Earlier this year, we wrote about the surprise yet very, very welcome return to gravure of two major stars now in their late thirties: Aya Ueto and Haruka Ayase. Indeed, as the likes of Yoko Kumada amply demonstrate, you can continue a career in gravure into your forties. While the industry is dominated by ladies in their twenties or late teens, we like to see veterans and survivors in there, and love a good comeback story. But even we were surprised by the return of Erika Yamakawa to gravure after a 20-year break. Now aged 42 and the mother of two children, the model made her gravure ...

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The former AKB48 idol Satomi Kaneko officially retired last year and we thought it was the last we would see of her. How wrong we are. Today comes the happy news that Satomi Kaneko is to make her porn debut with the Muteki label -- which specializes in such industry crossover debuts -- and under the name Kiho Kanematsu (金松季歩). It is common, often for contractual reasons, for idols to change their professional name when transition into porn, or even just when switching management agencies. Kaneko/Kanematsu announced her new professional name about a week ago, along with a new shoot ...

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When does a debate over gravure photography become a debate over public space, civil rights, freedom of speech, and other lofty notions? When it involves parks in Saitama. A surprisingly big controversy last year involved the withdrawal of permission to use public parks in Saitama for gravure swimwear events, where models would pose for fans to take photos. Such events are particularly popular for fans to take photos of idols up-close and for freelance models who don't get the lucrative cover shoots in the weeklies to make some much-needed yen. But the events were planned for pools located ...

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The actress and mature gravure idol Mami Yamasaki is to release her tenth and final photo book. The photo book, Camellia, will come out in Japan on April 15 from Shogakukan. As announced on February 19, the publication will mark her retirement from gravure after a 20-year career. Now aged 38 and still unmarried, Mami Yamasaki has got more alluring with age -- and indulged in more explicit photo shoots. She seemed to embrace entering her thirties as the opportunity to strip off for semi-nude shoots. Mami Yamasaki has aged like a fine wine, getting sexier the older she gets. ...

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In mid-January, we wrote about the pleasant surprise that was actress and model Haruka Ayase's return to gravure. Well, this seems to be a bit of a trend right now: actresses and models who were huge in the 2000s and 2010s are going back to their gravure roots. Aya Ueto has done a cover shoot for the February 27 issue of Flash, which is now on sale. Though she made her debut as an actress in the year 2000, Ueto worked in gravure before she became a big mainstream star, including as a junior idol. Ueto now has three children, having giving birth to her most recent one last year, and while ...

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Of all the points of entry into gravure, we are well used to women side-stepping into the industry from other jobs like music idols, fashion models, ring girls, race queens, and convention booth companions. But geisha?! Rino (莉乃) is a 22-year-old from Shizuoka who moved to Kyoto at 16 to become a maiko, or apprentice geisha. She worked in the old capital as a maiko in the Miyagawacho district until the age of 20. She has now made her debut in the rather less glamorous but more modern world of gravure with a shoot for Weekly Friday. And in a very competitive industry in which new idols ...

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We always like to welcome back old friends at Tokyo Kinky. Haruka Ayase's return to gravure, while quite modest, recently put a big smile on our faces. And so it is with a little squeal of glee that we greet the gravure comeback of Miwako Kakei. The Terrace House alum was a big gravure idol in the mid-2010s but has been content to plow a trade as a regular model, celebrity, and actress in more recent times. (Her acting gigs have particularly picked up in the past few years, especially for TV dramas.) For whatever the reason, she has gone back to what she was originally good at, and is ...

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Haruka Ayase is one of the most famous models and actors in Japan. Before she made the transition into mainstream acting and modeling, and seemed to appear in almost every TV commercial or brand campaign, Ayase was briefly a gravure idol. She's got the looks for it: a cute, girl-next-door face, slim body, and (by most Japanese standards) large breasts. This shoot in which she stands alluringly against a window, her body on display except for skimpy swimwear, is one of our all-time favorite gravure pics. She even once shot some sort of video in a bath, and you can find nude grainy ...

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2023 was another busy year for us, publishing an article almost every weekday. We hope you enjoyed reading our content. With just a few days of 2023 left, let's look back on the year through some of the major developments in the gravure industry. In January, Ichika Miri announced her retirement (though since she's just 24 years old, we hope she might return under a different name and new management). One-time top gravure princess Anri Sugihara released her first photo book in over six years. She is now a charmingly mature 41 years old. In March, Memo Oba retired. Gravure is brutally ...

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As the year draws to a close, it's natural to look back on the past months and get a little nostalgic. Present-day Japanese gravure idols dressed up and photographed in the style of vintage pinup models? Yes, please! That's the basic concept behind a new photo book called Pin-Up Girls Selection, which is attempting to conjure up the image of "American porn from 100 years ago," according to the promo spiel. There are nine participating models: Rin Takahashi, ENA, Hinano Ayakawa, Miku Oshima, Miyako Sono, Miyu Nakagawa, Aya Hazuki, Haruka Bando, and Saki Yanase. Bando and Oshima are ...

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