Japanese photographer Kishin Shinoyama has died at the age of 83.
As regular readers will know, Shinoyama is regarded as the king of the hair nude (full-frontal nude), and is largely responsible for establishing it as a publishing genre in the early 1990s with his photo books of Rie Miyazawa (Santa Fe) and Kanoko Higuchi (Water Fruit), though Shinoyama and others had already done nudes in the previous decade (notably, a lovely shoot with Aki Mizusawa).
Others quickly dropped their clothes in front of the camera (not least, Yoko Shimada and Saki Takaoka), hoping to replicate Miyazawa ...
Yesterday we wrote about a Japanese photographer who has turned his private house into a sex doll museum -- and opened it up to the public. Now here are three developments related to Japan's top sex doll brand, Orient Industry.
Orient Industry has released a 40th-anniversary book looking at the history of their sex dolls (also known as love dolls) and how they are made. You can order it from Kanojo Toys, though be aware that the text is only in Japanese.
The Kishin Shinoyama photography exhibition we previewed in April has now started at the Shibuya art space Atsuko Barouh Arts Drinks ...
The legendary erotic photographer Kishin Shinoyama's latest project is a series of portraits of luxury Japanese sex dolls.
The "Love Doll x Shinoyama Kishin" exhibition will run at the Shibuya art space Atsuko Barouh Arts Drinks Talk from April 29 until May 14.
Shinoyama is best known for his full-frontal "hair nude" shoots, including Rie Miyazawa's iconic one in the early 1990s. He also recently released a nude photo book with Haruna Yabuki (Mari Abe).
As we know, high-grade silicone Japanese sex dolls by the likes of Orient Industry are famous the world over and have fairly ...
Today, we revisit a golden oldie.
The Perfect Education is a series of pink eiga (soft-core porn films) that started in 1999 and has so far has produced eight films.
Directed by Ben Wada, the original 1999 film (called Kanzen naru shiiku in Japanese) stars Naoto Takenaka in the lead (and who allegedly directed the sex scenes himself).
Hijiri Kojima here shows off her 22-year-old charms even though she is playing a schoolgirl, who gets captured as a sex slave by an older man.
At the time of making film, Kojima had also just published a hair nude ...
The "hair nude" is a curious Japanese-English phrase. It refers not just to naked flesh; it's naked flesh with genital hair.
What is "shocking" here is the display of pubic hair, the line by which art and entertainment is usually fettered in Japan. It is fine to have plenty of nudity in films and publications, but to avoid the century-old ambiguous obscenity laws, people censored or did not show actual pubic hair.
The hair nude set out to deliberately show this was something to be challenged, legally and artistically.
While the likes of Nobuyoshi Araki had already made erotic photography ...
We got pretty excited when news broke in May that model Haruna Yabuki was releasing a hair nude photo book by Kishin Shinoyama.
Now that the collection -- called simply "Haruna" -- has hit the shelves, we are pleased that some scans are making the rounds online.
More will surely emerge over the weeks -- and hopefully better quality ones, too. For now, enjoy Haruna's lush thirty-something body. If she seems too good to be true, remember that her celebrity boyfriend wasn't satisfied and two-timed her with a hostess. She literally found him in bed ...
He may well be an old man now but Kishin Shinoyama still likes to photograph nude bodies, and generate headlines for doing so.
The king of the hair nude recently shot a hair nude photo book with Haruna Yabuki (photos are starting to appear online -- we'll have a post on this soon).
His publications have been bestsellers and he also has mainstream recognition from the art world, too.
His new photography exhibition, "La Maison de rendez-vous", is at Hara Museum of Contemporary Art from September 3 to January 9. That's over 100 days of nude photography, folks.
It features around 60 examples ...
The alluring gravure idol and actress Haruna Yabuki (formerly known as Mari Abe) has gone fully nude in a "hair nude" shoot for Golden Week in a weekly tabloid magazine, shot by the famed photographer Kishin Shinoyama.
Though she has done semi-nude shoots before, this is a new step for the 1984-born Yabuki, who has officially now become a jukujo like Manami Hashimoto or Mitsu Dan.
The truth is, Yabuki's career is at a bit of an ebb. She broke up with her idiot celebrity boyfriend after she caught him in bed with a hostess. It's been years since she was releasing photobooks and gracing ...
Rie Miyazawa's photo book Santa Fe came out in 1991, making the hair nude photo-book genre very famous. Santa Fe was a huge hit for Rie Miyazawa and photographer Kishin Shinoyama.
It then became popular for young stars to announce their maturity through hair nude shoots -- plus a way to relaunch their career, as Miyazawa very successfully did.
Compared to other "hair nude" photo books, though, Sante Fe is relatively tame. You only get a glimpse of Rie's bush. (Compare it, say, to Saki Takaoka's hair nude shoot.)
In a curious detail that has only been revealed recently, Miyazawa ...
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 ...
