto Mizugi, Onna darake no Suiei Taikai (Gosh! Just Bikinis! The Girls Only swimming race)". It was a stupid show with a bad taste. In the program, young female pop singers and actresses (some of them are called Aidoru [Idols]) competed in a swimming competition.
(Good old Masashi Tashiro used to be its host. He was arrested a few years ago for secretly video-taping the inside of girls' skirts in public places. I wonder what he is doing now.)
Its best attraction was "mock cavalry battles in water".
During the battle, sometimes a pop idol in bikini got her top taken off and her breasts exposed.
I was about ten years old, and, of course, my parents didn't allow me to watch the program, but still I did behind their back.
It was very exciting to see a girl’s chest exposed.
(In this sense, I feel sorry for the kids these days because they have such an easy access to lecherous contents on Internet that uncovered breasts do not excite them any more. They are exciting because they are rare. We enjoy them secretly. Lately we are losing this peculiar joy of Eros.)
In this bizarre swimming competition, they had a swimsuit fashion show. TV screen showed race queens posing on the catwalk by the swimming pool.
This was the very first time I saw them.
I was so moved that, even now, twenty years later, I still remember the moment.
They were not completely undressed.
They were walking in swimwear.
It was just an exposition of the trendy bathing suits of those days.
Nevertheless, I was completely captured by the race queens.
When I look back at it, I don't know what my pre-teen self was thinking about them.
I might have already made a fetish of swimsuits and leotards.
I can at least say that the human instinct of reproduction was undeniably there in my infantile body.
Why did it have to be a race queen?
You could see other girls in swimwear than race queens.
If leotards had been so important, someone like a rhythmic gymnast could have fascinated me.
Why does a race queen attract me?
It is because a good-looking girl who might live in your neighbourhood or go to your school wear such a scanty and provocative swimsuit.
Some men like beautiful pop stars or famous Aidoru (idols), but they don't excite me at all.
After all, those girls live in a world with which I have nothing to do.
I prefer race queens because they might possibly live in my world.
It is my infinite pleasure to see a girl covered with a tiny patch of cloth faking a smile with a parasol in her hand.
-There are two types of race queen fans.
All the fans go to a racecourse with their cameras.
Some of them have a video camera, and others have a digital camera.
Although they look the same, they have fundamental differences in the way they shoot a race queen.
1, the fans who want to shoot beautiful photos or videos of a race queen genuinely for artistic purposes.
2, the fans who want to shoot some particular body parts of a race queen, i.e. her bottoms, breasts, or legs for the purpose of fetishism.
People make a fetish of the various parts of their bodies.
There are some race queen videos shot with an incredible obsession.
In one of these, the camera just follows the buttocks of race queens and shoots them from lower angles, right beneath them or slant ways or whatever.
You can see the video photographer following the bottoms of a race queen without mercy and eventually being shouted at by the queen herself and a security officer. He kept shooting the video. How tenacious!
Fortunately or unfortunately, those days are gone.
The videos of this kind sold well, and some collectors bought many in the nineties. One was able to buy such a video with remarkable quality at a mail order Internet site. It is a pity that now one cannot. A guy ran the site, and he may have closed it. It no longer exists. Shame.
-After the burst of Japan's bubble economy, the race queens wear costumes that are more conservative.
At the height of the booming economy induced by the skyrocketing land prices in the late '80s, the race queens wore an arousing and lecherous swimsuit.
All of them wore a G-string. The cloth of their high leg cut bikinis barely covered the private part.
Retrospectively, we were a little insane in the economic bubbles.
It was the era when everything was golden and everyone had Midas' touch.
All the Japanese had an anything-goes mentality and they didn't care no matter how provoking their swimsuits were.
After the collapse of the bubble economy, the costumes of the race queens have become less and less provocative. The skirts got longer and race queens in a mini-skirt got rarer.
These days the situation has got so deteriorated that you can see a race queen in a G-string once every three or four years, if any.
The conservative tendency of Japanese TV programs continues and we hardly see any wanton shows.
The burst of the bubble economy created frustration in Japanese society and you can feel it everywhere, even on the well-covered body of a race queen.
Does the sluggish economy of a nation affect the creativity of its libidinous culture?