Cosplay

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Cosplay, a portmanteau of the words costume play, is a performance art in which participants called cosplayers wear costumes and fashion accessories to represent a specific character.Cosplayers often interact to create a subculture, and a broader use of the term "cosplay" applies to any costumed role-playing in venues apart from the stage. Any entity that lends itself to dramatic interpretation may be taken up as a subject and it is not unusual to see genders switched. Favorite sources include anime, cartoons, comic books, manga, live-action films, television series, and video games. The rapid growth in the number of people cosplaying as a hobby since 1990s has made the phenomenon a significant aspect of po[CENSORED]r culture in Japan and some other parts of Asia and in the Western world. Cosplay events are common features of fan conventions and there are also dedicated conventions and local and international competitions, as well as social networks, websites and other forms of media centered on cosplay activities. The term "cosplay" was coined in Japan in 1984. It was inspired by and grew out of the practice of fan costuming at science fiction conventions, beginning with Mojo's "futuristic costumes" created for the 1st World Science Fiction Convention in New York City in 1939.

The term "cosplay" is a Japanese portmanteau of the English terms costume and play.The term was coined by Nobuyuki Takahashi of Studio Hard after he attended the 1984 World Science Fiction Convention  in Los Angeles and saw costumed fans, which he later wrote about in an article for the Japanese magazine My Anime.Takahashi chose to coin a new word rather than use the existing translation of the English term "masquerade" because that translates into Japanese as "an aristocratic costume", which did not match his experience of the WorldCon.The coinage reflects a common Japanese method of abbreviation in which the first two moras of a pair of words are used to form an independent compound: 'costume' becomes kosu and 'play' becomes pure.