Right now, gravure feels a bit like a battle between the nearly 40-year-olds, all vying to outdo each other.
Or it could be that for all the sweet charms of fresh-faced young newbies like Hina Kikuchi, Cocoro Toyoshima, Aika Sawaguchi, Ina Enohara, and Yuzuha Hongo, these older models and idols just make better stories. (And to be frank, as we get older, we can't help finding these similarly aged women the hottest.)
We recently had Yuka Iguchi showing us her age-defying beach body and bust.
Former AKB48 idol Mai Oshima is also 37 and looks amazing.
Mayumi Yamanaka is a bit younger but a ...
Many music idols have rules, explicit or implicit, that prevent them from having romantic or sexual relationships to keep up the pretense that fans have a chance of dating their favorite singer.
If you think music idols are not having sex, though, you've pretty naive, as the various dating "scandals" have demonstrated over the years.
Some idols are even more sexually active than you might suspect, including having secret porn careers.
Tsumugi Mugino was recently fired from the Hokkaido idol group Icecream Square after her alleged appearance in an "amateur" porn release came to ...
Until a few days ago, Saori Araki (荒木佐保里) was little known even in Japan, to say nothing of outside the country. But that all changed this week.
That Nagasaki-born idol with cute cheeks has now hundreds of followers on social media. (She had a mere 7,000 followers on X and 100,000 on Instagram in June.)
And it all began with a photo of herself in suit and holding a laptop that she posted on July 25 with a simple "good morning" message. That post on X currently has 76 million views, the majority of which are from the United States and Britain. So what gives?
Her post had ...
Marking 20 years since she entered the entertainment industry and 15 years since she made her solo debut, the former AKB48 music idol Mai Oshima has returned to gravure with an erotic shoot that emphasizes her alluring jukujo charms.
Oshima was a member of AKB48 between 2005 and 2010, and marked her graduation with a solo photo book. All that feels like a long time ago -- and it was, at least in terms of gravure idols, which are the industry equivalent of FMCG.
Now aged 37 (and turning 38 in September), the comely model is today mostly a YouTuber (she opened her first channel in 2021 ...
Yesterday we published an article about Neru Nagahama's comeback photo book, the Keyakizaka46 music idol's first such release in eight years.
Nagahama is a rare case of a music idol from an AKB or Sakamichi group who has maintained a career after graduating. Most of the more minor members disappear into obscurity -- to say nothing of the many, many other wannabe idols who audition but never even get into the minor ranks.
And some wind up doing porn.
Netizens have identified a former auditionee for Sakurazaka46 (as Keyakizaka46 is now known) as a new porn star Nagi Yasaka ...
Former Keyakizaka46 music idol Neru Nagahama is back with a new photo book, a self-titled release from major publication Kodansha on July 15.
The 26-year-old has not published a photo book in eight years.
The Nagasaki native was seen as a rising star in the idol world in the late 2010s, with her first photo book going through a reprint. The alluring shower pics surely helped.
Recent years have been leaner ones for Nagahama since leaving Keyakizaka46 in 2019, though she remains connected to the idol industry though a position with Tokyo Idol Festival, and her first photo book was ...
One of the more unusual stories swirling around J-pop right now is the identify of the mystery singer with whom Elon Musk claims to have fathered a child.
Ashley St. Clair, a conservative influencer and mother of Musk's fourteenth known child, told the New York Times that Musk has "fathered children around the world, including one with a Japanese pop star."
Of course, this is a second-hand report and not from Musk directly, but people have taken it seriously.
Who could it be? Suspicions quickly centered on Ayumi Hamasaki, the veteran "Empress of Pop" who has two children (one born at the ...
Given the huge volume of porn produced in Japan and, thus, the large number of women involved, it is inevitably that many of the performers will have families after they retire from the industry. The question of former or current adult video stars raising families is one that occasionally appears in the media, often with a degree of sympathy (for the abuse they can suffer online) and curiosity.
Spa! recently featured an interview with AiRis, an up-and-coming gravure idol and singer who is also the daughter of 46-year-old former porn star Mariko Sata.
Single mom Sata was active in the ...
The Nogizaka46 music idol Nagi Inoue (井上和) released her debut photo book on April 22 and as scans are now appearing online, fans are delighted that the slinky 20-year-old has opted to do a semi-nude shoot so early in her career.
Published by Kodansha, Monologue features Inoue naked except for a thin, short towel, or nude from the waist up with her breasts hidden only by her arms wrapped around her chest in the "hand bra" (tebura) pose so common in gravure. In another shot, she's sitting down, seemingly fully nude and her modesty preserved only by elbows placed on her ...
The former STU48 idol Yuka (sometimes Yuuka) Oki shows off her naked butt in her second photo book, which came out February 26 from Kadokawa.
Swimming Allowed is the latest release from this slinky idol and features her in sensual lingerie and several shots in a milky bath. The best shot of all features her on her front in the bath, with her cute little butt poking up through the water.
Another shot features the idol naked under a sheer dress.
We think this is the most 25-year-old Oki has ever shown in a gravure shoot.
To promote the book, she also appeared in a recent issue ...
