일본문화에서 세계문화로 진화하는 코스프레 ―세계 코스프레의 비교분석을 통하여―

Abstract

Once an idiosyncratic subculture in Japan, cosplay has developed into a global phenomenon. Costuming catapulted into popularity to become a significant aspect of popular culture in Japan in the 1980s, when anime and manga fandom embraced it as a favored form of expression. In order to understand cosplay as a global phenomenon, cosplayers from various countries were interviewed in 2013 and 2017. Based on the interviews from both years, changes were compared across seven countries by analyzing cosplay characteristics of nine countries. The results confirmed the continued spread of the cosplay phenomenon around the world, and revealed the development of distinct cosplay cultures and characteristics that shared similarities to, but were also distinct from, the Japanese model. In summary, though the modern form of cosplay stems from Japan and has since spread across the world, it has undergone a process of diffusion to emerge as a generalized culture shared by the world.