NHK announcer Anna Nakagawa makes gravure debut

The former NHK announcer Anna Nakagawa has made her gravure debut with a splashy cover shoot for Weekly Playboy.

The 31-year-old quit the public broadcaster in March and has been attached to major talent agency Horipro since April. She clearly hopes to take her career in a whole new direction.

This is her first gravure shoot, done on location in Odawara and at a studio in Tokyo. Weekly Playboy also released a 100-page digital photo book to accompany the issue, which went on sale on Monday.

Though the shoot is relatively conservative by gravure standards, Nakagawa is clearly hoping to follow in the footsteps of other announcers like Kasumi Mori, who has carved out a successful modeling career, and Minami Tanaka, who established herself as one of the biggest female celebrities in Japan after a hit photo book, and also now acts.

TV announcers are the thinking man’s crumpet in Japan, beloved for their charming looks and demure manner, which is somewhat different to the usual appeal of gravure idols, who tend to have big, buxom bodies, and winsome smiles. There is also a class difference of sorts: announcers are almost always university-educated, often graduating from prestigious private colleges (Nakagawa is an alumnus of Keio University), while gradols tend to enter the industry in their teens. In other words: announcers have the brains; gravure idols have the body.

Former Fuji TV announcer Nagisa Watanabe is perhaps the most high-profile recent example of someone from the industry making a foray into gravure, though this became especially prominent because of the speculation over her alleged role in a sexual assault case involving one the biggest male celebrities in Japan.