Let's do a quiz. How well do you know your Japanese porn stars? Can you identify an adult video performer just from close-ups of their body parts? The pics show only key parts of the JAV performer's naked body (namely, breasts, butt, bush, etc.). No faces, natch. The "quiz" has been doing the rounds on the Japanese interwebs recently and we thought we would share it with readers so they can try it for themselves. If we're honest, we think this is quite hard. Scroll slowly to avoid showing the answer before you're ready to check! Here's the first question. So who is it? The answer is ...

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Ah, April. The glorious month of the cherry blossom (depending on where you are in Japan) and new starts, because both the academic and fiscal years begin. During April, youngsters up and down the land enter school or college. It is also the time of year when the fresh intake of corporate hires kick off their careers at the company they chose. These people are typically in their early twenties and straight out of college. Many corporations hold an entrance ceremony of some sorts to welcome the newbies, who sit in formal suits looking forward to becoming corporate drones. In the adult ...

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In March, we wrote about the former Self-Defense Force nurse and sex worker running for election for a local assembly in Tokyo this month. Hasumin Yoshikawa has promised to debut in porn after the poll, whether she wins a seat or not. Well, her party, the anti-NHK fringe right-wing populist Politician Girls 48 Party (aka Political Party Girls 48), has become mired in in-fighting among its leadership and accusations about misappropriate use of party funds, but Yoshikawa continues to campaign in Setagaya. In fact, we even received one of her pamphlets through our letterbox at the Tokyo ...

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Last week, we wrote about the Politician Girls 48 Party (aka Political Party Girls 48), the latest incarnation of an anti-NHK fringe right-wing populist party. The candidates are all female and feature many former idols, models, and minor celebrities. Now, as the party fields candidates in various upcoming local elections, more details have emerged about its prospective lawmakers. In April, Hasumin Yoshikawa is standing for a seat in the Setagaya City Assembly election. Setagaya, incidentally, is where the Tokyo Kinky offices are located. It's a large, mostly residential part of Tokyo known ...

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On Monday came news that Yua Mikami is to retire from porn after a stunning eight-year run in the industry. The announcement isn't a huge surprise, given her age (she turns 30 in August) and length of time in the industry, plus Mikami had also done other things in parallel with her adult video performing, such as being a member of a K-Pop music group (comprising only porn stars), selling NFT art, and designing her own apparel. As regular readers and JAV fans will know well, Yua Mikami used to be a member of the AKB48 spin-off group SKE48. She is one of many AKB-related idols who branched ...

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As regular readers will know, one of our preoccupations is the afterlives of idols: what happens to music, gravure, and adult video idols after they retire? Aya Takanashi is a freelance columnist and writer. She claims she made her debut as a porn star in 2016 because "I had nothing else to do" and then left the industry after two and a half years. In a recent article for Spa!, she says she was able to return to the "daytime world" (meaning the non-porn world) as if nothing had ever happened. After her AV career ended, she worked for a while as a scriptwriter for social network games before ...

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The ex-porn star Kaho Shibuya is suing a production company for ¥7.4 million (about $55,000) for mental distress, infringement of privacy, and harm to her reputation after it neglected to handle unedited data properly, resulting in a leak of footage. In January 2022, Shibuya ascertained that two of her adult video releases made in September 2016 and released in 2017 had been uploaded to a video site in an unedited (uncensored) format not available commercially. In other words, the genitals on the content were not blurred out in the usual Japanese way (known as "mosaic," a custom in porn as ...

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The immensely popular Japanese porn star Eimi Fukada landed herself in hot water this week by complaining on social media that men should pay for dates with girls. Fukada, who last year held a 24-hour "free hugs" event for fans, reasoned that women already have various expenses that men don't, such as hair styling, makeup, and clothing costs, not to mention the time the women spend getting ready for their date. She said men should pay the "date charges" -- presumably meaning paying for all the costs of the date (meal, drinks, movie theater tickets, etc.), not an actual "fee" paid to the ...

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The former HKT48 idol Haruka Kodama recently appeared on a TV variety show where guests were asked to give their insights on how a couple can improve their relationship. She gave one suggestion that shocked (or delighted) fans: she said that couples should watch porn together. On the ABEMA show on February 7, where couples get advice directly from guests in the studio, a female comedian called Renachiru complained that her sex life with her boyfriend (a former host) had declined. She suspects she might be to blame, because she admits imposing a lot of rules on her lover, including blanket ...

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It's a dangerous thing to make your gravure debut in this day and age, when netizens have so many tools and resources at their disposal to do research on your background. And so when the comely Rio Niita's (新田りお) gravure debut was announced with some fanfare, including an image video DVD release before she had even appeared in the usual gravure magazines, people got interested. Who is she? Where did she suddenly spring from? And the rumors are that the 19-year-old model already has a secret past career in porn. Like most such "image videos," her new DVD (out January 25) ...

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