Turning to look in the changing-room mirror, the area of fabric had vanished, just two thin straps running over the hip bones. The buttocks fully exposed. Straps tied at each hip, and a single strap descending along the cleft. This extreme structure, which gave up covering with fabric yet did not stop being underwear, is the subject of this article. The thong (Japanese: Tバック, T-back) is the general term for women’s underwear and swimwear that leaves the buttocks uncovered with only a minimal strip of fabric at the back. The front is the usual triangle of cloth; at each hip a thin strap gathers downward, passes under the crotch, and returns to the back hip, drawing the letter T from behind, which is why the Japanese-English coinage T-back is used.

Etymology and classification

In English the same garment is called a thong or G-string. Thong derives from Old English thwong (leather strap), originally meaning leather or cord. G-string arose in the early-twentieth-century US stripper trade, its etymology disputed, with theories citing an instrument’s string or a loincloth. The Japanese “T-back” is a Japanese-English coinage from the T-shaped outline seen from behind. By fabric area there is a gradation: the tanga (a 2–3 cm strip remaining at the back centre), the thong (a thin strap under 1 cm wide), and the G-string (almost strap only). The Japanese lingerie trade customarily lumps these together as the T-back without distinction.

Establishment as swimwear

The thong-type swimsuit is traced to a turning point at the 1974 Rio de Janeiro carnival, where the Brazilian designer Rosa Kaufmann and others presented a minimal bikini called the tanga. Even before this, low-fabric swimwear was favoured on Brazilian beaches, but the media coverage spread it worldwide. It transmitted to the Miami and Los Angeles beaches of the US in the 1980s, and around 1985 internationalised as a visual sign through Hollywood film and MTV music videos. In Japan it was introduced as swimwear in the late 1980s, and around the 1989 film Nami no Kazu Dake Dakishimete and the 1990s beach events of Okinawa and Shonan saw a degree of vogue, but did not settle on ordinary beaches. Chances of everyday wear at the swimming spot were limited, and in Japan the image of the T-back as underwear came first.

Development into underwear

The thong, arriving as swimwear, was repurposed into lingerie in the late 1980s. The advantage of adopting it as underwear is that the underwear line does not show through tight outer garments (a bodycon suit, jeans, a thin skirt, a pencil skirt). Parallel to the bodycon boom of the period, it spread as a practical option for a “no visible panty line” state. Alongside the practical function, lingerie shops supplied the thong as a core of the “sexy underwear” category. Specialist brands such as Victoria’s Secret (US, founded 1977) and Agent Provocateur (UK, founded 1994) sold lace, satin, and sheer thongs as line highlights, strengthening the positioning of underwear as a gift and as underwear for a special day.

Reception as a sexual sign

Reception in Japan advanced through gravure, adult video, and adult manga. In gravure it became a device for capturing buttock exposure on screen as a low-fabric swimsuit, with rear cuts, on-all-fours cuts, and looking-back cuts composed on the premise of the thong. In AV it appears frequently as the underwear revealed the instant the outer skirt or jeans are removed, staging the reversal structure of “invisible from outside but worn underneath.” In adult manga and eroge it became a stock device of gap expression, a seemingly prim character undressing to reveal bold underwear, carrying an iconicity recognised at a glance as “special underwear,” functioning as a sign that conveys characterisation or scene intent without explanation.

Relation to himo-pan

In Japanese the alternative name himo-pan (string-panty) circulates in parallel. Himo-pan originally denotes a structure tied with straps at each hip for putting on and off, not necessarily coinciding with the thong; a type with equal fabric area front and back, tied only at the hips, also counts as himo-pan. In Japanese subculture and adult expression, however, the words T-back and himo-pan are used effectively as synonyms, and scenes that strictly distinguish them are few. The tie-string structure connotes, as a visual sign, the latent action of “about to come undone” and “if untied the underwear falls.” The combination of T-back plus tie-string carries a double minimality, minimal fabric area plus single-string fastening, and is one of the most frequently used items of underwear as material for erotic expression.

Structure as a taste

The vision that makes the thong an object of arousal includes several elements: the areal property of taking the whole buttocks into the field of view, the geometry of the thin straps running over the hip bones, the kinetic vision of the strap’s tension transmitting the movement of the hips, and the anticipation of the action whereby untying the knot removes it. Together, more than the smallness of the fabric itself, the contradictory presence of “remaining underwear while minimising its function as underwear” is placed at the core of the taste. The minimisation of fabric area overlaps with the chakuero-style visual mechanism of “a little fabric being more arousing than full nudity”: not complete exposure, but the slight remaining fabric becoming the reference point of the gaze, its scarcity throwing the extremity of the exposure into relief. In this the thong is one of the polar designs of underwear fetish.

See also

• Stockings
• Shimapan
• Garter Belt
• Chakuero
• Bodycon
• Gravure
• Underwear Fetish