This is your perennial reminder that Japan's Minister of State for Special Missions (Child Policy, Youth Empowerment, Declining Birth Rate, Gender Equality) looked like this.
Alright, she did when she was much younger. Today, she's 61 years old and has a penchant for the pants suit.
She became a politician in 2010. Despite having no children of her own (though she's had some practice -- she's on her third husband, who is 24 years her junior, since 2016), she was tasked with reversing Japan's chronically declining birth rate.
Mihara started off her career as a singer. When she was an ...
We do love the gravure comeback. Sure, it's sometimes just a marketing gimmick, a manufactured framing of a return in order to generate headlines. Other times, a comeback genuinely raises a nostalgic smile as we remember when the idol (and we) were younger, and marvel at how good they still are.
Recently, comebacks have been popular, with top stars from the 2000s returning to gravure for an anniversary or career boost: Nozomi Sasaki, Megumi Kagurazaka, Erika Sawajiri, and Atsuko Maeda.
But most of these ladies are still in their forties or even late thirties. What about those stunners from ...
Nozomi Sasaki is celebrating 20 years in the industry with a new calendar out on June 9.
The Akita native was a favorite of the late 2000s. She made her debut in 2006 and established herself in gravure as well as acting roles. With her pure-looking face and waif-like body, she was one of the most eligible women in entertainment, and ultimately married comedian Ken Watabe in 2017. They have two kids together, though their marriage was rocked by scandal when Watabe's affair hit the headlines with lots of salacious detail about toilet sex in Roppongi. The scandal even inspired its own adult ...
The former AKB48 idol Haruna Kojima has focused on fashion modeling and her own apparel brand since leaving the music group.
She has transformed herself into a savvy businesswomen by building a brand that puts her own popularity as a model at its center. Now aged 37, Kojiharu can claim business triumph with the sale this month of her apparel company heart relation for ¥3.5 billion ($22 million) to e-commerce company yutori.
She created heart relation in 2020 to run her (oddly named) brand Her lip to (which she founded in 2018) and Her lip to BEAUTY. She set to receive the payment in two ...
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 ...
It may seem strange that the Japanese interwebs is going mad over a single mom in her mid-thirties, but don't question the power of nostalgia. Because we are talking about Atsuko Maeda, the most famous idol in the original AKB48 lineup, who was ubiquitous in the late 2000s and early 2010s.
She left the group in 2012 to pursue a more serious acting career, leaving music and the gravure weeklies behind. For fans back in the day, her return to gravure is catnip, since they have grown older together, and it's like snuggling up to a former lover.
Maeda is now a divorced mom and has claimed that ...
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 ...
In mid-February, we shared some initial preview pics from Atsuko Maeda's comeback photo book, Beste.
The 34-year-old single mom, who was a member of the legendary first generation of AKB48 back in the day, looks ravishing in the blue and pink lingerie in the shoot.
The most explicit shots feature Acchan nude except for thong panties, while lying on her front with her hands covering her breasts, and revealing her alluring back and side boob.
It's all nice stuff in the idol-you-can-meet tradition of AKB48, though quite tamer compared to former SKE848 idol Ruka Kitano's recent photo book, ...
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 ...
