The gravure idol Tayu Anio has caused a bit of a stir by proudly posting a selfie on social media that features her armpit hair.
The 25-year-old posted the viral image at the end of March. It features not just a few strands of armpit hair, but long hair that she has even dyed to match the color of her regular hair.
It's not the first time. She has also not hidden her armpit hair in past shoots and selfies, and it seems that her decision to grow her armpit hair led her to leave her agency in 2022 and go freelance.
In 2023, she released a nude photo book (inevitably, her other very ...
She is now in her thirties and, despite being still one of the most famous gravure idols in Japan, it was inevitable that this day would come: Jun Amaki is to retire this summer.
Yes, it's sadly time to say sayonara to one of the cutest and bustiest of gradols in Japan.
She announced this a few days ago to accompany her appearance in the current issue of Weekly Playboy. There is also a tie-in digital photo book, appropriately called Retirement, now on release. The resulting storm of publicity Amaki's announcement has generated has helped send the book up the Kindle charts.
Amaki was at ...
Former AKB48 superstar Atsuko Maeda has recently proved that rewarding fans who have waited nearly two decades with a semi-nude photo book in your mid-thirties, and claiming it's your best and your last, will reap commercial dividends.
On the other hand, as relative newcomer Miyuka Minami is showing, you can just go nude early in your career to make a splash.
The 20-year-old Mie native made her debut in 2021 as a junior idol but has branched out into more full-on gravure in recent years with the end of her stints in two idol groups in Nagoya. She released her first gravure photo book in ...
What magic is this? What elixir of youth has she drunk? Because veteran gravure idol Yoko Kumada does not look like a 43-year-old three-time mom.
The model continues to carve out a career well past the point at which most gradols have thrown in the towel. Not so with Yoko, who has overcome a fair few challenges in her personal life (not least, domestic violence and divorce) and stays in superb shape through pole dancing. She pumps out regular gravure DVDs that show off her athletic body.
In the latest proof of this, Kumada has released a video on Instagram showing a behind-the-scenes ...
At Tokyo Kinky, we keep a close eye on new gravure idols and other developments in the industry, not least because it's a constant flux and flurry of activity: who is debuting, who is making a comeback, whose photo book sold well, etc.
But even we were a little taken aback by the latest "idol" to release a photo book: Myaku-Myaku, the weird and wacky mascot for the 2025 Osaka expo.
While the expo ended in October last year, love for the bizarre alien creature still lives on. Myaku-Myaku is possibly meant to represent water and cells, but even that doesn't explain why the upright, bipedal ...
In an age of AI, when computer-generated content has glutted our screens and it is sometimes hard to tell what is human and what is fake, what does it take a new idol to stand out from the pixels?
Sarina is hoping she has it.
The "sexy streamer" has just launched a gravure career, building on her massive social media base that has seen her accrue hundreds of thousands of followers.
She has just released Miraculous Quartet Body, a digital photo book for Weekly Playboy that is R18 rated (and also available in a tamer "all-ages edition"). It shows off her slinky body and large breasts, ...
Erika Sawajiri is to release her first photo book in 20 years, cementing her comeback.
Now aged 39, Day Off comes out on May 23 from Gentosha. It features over 150 images, selected from more than 10,000 taken of Sawajiri on location in an exotic beach and sea setting. Perhaps taking a cue from mature hottie Kyoko Fukuda, who loves to show off an active style for her beach body, Sawajiri is seen swimming and surfing in the upcoming release.
Her previous photo book was ERIKA, released in 2007, when she was just breaking out as a star. It's been a roller-coaster ride ever since.
Erika ...
The Japanese actor, fashion model, and gravure idol Akari Yoshida has made a comeback under a new name.
Now known as Akari Koda, she has done her first gravure shoot in about three years. The shoot appears in the current issue of Weekly Playboy.
"I had always wanted to do gravure modeling, but I was waiting for the right timing," Koda told the magazine. "I changed agencies and had decided to change my name, so I thought it would be great if more people could get to know a different side of me."
The shoot by veteran gravure photographer Chikashi Kasai puts lots of emphasis on her thighs ...
Fans of early period AKB48 idols are in for a treat right now with the recent photo shoots of Haruna Kojima, who looks ravishing at 37, and the new photo book by Atsuko Maeda.
Maeda has established herself as a serious actress since leaving the idol group in 2012, having been with it since the very beginning. She also got married, had a child, and then divorced. Today, she's a 34-year-old single mom.
Japanese idol groups are often premised on members with girl-next-door looks and whose fandom emphasizes their normality. This was very much the case with AKB48 too, so much so that it's ...
The former music idol Haruna Kojima still looks amazing at 37, as these recent pictures from a photo shoot demonstrate. They show her in a figure-hugging black swimsuit that reveals her trim body, flat stomach, and slender legs.
Kojiharu, as she is nicknamed, turns 38 in April and is one of the hottest jukujo in Japan, up there with Sayaka Isoyama and Kyoko Fukada.
The Saitama native was part of the early period of AKB48 history, when the supergroup was ubiquitous and produced several mainstream stars. She was a member of the group from 2005 to 2017, after which she worked as a fashion ...
