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, ...
Yuka Oki has just graduated STU48, the Setouchi-based version of AKB48, and seems determined to make a name for herself.
And as past members of the AKB and Nogizaka sister groups have demonstrated (most recently Miku Tanaka and Ruka Kitano), stripping off is a surefire way to get attention.
She hasn't done quite that, but Oki has done probably her sexist shoot yet.
Aptly titled "Breaking Compliance," Oki's shoot for Flash sees her switch from music idol to gravure idol with aplomb, wearing a figure-hugging leotard or swimsuit that buttons up along the middle.
The high-cut item really ...
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 ...
We are used to Japanese politicians, both male and female, having affairs with hostesses, party workers, foreign musicians, and even other lawmakers. But what about gravure idols?
In a case that recalls Kensuke Miyazaki, who had advocated for fathers to take paternity leave but was caught having an affair with a gravure model while his wife (another lawmaker) was giving birth, a tabloid has broken a scoop on Democratic Party for the People leader Yuichiro Tamaki, who is alleged to have been having an affair with a former gradol.
Flash has revealed that the 55-year-old Tamaki has been ...
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 ...
Two gravure gyaru. What more could you want?!
Yukipoyo has been joined by her younger sister in a gravure shoot for the first time.
The 20-year-old Yumichi poses with Yukipoyo for a shoot in the October 22 issue of Flash magazine.
Yukipoyo (full name Yuki Kimura) is 27 years old and, though now known more generally as a celebrity, got her start in the gyaru fashion magazine egg. She overcame a drug scandal to make a comeback a few years ago. Stripping off helped.
Yumichi (Yumi Kimura) is very much following in her older sister's footsteps. She made her debut this February as a model in ...
We recently wrote about what we think is Kei Fubuki's first sex scene, which was very welcome in some ways, but disappointing in others (no nipples on display).
She continues to branch out into acting but Fubuki remains best known as a gravure idol. That said, she used to do a different job entirely.
As she reveals in an interview with the tabloid magazine Friday, she was once a flight attendant!
Imagine sitting in economy and this stunner is a member of the flight crew serving you drinks!
With such a large (and surely heavy) bust, we're surprised her airline didn't take a cut from ...
The gravure idol and actor Asuka Kishi has returned to the pages of Weekly Playboy for the first time in six years.
The 33-year-old Asuka Kishi has focused more on acting roles of late, landing a number of credits in TV dramas. Known for her H cup, she made her debut in 2012. Her last print photo book was Culmination, which came out in 2022.
The mini-comeback shoot appears in the Weekly Playboy issue that went on sale on October 7. A digital photo book is also now on sale.
It's not the cover shoot -- that honor goes to Mizuho Habu, formerly of Sakurazaka46 -- but it's one of ...
