We've bemoaned the crowded and competitive state of the gravure industry before. A gradol may grace the cover of Weekly Playboy or Young Jump one week and, just a few months later, be hung out to dry as yet another young lady in a bikini takes their place. It's hard to keep up with all the new arrivals on the scene and while many gravure idols try to expand into acting and TV work without explicitly "graduating" from glamor modeling, some do more formally retire. But even this is often done without much fanfare. Perhaps it gets announced on social media and then that's it: the idol is ...

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If you follow the Japanese adult video newbies closely, you may have noticed the porn debut of Moeka Marui (円井萌華) back in May for SOD Create. Though her exact age is unknown, Marui was formerly a child model and music idol under the name Moeka (萌華). She apparently had a following in Taiwan and would travel to appear in events there, though they seem like relatively small street performances. (So the next time you see an idol performing on the street in a Japanese city, imagine their future career in porn!) Here is Marui back in her Taiwanese days. She has so far ...

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Gravure idols famously come and go. Those who seemed at the top of their game with regular cover shoots in the weeklies might fall out of favor in a couple of months and be gone from our lives. The most successful idols learn that they need to branch out into acting and TV work, and not rely on the precarious gigs doing shoots for magazines and releasing digital photo books in a crowded market. Nana Asakawa was huge at the end of the 2010s and likewise began to take high-profile acting jobs, including sex scenes in the Haram Marriage TV adaptation and We're Too Bad at Romance. Those ...

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Here's that rare thing: a happy ending. Anri Sakaguchi was initially famous for, well, being famous. She was the daughter of an actress, and gained some celebrity at an early age, joining the entertainment world in the late 2000s. But financial debts forced her into porn, and she debuted in 2016 for Muteki, and went on to star in several AV titles (going by the name Anri). She also did at least one nude photo shoot during this time. After retiring from porn, Sakaguchi (whose real name is Mizue Nozawa) ran into some trouble with the law, being arrested twice: once for attempting to exhort ...

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The former Japanese adult video star Kaho Shibuya recently sat down for a candid and insightful interview with Tokyo Weekender, where she talked about her porn career and subsequent work. Kaho Shibuya (not to be confused with similarly busty former gravure idol Yuri Shibuya) has actually had a lot of jobs in her time, including a baseball reporter, English teacher, and adult toy reviewer. It was this last job that led to her four-year stint in JAV. As she outlines in her cautionary book about the industry, Everything Girls Should Know About the JAV Industry, her agency pushed her into ...

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Readers got understandably excited when we reported in May on the upcoming adult video debut of former Fairies music idol Rikako Inoue. Now active as a gravure idol and singer under the name Yotsuha Kominato, the beautiful starlet is making her entry into the porn industry with a highly anticipated release from SODstar on June 27 (unfortunately, we don't have a video code yet). Intriguingly, the porn release is being promoted by Soft on Demand alongside her new solo music release, suggesting it was part of the deal they made with her or that they are even involved with the production or ...

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The graduation of various leading members and the restrictions placed on live, in-person events by the pandemic have greatly reduced the presence of AKB48 and its sister groups in popular culture. The groups retain strong followings, of course, but the days when AKB dominated advertising and TV shows seem over. As such, even the little scandals seem to pass us by. We missed that Yuka Suzuki (鈴木優香) was forced to graduate AKB48 last September due to an alleged romance (oh, the horror!) that first emerged in spring 2021. Following her ignominious departure from AKB48, Yuka Suzuki ...

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Given the wide-ranging discussions now taking place about introducing a new law with major implications for the porn industry in Japan, we wanted to share a related reform proposal from a few years ago. Given that the potential new law is intended to protect young and vulnerable performers from coercion, increase performer rights, and give them more control over how their bodies are used, we wonder if anyone is taking note of what a former adult video actress suggested back in late 2018, when the initial coercion issue was in the spotlight. Aged 43 at the time, the retired porn star Yuri ...

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Rikako Inoue (井上理香子), a former member of the now-defunct idol group Fairies, is to make her porn debut as Yotsuha Kominato (小湊よつ葉). Fairies disbanded in 2020, after which Inoue (who was a member of the group throughout its roughly nine-year run) nominally retired from the entertainment industry and became a company employee for two years. However, the 25-year-old officially adopted the name Yotsuha Kominato in March this year and returned to gravure with a shoot for Weekly Playboy and tie-in 57-page photo book. This month, she released the music video for a solo song, ...

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Now this is what we call going out with a bang. Top Japanese adult video star Shoko Takahashi has retired from porn, as announced in April, and released her final title (MIDV-099) this month. Of course, JAV is more than just videos, and Takasho has also put out an array of tie-in toys over the years, from onaholes to lubes and even vibrators. To complement her last ever porn release, she has teamed up with top adult brand EXE to produce the Japanese Real Oppai Shoko Takahashi Breasts. Given that Takasho's greatest asset is her chest, and her unusual inverted nipples, this is a no-brainer ...

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