Earlier this month, the naked body of 23-year-old Rina Arano was found tied to a tree. Her body showed no obvious sign of injury and the cause of death is still unclear.
A 33-year-old man has been arrested for confining her against her will in his vacation home in Hitachiota, Ibaraki, which is located around a kilometer from where Arano's body was found.
Arano apparently met the Hiroyuki Sanpei, a 33-year-old company employee in Minamiashigara, Kanagawa, for the first time in February or March. It is unclear exactly why she and Sanpei went to his villa in the rural district -- or what took ...
As already reported several times on this blog, Japan's groundbreaking new porn law that aims to protest performers' rights has now passed the Diet after approval in the Upper House on June 15.
The legislation, which was initially proposed by opposition lawmakers and taken up by a cross-party group, was sparked by the realization that lowering the age of adulthood to 18 would have implications for previous safeguards for young people working in porn or the gravure industry, and fears that teenagers would be exploited and coerced into contracts they either did not understand or did not really ...
The former Japanese adult video star Kaho Shibuya recently sat down for a candid and insightful interview with Tokyo Weekender, where she talked about her porn career and subsequent work.
Kaho Shibuya (not to be confused with similarly busty former gravure idol Yuri Shibuya) has actually had a lot of jobs in her time, including a baseball reporter, English teacher, and adult toy reviewer.
It was this last job that led to her four-year stint in JAV. As she outlines in her cautionary book about the industry, Everything Girls Should Know About the JAV Industry, her agency pushed her into ...
Readers got understandably excited when we reported in May on the upcoming adult video debut of former Fairies music idol Rikako Inoue.
Now active as a gravure idol and singer under the name Yotsuha Kominato, the beautiful starlet is making her entry into the porn industry with a highly anticipated release from SODstar on June 27 (unfortunately, we don't have a video code yet).
Intriguingly, the porn release is being promoted by Soft on Demand alongside her new solo music release, suggesting it was part of the deal they made with her or that they are even involved with the production or ...
As widely covered on this blog, the lowering of the age of adulthood in Japan from 20 to 18 has sparked a scramble to create a new exemption for 18- and 19-year-olds in regard to contracts for adult video.
As was belatedly discovered, the new age of adulthood would make legal contracts fully binding, removing the previous safeguard that allowed teenagers to back out of contracts. After initially hoping to introduce a simple exemption mechanism, politicians have eventually moved forward with an entirely new, more ambitious new law aimed at adult video performers that enables all performers to ...
Given the wide-ranging discussions now taking place about introducing a new law with major implications for the porn industry in Japan, we wanted to share a related reform proposal from a few years ago.
Given that the potential new law is intended to protect young and vulnerable performers from coercion, increase performer rights, and give them more control over how their bodies are used, we wonder if anyone is taking note of what a former adult video actress suggested back in late 2018, when the initial coercion issue was in the spotlight.
Aged 43 at the time, the retired porn star Yuri ...
Rikako Inoue (井上理香子), a former member of the now-defunct idol group Fairies, is to make her porn debut as Yotsuha Kominato (小湊よつ葉).
Fairies disbanded in 2020, after which Inoue (who was a member of the group throughout its roughly nine-year run) nominally retired from the entertainment industry and became a company employee for two years.
However, the 25-year-old officially adopted the name Yotsuha Kominato in March this year and returned to gravure with a shoot for Weekly Playboy and tie-in 57-page photo book.
This month, she released the music video for a solo song, ...
Japanese adult video often pushes the envelope, gamely taking on themes and subject matters ordinarily considered unsuitable or out of bounds for porn. It's one of the reasons the industry is so creative and broad in Japan.
Some people, though, are speculating if this example is not going too far -- or simply too eager to test the limits of taste and fetish as to render it unappealing to most audiences. Plus ça change!
A new porn release directed by Migiwa Ota and staring Mai Kagari seems, some are saying, more like a kind of horror movie.
The behind-the-scenes pictures, at any ...
Now this is what we call going out with a bang. Top Japanese adult video star Shoko Takahashi has retired from porn, as announced in April, and released her final title (MIDV-099) this month.
Of course, JAV is more than just videos, and Takasho has also put out an array of tie-in toys over the years, from onaholes to lubes and even vibrators.
To complement her last ever porn release, she has teamed up with top adult brand EXE to produce the Japanese Real Oppai Shoko Takahashi Breasts. Given that Takasho's greatest asset is her chest, and her unusual inverted nipples, this is a no-brainer ...
MeToo has finally caught up to the Japanese film industry, with multiple allegations of assault and harassment against directors Hideo Sakaki and Sion Sono as well as actor Houka Kinoshita.
Amid concerns over coercion in porn, politicians in Japan have been working on creating a legal exemption for adult video contracts to the newly lowered age of adulthood in Japan (from 20 to 18).
Though the move, which was prompted by the realization that the legal change this spring would remove the safeguard for porn whereby underage performers required a parental guardian to sign for them, has enjoyed ...
