Japan's porn giant Soft on Demand seems finally to have recovered from one of the most bizarre and shocking screw-ups in their history.
SOD Land in Kabukicho suddenly closed down in March this year after police discovered it was violating the law on fuzoku ("amusement businesses") establishments, which covers hostess clubs, brothels, and so on.
Billed as an "adult theme park," SOD Land allows visitors to meet and interact with actual Japanese porn performers (and others like sex workers and hostesses) in various ways across five floors, including bars and a space for viewing performers in ...
Kaho Shibuya was a big name in porn during her time as a performer and she's also a rare example of someone who has managed to retain her fame since retiring from adult video in 2018 by carving out a successful second career.
She also takes no prisoners, prepared to spill the beans on the dark side of Japanese porn, and sue a production company for leaking her old videos.
Now active as a cosplayer, Twitch streamer, and author, Shibuya speaks English fluently, which has helped her a lot to keep an international profile.
She recently sat down with Tokyo Weekender for an interview about her ...
Last month, we reported on the controversy over a new gravure idol who was supposedly AI-generated but seemed to be just a slightly different version of a flesh-and-blood gradol. The publisher eventually withdrew its much-hyped photo book featuring Ai Satsuki.
As we noted in a follow-up post, artificial intelligence has major implications for gravure, making it possible to churn out cheap photo books with almost now overheads (no expensive photo shoots, no model fees, etc.). It has meant the market is currently flooded with cheap or even free photo books.
The issue of AI and gravure has ...
Before we had streaming and downloadable formats, we had Blu-ray and DVD. And before that, back in some period lost to the mists of time -- namely, the 1980s and 1990s -- we have VHS video tapes.
The arrival of VHS marked the full birth of the Japanese adult video industry, hence the name.
The new format had incredible commercial potential for widespread distribution of content and meant hardcore porn was no longer a niche but an easily accessible, widely consumed form of porn (as opposed to the simulated sex in "pink" sexploitation, whose decline was hastened by AV).
VHS was the heyday of ...
Last week, we reported on porn star Eimi Fukada's latest "free hugs" event.
It went ahead as planned in Osaka over the weekend and saw the 25-year-old JAV performer embrace 3,221 fans, beating the number set at her previous event in Shibuya last summer when she hugged 3,163 fans.
The Osaka event took place over two days (12 hours each day) and proved so popular that fans lined up two hours in the rain just for a chance to be hugged by their favorite adult video star (they were not allowed themselves to do the hugging and had to keep their own hands behind them and away from her ...
After its huge success last year, Japanese porn star Eimi Fukada is to hold another 24-hour "free hugs" event this weekend.
The event in August 2022 saw her hug over 3,000 fans for free (though a small fee was charged for a photo) and maintain a smile the whole time (and change clothes every six hours).
The entire event was streamed online too, though there was a caveat. Women were allowed to hug Fukada but male participants had to keep their arms down and let Fukada do the hugging.
We assume the same rules and conditions will apply to the event in Osaka (whose marketing tagline read ...
The ero-cosplayer Yuko Haruno (春野ゆこ) will make her porn debut in an adult video that comes out digitally on May 30, followed by a physical release in July.
The epic, 217-minute AV production (1STARS00799), filmed in 4K, from SODstar promises to make much of her pale skin and beautiful, massive breasts (supposedly an I cup). The publicity is also emphasizing Haruno's versatility with cosplaying a wide range of characters, which puts her in good stead for different porn scenarios.
They say that all newbies looking to break into an industry now need a platform to sell ...
You would think that a company as large and successful as Soft on Demand would have an army of lawyers and legal advisors on retainer, and that they would consult them carefully when launching a major and costly new project. Or perhaps they did and their team simply wasn't doing their job right.
Either way, our proverbial jaw hit the floor when we read this news.
On March 16, it was announced by Tokyo Metropolitan Police that the 40-year-old CEO of SOD -- the biggest porn producer in Japan -- has been arrested for violation of the fuzoku law. You might presume this is related to ...
On Monday came news that Yua Mikami is to retire from porn after a stunning eight-year run in the industry.
The announcement isn't a huge surprise, given her age (she turns 30 in August) and length of time in the industry, plus Mikami had also done other things in parallel with her adult video performing, such as being a member of a K-Pop music group (comprising only porn stars), selling NFT art, and designing her own apparel.
As regular readers and JAV fans will know well, Yua Mikami used to be a member of the AKB48 spin-off group SKE48. She is one of many AKB-related idols who branched ...
As regular readers will know, one of our preoccupations is the afterlives of idols: what happens to music, gravure, and adult video idols after they retire?
Aya Takanashi is a freelance columnist and writer. She claims she made her debut as a porn star in 2016 because "I had nothing else to do" and then left the industry after two and a half years. In a recent article for Spa!, she says she was able to return to the "daytime world" (meaning the non-porn world) as if nothing had ever happened.
After her AV career ended, she worked for a while as a scriptwriter for social network games before ...
