Aki Mizusawa: the bankrupt 1980s gravure pin-up and actress back in the limelight

What happens after gravure idols hang up their bikinis and try to move on in their careers is a question that fascinates us.

Most crash and burn, but in the meantime manage to find a nice husband in the industry who will take care of them.

The tale of Aki Mizusawa is an interesting one.

Born in 1959, she was a gravure pin-up during the 1980s.

In between winning the hearts of men around the nation, she found time to have an affair with Jackie Chan, a well-known philanderer, in Spain in 1984.

She was also working as a singer during this time.

She sealed her sex siren reputation by posing for a “hair nude” shoot.

In the 1986 January issue of Goro magazine she appeared nude in the iconic “Gekisha” series by Kishin Shinoyama, when she was a ripe 30 years old. After that, more nude shots were released from earlier in her career.

She married an American living in Japan, Guy Cihi, in 1986 but they divorced in 1993. They had two children. One of them, Frankie Cihi, is a Tokyo-based artist and was part of the cast of the first season of reality TV show Terrace House.

Then the big trouble for Mizusawa started as her real estate investments failed when the economic bubble collapsed.

She was left with enormous debts that she struggled to pay off through further business ventures and frugality (she used to feed her kids by heading to the department store food court and taking the free tasting samples). By 2011 she was debt-free.

In 2011, she appeared in a film called Kindly Hand, which involved a tasteful nude scene.

And now she is back in the limelight after all her trials and tribulations.

Her new stage in her career? The 60-year-old is really into hip-hop and has opened two dance studios in Tokyo, one in Shinjuku and one in Setagaya.