Gravure photographer Seiichi Nomura recently sat down for an interview with Aera.dot in which he looked back on his five-decade-long career, during which he has photographed countless numbers of idols, actresses, models, and singers.
"I've done more than 400 hundred photo books and thousands of covers for weekly magazines," Nomura estimates.
Originally an interior photographer, Nomura got into gravure by necessity: he needed the money. In the summer of 1976, at the age of 25, he traveled to Europe. After he returned, though, he was told by his clients that he had been away too long and they ...
Maki Makie (マキエマキ) has been working since the early 1990s as a freelance commercial photographer.
Now aged 56, she gained a whole new following when she began taking self-portraits in 2015 and repositioning herself as a "selfie jukujo" (自撮り熟女) model.
This fame has had some unexpected consequences, as she revealed in a long interview with Bunshun.
Her self-portraits revel in a Showa-era atmosphere. Often shot in sketchy or remote locations (like old, rundown resorts or empty shopping streets), they mix humor with the erotic. She is currently exhibiting her work in ...
The 2018 Japanese movie Still Life of Memories didn't make much of a splash when it was first released and we are finally catching up with it now. The somewhat peculiar plot is about a love triangle that emerges between a photographer, played by Masanobu Ando, and his younger girlfriend (Rima Matsuda, b. 1994) and a jukujo museum curator (Natsuko Haru, b. 1983), who asks the photographer to take pictures of her most intimate body parts.
Yes, this is one of those little films that looks certain to cement the reputation that Japanese have internationally for perversion -- and Japanese women, ...
Gradol (gravure idol) shoots have a certain kind of culture. The locations gradually start to feel familiar and the way the models pose is also often repeated.
In this post, we bring together a few typical poses.
We start with the raised-arm pose, where the armpit(s) are exposed along with the neck and chest area. This hints at what the gradol looks like when pressed down on a bed or up against a wall.
The sideways-on-all-fours pose has obvious appeal: you get to see what she looks like when poised for doing it doggy. A common variation of this pose is from behind -- again, with ...
Freelance photographer Misuzu Shibuya (渋谷美鈴) recently shared on Twitter highlights from an erotic photo shoot she did with three models: Maria Mitsu (Maria Temari), ai, and Rin.
In a far, frankly welcome cry from the more obvious world of busts, butts, and bikinis in the gravure shoots of the weekly tabloids, Shibuya has created an artistic, remarkably alluring series of images.
The red theme is an obvious winner, as is the water, subtle nudity, and the hints of lesbianism.
Is this the sexiest erotic photo shoot ever? Well, probably not -- but it's gotta be in the list.
Our ...
Like a lot of gravure idols recently, RaMu has taken to YouTube to connect directly with fans and also occupy herself during downtime (which the coronavirus pandemic is generating a lot of for precariously employed models and idols).
These days, gradols are YouTubers, and one video that RaMu uploaded at the end of 2020 is gaining some traction (over 360,000 views and counting).
In it, 23-year-old RaMu talks about the secrets of how a gravure photo shoot works. It is all in Japanese but she has some illustrative props.
These include panties with see-through string so that the model can ...
The singer and actress KOM_I is known for her provocative career choices, from doing lesbian sex scenes in the Netflix show Followers to releasing nude photo shoots not once -- but twice. Somewhat queasily yet erotically, one of the shoots even involved blood and knives in addition to her pale, naked flesh.
The 28-year-old Wednesday Campanella singer has now shed her clothes again for a photo shoot for Vogue Japan, the highlights of which she posted on her own Instagram account a few days ago.
The shoot has KOM_I nude in a garden, facing off against a classic sculpture while wearing a gold ...
Like many, we have avoided the beach this year because of the recommendations not to leave Tokyo and not unintentionally spread the coronavirus.
Last week, we shared a couple of photo shoots that offered a vicarious experience of a love hotel session with a stunning Japanese beauty.
What about something more summery? Hungry for a beach fix, we recently admired a shoot done with the model 3zuki (Mizuki) by photographer ohmen2001, who generously shared the results on their social media channels.
She is ravishingly slinky in a barely-there bikini as well as satisfyingly curvy in a wet ...
Too scared to go to love hotels with a partner right now in case you catch the dreaded virus?
Like a lot of people, we are holding back these days and not taking our usual trips to places. This might be the beach or the movie theater or museum, though our no-fly zone also currently includes nightclubs, bars, and love hotels. Life is dull indeed.
Fortunately, other people can go to these places for us and provide stunning photo shoots that offer a vicarious experience.
Such as Twitter user and photographer @room404nf, who posted a series of images from an incredible love hotel shoot. The ...
Have you ever seen (or stayed at) a love hotel like this?
Though the cyberpunk (is that the right descriptor?) style is like something out of a Neo Tokyo landscape or cut from the same cloth as the Robot Restaurant in Kabukicho, it is actually a room in an Okayama hotel with a retro fairground and amusement park theme.
As fans know, the most outrageous and unusual love hotels are to be found not in cities but deep in the countryside.
Saying that, if you are into BDSM and dungeons, there is this love hotel in Asabu, Minato ward, that has been running for four decades.
The ...
