In the summer of 1939, two strangers walked into the Caravan Hall of the New York City World Science Fiction Convention wearing outfits that no one else had ever seen before. Forrest J Ackerman and Myrtle R. Douglas, known in fandom circles as Morojo, stepped onto the floor of the first Worldcon dressed in green capes and breeches that they had designed and sewn themselves. They called these garments futuristicostumes, drawing inspiration from the pulp magazine artwork of Frank R. Paul and the 1936 film Things to Come. While the rest of the convention attendees wore their regular clothes, Ackerman and Douglas believed that everyone was supposed to wear a costume, a belief that set them apart in a sea of ordinary suits and dresses. This moment marked the birth of what would eventually become cosplay, transforming a simple masquerade into a dedicated performance art. The pair returned to the 1940 convention, the 2nd Worldcon, where their costumes became part of an unofficial masquerade held in Douglas' room, and later appeared again in the official program. Their influence spread quickly, with other attendees beginning to wear costumes to conventions, including David Kyle, who won a masquerade contest with a Ming the Merciless costume created by Leslie Perri. The tradition of costuming at science fiction conventions had begun, and it would evolve over the next several decades into a global phenomenon.
The Coining of a New Word
The term cosplay did not exist until the 1983 issue of a Japanese magazine, where a writer from Studio Hard coined the word to describe the growing trend of fans dressing up as characters. Takahashi, the author of the article, deliberately chose to create a new word rather than use the existing translation of the English term masquerade, which he felt implied nobility and was old-fashioned. The new word was a blend of costume and play, shortened to kosu and pure, reflecting a common Japanese method of abbreviation. This linguistic innovation did not catch on immediately, taking a year or two to become common knowledge among fans at conventions. It was not until the 1990s, after exposure on television and in magazines, that the term and practice of cosplaying became widely known in Japan. The rapid growth in the number of people cosplaying as a hobby since the 1990s made the phenomenon a significant aspect of popular culture in Japan, as well as in other parts of East Asia and in the Western world. The first cosplay cafés appeared in the Akihabara area of Tokyo in the late 1990s, with a temporary maid café set up at the Tokyo Character Collection event in August 1998 to promote the video game Welcome to Pia Carrot 2. The first permanent establishment, Cure Maid Café, opened in March 2001, solving the issue of limited lifespan by using generic maids. The first World Cosplay Summit was held on the 12th of October 2003 at the Rose Court Hotel in Nagoya, Japan, with five cosplayers invited from Germany, France and Italy, establishing a global stage for the art form.