Former Onyanko Club music idol Mayumi Yamazaki makes gravure comeback at age 53

Mayumi Yamazaki has burst back onto the scene at the age of 53 years young. Marking her first gravure shoot in 32 years, the comely ex-idol appears in a shoot over eight pages of the current issue of Weekly Flash.

Of course, makeup and Photoshop can work wonders for anyone, but we think Mayumi looks fantastic. Let’s hope this isn’t just a one-off.

The former music idol was a member of Onyanko Club’s B-Gumi from 1986 to 1987, and then went on to release a few singles as a solo artist. Onyanko Club was the Morning Musume or AKB48 of its day.

She married in 1994 and retired from the entertainment industry, but not before releasing 11 photo books between 1988 and 1993. This includes nude shoots for Mon Amour (1991) and for her final photo book, Last Century (1993).

Here are a few highlights from her old shoots. We always love the amber, light-infused aesthetic of these 1980s and 1990s gravure shoots.

We are witnessing a wave of forays or returns to gravure by older woman, driven perhaps partly by nostalgia (older consumers, editors, and producers) and an aging population’s changing tastes. Tomoka Takenaka is making her full gravure debut at 43 and Yuka Kosaka has made a comeback, as has Megumi Kagurazaka. Of a similar age to Yamazaki is Reiko Kato, who made a comeback this year in her mid-fifties.