The former AKB48 idol Haruna Kojima has focused on fashion modeling and her own apparel brand since leaving the music group.
She has transformed herself into a savvy businesswomen by building a brand that puts her own popularity as a model at its center. Now aged 37, Kojiharu can claim business triumph with the sale this month of her apparel company heart relation for ¥3.5 billion ($22 million) to e-commerce company yutori.
She created heart relation in 2020 to run her (oddly named) brand Her lip to (which she founded in 2018) and Her lip to BEAUTY. She set to receive the payment in two ...
The top hostess Himeka has spoken out about her current feelings after winning a lawsuit in which a former male client had sought ¥38.5 million in damages from her.
"There were times when I was filled with despair," she said of her experience during the trial.
Himeka (also known as Himeka Nakamoto), who currently works at a club in Osaka and is famous for her high-earning hostess lifestyle, was sued by a former client in March last year.
Kakeru Kikuchi, the former CEO of a venture capital firm that went bankrupt, made various accusations of "romance and marriage fraud" on social media and ...
We all know that celebrities, especially female celebrities, often face abuse online. But does that extend to virtual celebrities like VTubers?
Virtual Entertainment, the operator of the VTuber agency VSPO!, updated its website on April 10, giving its response to defamation and other actions against its affiliated talent.
Just because the characters are virtual and so don't have "feelings," the copyright holders are not going to stand idly by while netizens defame their creations.
Regarding the character Nazuna Kaga (pictured), the agency announced, "We have identified the person who ...
Young entrepreneurs are always worthy of praise. Young female entrepreneurs perhaps especially so. But the response to Mizuho Ieiri has been more muted, particularly among male netizens.
The International Christian University student has just opened a luxury Korean BBQ restaurant in Shibuya, central Tokyo, using ¥60 million of her own money.
Aiming to become financially independent and retire early, the 24-year-old has spent six years at the prestigious college but has still not graduated because she was so busy working. Doing what? Well, she wasn't interning at an office (or, ...
Ayaka Miyoshi has got the nation's pulses racing with the preview images that show her in character for the fifth entry in the Kingdom film series.
In Kingdom: Tamashii no Kessen (aka Kingdom 5), which is released July 17 in Japan, she plays the female general Ka Rin, and Miyoshi in costume looks suitably sexy and tough. She could definitely conquer any male army!
The costume designers have certainly tried to emphasize her bust as much as possible, and leave much of the rest of her body on display. We're getting major Ursa supervillain vibes.
Created by Yasuhisa Hara, Kingdom is a manga, ...
While Japanese porn stars are often described euphemistically in the mainstream media as "sexy actresses," major apparel brands think nothing of hiring adult video performers to front campaigns for them (though this is not without some controversy).
And so we have Minamo modeling for top lingerie brand Ravijour.
This is not a new campaign per se. The 25-year-old JAV superstar has been modeling for Ravijour since at least 2023, as we gleefully reported at the time.
Originally a gravure star who worked under the name Shizuku Taiyo, the mononymous stunner made her porn debut in 2021 and ...
It has emerged this week that Tokyo prosecutors last year indicated a male All Nippon Airways captain over an alleged sexual assault of a female colleague.
The captain in his forties is accused of groping a cabin attendant on the buttocks in October 2023. He was indicated without arrest in March 2025.
It follows an internal investigation by ANA, which claims that it took "strict disciplinary action" against the captain in question.
The penalty for indecent assault is imprisonment of six months to ten years.
While this might seem like a cut-and-dry case of an older man using his authority ...
The rather sad travails of former porn star and minor celebrity Anri Sakaguchi continue. The 34-year-old tabloid favorite has now been arrested for shoplifting.
Police nabbed her on the scene after she was caught stealing a single sandwich in Hachioji, West Tokyo, on March 17. She has since been held at Takao Police Station. She has admitted the charge, though police can hold suspects for over 20 days without formally charging or indicting them, and it is likely that she won't be released for some time, despite the minor nature of her crime (the sandwich apparently cost around ¥300).
A ...
The debate over surnames in Japan has become a surprisingly big sticking point: polls tend to show that the majority of the public want the law to change, but the conservative government is committed to retaining the current situation, where Japanese citizens must change their surnames when they marry so that both members of a married couple have the same name. In practice, this almost always means the woman changes her name to her husband's. (One loophole around this is to marry someone who isn't a Japanese citizen, though we doubt the government will actively encourage that!)
The ...
The Japanese porn star Rina Kago (雅子りな) has stoked controversy by going off on an online rant about her dislike of Taiwanese people.
The 24-year-old adult video performer released a bizarre flurry of tweets on March 9 with a series of stark pronouncements that all Taiwanese people are trash, and that she doesn't want them to watch her AV releases.
"Taiwanese men make my skin crawl," she declared on X, apropos of nothing. She described Taiwanese food as smelling like piss and their language as unpleasant, and that she would "kill the dirty Taiwanese trying to enter Japan."
She ...
