Porn star Momona Koibuchi on sexual harassment, strict parents, and future dreams

Top Japanese adult video performer Momona Koibuchi recently gave an interview to Japanese tabloid Spa!, discussing her career and her unusual background as originally a civil servant in Yamagata, northeast Japan.

Here are some highlights from the interview with the 26-year-old porn princess.

Q. You went from being a civil servant to being a porn actress, but did you originally want to become a civil servant?

Momona Koibuchi: Not at all. Actually, I like clothes, so I wanted to work in the apparel industry, or as a fashion designer. I like talking to people, so I wanted to work in customer service.

Q. So why did you become a civil servant?

Koibuchi: I was completely at my parents’ mercy. To begin with, I wanted to go to a private liberal arts university because I like history. But my mother was very against it, telling I’d be unemployable and threatening not to pay my tuition. I thought that being a civil servant was about the only thing I could do, since I live in a rural town in Yamagata.

Q. You became a civil servant right after graduating high school?

Koibuchi: I didn’t do much to prepare for the civil service exam, and failed the first year.

Q. What clubs did you join at high school?

Koibuchi: Broadcasting club. I loved anime then, and still do. I dreamed of becoming a voice actor.

Q. Did you think you could have become a voice actor?

Koibuchi: My parents were against that.

Q. Your parents were very strict.

Koibuchi: Being a civil servant offers stability, and maybe they hoped I’d get married and stay in Yamagata.

Q. What was it like working as a civil servant?

Koibuchi: I worked in the tax department, mainly dealing with light vehicle tax, nursing care insurance premiums, and late-stage elderly medical insurance premiums.

Maybe because I got the highest score in the civil service exam, I was the only one with a much heavier workload than the others. I worked overtime until late at night every day, while my peers left at the regular time. To begin with, working in front of a computer was so painful. I wondered if I was cut out for that work.

Q. And you were sexually harassed.

Koibuchi: I was sexually harassed as a matter of course. People would ask me, “What cup size are you?” and it was also common for them to touch my butt at drinking parties. When one guy held my hand in the taxi on the way home from a drinking party and tried to kiss me, I slammed a ¥5,000 yen on the taxi and left.

Q. That must have been tough.

Koibuchi: In the middle of my first year, the work was painful and I was starting to get mentally ill. The harassment compounded my mental issues.

I was diagnosed with schizophrenia at the hospital and prescribed medication, but it didn’t seem to work for me. Not only did I lose my appetite, I got to the point where I couldn’t even swallow my saliva. I lost 10 kilograms in a week.

I was so desperate to be alive that every morning I would try to stab myself in the stomach with a knife. The doctor at the hospital said, “It’s dangerous, so let’s have you hospitalized for a while,” so I was hospitalized in a psychiatric hospital for about four months.

Q. Did you go back to work after you were released from the hospital?

Koibuchi: I did, but I ended up throwing up in the bathroom at work because my body and mind just couldn’t take it. So I ended up quitting.

Q. Were your parents against you quitting?

Koibuchi: My mother wanted me to grin and bear it. I talked to my paternal grandparents who lived nearby.

Q. What happened after you quit your job as a civil servant?

Koibuchi: I thought I couldn’t stay there any more, so with my grandparents’ help again, I moved to Sendai and took on part-time work. When took a trip to Tokyo, I interviewed and made my porn debut [in April 2022].

Q. Were you considering becoming a porn actress from an early stage?

Koibuchi: I was originally a fan of porn star Hibiki Otsuki. I’ve always had the desire to be seen by others. I wanted to fulfill this desire.

But I think the main reason was that my breasts were too big. If there was a job where I could use my complex as an advantage, I thought it would be easier to do that job.

Q. Were you insecure about the size of your breasts?

Koibuchi: Yes. I had an E cup in the first year of junior high school, so I can’t help but laugh. In the end, wherever I worked, people would look at me with lewd eyes. Now, even my O-cup bra is too tight I don’t measure them anymore. The clothes I can wear are limited, so now I’m forcing myself to wear bra tops to flatten my breasts.

Q. Were you not worried about suddenly making the shift into porn?

Koibuchi: I did a ton of research beforehand and chose my current agency.

Q. Do your parents know about your work?

Koibuchi: At first I kept quiet, but I got tired of hiding it so I told them.

My mother seemed to think I was doing gravure or something. My father is the kind of person who can’t say anything in front of my mother.

I told my grandparents about my debut much earlier. I took all the photo books I’d released so far and asked my grandma to look at them. She looked at all the pages, even the nude ones, and said they were beautiful.

With this job, either you’re accepted or you’re rejected. I’m enjoying life right now.

I also felt that whatever my parents say is right until I left home. That enabled me to look at relationships objectively.

Try putting some distance between you for a while, and if you can get back together as a family after that, that’s fine. But if things still don’t work out, you just have to cut ties.

I was able to move away and do a job that suits me better than a civil servant. I’d also love to get offers to do voice acting, which has long been my dream.