In Japanese idol world (gravure, AV, and music), plastic surgery is something of an open secret. The occasional models and idols who admit to it -- Haruka Kodama being a recent one, as is porn star Ichika Mogami -- are exceptions that prove the rule, so to speak.
Formerly known as Tenka Hashimoto, Tenchim (てんちむ) is a 31-year-old Chinese-Japanese tarento and model, and a rare example of a celebrity who openly admits to having had surgery on her breasts.
In 2021, she made a comeback after a double scandal that saw her career as a model and tarento derailed, so much so that she took to ...
The gravure comebacks are arriving thick and fast. The end of the year is turning into a bit of a nostalgia blitz.
Just after Chinatsu Wakatsuki's return to gravure after a 19-year gap and similar highly anticipated comebacks by the likes of Rina Aizawa and Rina Koike, here's another lady who used to be a staple of gravure magazines.
Serina, formerly of AKB48 spin-off group SDN48, was a big part of our lives in the early 2010s.
SDN48, as readers with long memories may recall, was a short-lived music idol group formed to be a sexier version of AKB48. It failed to catch on and disbanded in ...
Chinatsu Wakatsuki has made a surprise gravure comeback with a cover shoot for the current issue of Weekly Young Jump.
Chinatsu Wakatsuki was one of the biggest female celebrities of the 2000s, known for her cute butt that she frequently showed off.
She is now 40 and married with two children, having had a shotgun wedding in 2012. She remains a fairly common face on TV.
Wakatsuki has rewarded her fans with this return to gravure, apparently her first such shoot for a gravure magazine in 19 years. (It might be mere coincidence that she left her management agency of 23 years back in ...
The internet recently went bonkers over the arrival of former Morning Musume idol Maki Goto's nipples, not least because she is almost 40 and it might be her last hurrah.
But a younger star, 25-year-old Rui Shido (紫藤るい), has set a precedent for doing nudity early on her career with her new photo shoot, which appears in Weekly Friday.
The gravure idol used to be known as Yuuri Rukawa, under which name she worked as a junior idol from the age of eight.
She is also a former cram school teacher, though her shoot reveals assets that surely would have distracted her students, ...
In her new photo book, 36-year-old Haruna Kojima goes nude with some pics that are going to send her legions of fans' pulses racing.
We've been following Kojiharu's career ever since her AKB48 days and we are pretty sure this is perhaps her most explicit shoot yet, though it sadly stops short of actual nudity in terms of nipples or full butt (luckily Sayaka Nitori showed us how to do shoots with nipples well earlier this year).
Still doing lingerie modeling despite both her age (approaching 40) and success as an entrepreneur, Haruna's first photo book in nine years came out at the end of ...
Who's your favorite gravure idol? Who do you like to see grace the covers of the tabloid magazines every month?
These are the questions constantly running through our minds on an almost daily basis -- and we're clearly not alone.
If you want to let the world know which lady you love best, you can now do so via a contest run by gravure magazine Weekly Friday.
The Grademy Award seeks to find Asia's top gradol. Celebrating the fortieth anniversary of Friday, voting is now open online via the dedicated website.
Friday is taking a broad definition of gradol -- basically anyone who does ...
The Japanese female TV announcers who present the news and other shows do pretty well, but some of them branch off to pursue even more successful careers in other fields: as a general celebrity (Crystal Takigawa), as a fashion model (Kasumi Mori), as an actress (Minami Tanaka), or even as a gravure idol (Akane Takiyama).
Hoping to emulate these predecessors, the former Fuji TV announcer Nagisa Watanabe has made her first foray into gravure in the current issue of Weekly Post.
The 27-year-old left the channel at the end of August after a period of illness suffering from PTSD.
A graduate ...
Most of us can only dream of dating a Japanese model. Usually, only actors, singers, sports players, or other male celebrities get to live out that fantasy. Recent examples include the boyfriends of hotties Risa Yukihira and Miyu Murashima.
So if you were lucky enough to be dating a Japanese fashion model or gravure idol, you'd be crazy to throw it away, right? Well, it happens. Perhaps after a while, you taken it for granted.
Gravure idol Sena Natsuki recently revealed on a late-night TV show that she was single again, having broken up with her boyfriend of five years.
She met him ...
This is quite a way to kick off a career.
Sena Himekawa (姫川せな) is a gravure newbie, having released a couple of image videos this year, but this hasn't stopped her from already making the leap right into the next stage of her career with a nude shoot included in the latest issue of Flash.
The shoot is nothing inventive or spectacular, mostly just Himekawa standing or lounging around to show off her naked body in a bedroom or bath. There's no bush, but mainly because she's obviously paipan (fully shaved) down there.
Himekawa has also released a new nude video (imaginatively ...
On any other day, the only thing notable and newsworthy about Haruna Kojima's meet-and-greet event in Shibuya last night to promote her new photo book would have been the appearance of fellow AKB48 alum Minami Takahashi, who turned up to get a copy of the book and say hello to Kojiharu (and perhaps get away from her smelly husband).
The former music idol and model, who still looks stunning at age 36 and is now a successful fashion entrepreneur, met with fans eager to get their hands on her newly released latest photo book -- her first in nine years.
One fan, though, was eager to get his ...
