Intimate apparel manufacturer releases newest volume of Lingerie White Paper.

If you’re the sort of person who likes to keep your eyes on breasts, in a statistical sense, of course, you might recall that Japanese intimate apparel manufacturer Triumph periodically releases what it calls the Lingerie White Paper. Since 1980, the company has been annually compiling statistics on its bra sales, with the data broken down by cup size, in an attempt to determine the current state of chest sizes in Japan.

We last sifted through the data two years ago. Since then, the trend of increasingly large busts has continued, with Triumph’s sales of A cup bras falling to a minuscule 4.1 percent of the sales total in 2016, in stark contrast to the 58.6 percent of its sales that came from A cup offerings in 1980. In fact, A, B, and C cup sales have all been in steady decline, continuing through the most recent period.

● A cup sales (2015): 4.7 percent
● A cup sales (2016): 4.1 percent
● B cup sales (2015): 19.5 percent
● B cup sales (2016): 19 percent
● C cup sales (2015): 26.1 percent
● C cup sales (2016): 25.6 percent

Since we’re talking about both physical and sales proportions here, this of course means that Triumph has been seeing increasing sales for larger cup sizes.

● D cup sales (2015): 24.8 percent
● D cup sales (2016): 25 percent
● E cup sales (2015): 16.7 percent
● E cup sales (2016): 17.2 percent
● F cup sales (2015): 6.6 percent
● F cup sales (2016): 6.6 percent

And while those aren’t huge gains, they’re increases nonetheless, and together they add up to a significant turning point. Triumph’s combined D, E, and F cup sales in 2016 accounted for 51.3 percent of its sales total in 2016, making it the first time ever that demand for its larger bras surpassed that for more petite sizes. While this development has been a long time coming, it’s still a dramatic reversal from 1980, when D-plus cup sizes were a mere 4.5 percent of Triumph’s business.

It’s worth pointing out that while the data indirectly points to Japan’s breasts getting larger, the statistical trends could be being caused by a shift in Triumph’s customer base, or even large-breasted women simply buying more lingerie per capita than less busty shoppers. Still, the huge differences between 1980 and 2016 are unlikely to have happened without at least some corresponding changes to the baseline body type in Japan, so maybe there’s not as much need for boob-producing optical illusion T-shirts as some people may have thought.

Source: J Cast Trend
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Insert images: Pakutaso (1, 2)