Regular readers will remember the cautionary tale of gravure idol Miyu Murashima, who was forced to apologize and put her burgeoning career on ice in mid-2024 after her affair with a married basketball player came to light.
She was effectively sacked by her agency and announced later in 2024 she would no longer do gravure, instead focusing on producing her own content on YouTube and TikTok.
The basketball player with whom she had an affair seemed to suffer no professional consequences.
Over two years on from the scandal, what is Murashima doing?
Now 27 years old, the former idol announced ...
What happens when porn stars retire? Most disappear into obscurity after a short career in a highly competitive industry, probably earning money by hostessing, compensated dating, and sex work. A small number are able to switch gears to an adjacent career, such as acting or modeling (such as Yua Mikami). And there are interesting examples of JAV stars who switch to a wholly different occupation, like Hiyori Yoshioka, who works at a sexual health clinic.
We have chronicled various examples of these post-idol careers over the years, and another interesting one recently came across our ...
Retired porn stars tend to disappear into the oblivion of regular employment after retirement, with only a few seeking out the limelight by launching other public-facing careers. But this is the first time that we have heard of a porn star switching gears into charity work.
Eimi Fukada was one of the biggest names in the Japanese adult video industry but she seemed to quietly retire last year. As far as we know, she didn't realize any new productions and, while we didn't seem a formal announcement, she is now described in the media as a "former" porn star (or, as the Japanese media always ...
What happens to those sexy, leggy race queens (grid girls) when their careers dry up? Well, in the case of Chisato Morishita, they might go into politics. A lucky few switch to grave. Others run bars.
And possibly get arrested for doing so.
Last week, people went crazy about the beautiful, chatty bar manager who was among five arrested in a police crackdown in Kabukicho, Akihabara, and Ikebukuro, and now some details and rumors about her background have emerged.
Tomoko Nagata is accused of operating Wisteria as an unlicensed girls bar in Kabukicho because her female staff were not just ...
The veteran gravure idol Ayana Nishinaga is to retire from the industry after an 18-year career that began at the age of 12.
She released her fiftieth DVD in 2025, appropriately titled Bye-bye!, and appears in the current issue of Weekly Playboy, which has released a digital photo book called The Last to accompany her final shoot, suggestively featuring the model in a wedding dress.
The 30-year-old from Okayama describes in her interview in the magazine how she hopes to get married in her early thirties and start a family.
The magazine shoot features Nishinaga enjoying a "bath" with her ...
Many gravure idols struggle to reinvent themselves when their modeling career starts to wan, but Rin Takahashi has demonstrated that you can do this with aplomb -- and completely transform your body at the same time!
The 35-year-old formerly curvy gradol has shifted careers by becoming a personal trainer, toning herself in the process into a muscular, athletic, and tanned beauty.
A recent before-and-after viral photo shared by Garen Takizawa really brings home the extent of her physical journey, which she herself announced at the start of 2026. She lost around 17 kilograms in two years by ...
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 ...
Former AKB48 idols have been in the news again recently, from the first generation of idols like Atsuko Maeda (releasing her first photok book in 14 years) and Haruna Kojima (still ravishing at 37) to more recent members of the supergroup like Megu Taniguchi.
The 27-year-old Taniguchi, known as Omegu to fans, is now promoting Ravijour lingerie as part of a new campaign for the brand announced this month.
She was a member of AKB48 from 2013 to 2024. Fans are celebrating how stunning she looks in the revealing Ravijour lingerie, which revels in her slinky body.
Doing a stint as a ...
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 ...
Former gravure model Chisato Morishita has won her seat in the snap election called by Sanae Takaichi, which saw the ruling Liberal Democratic Party secured a big majority and wipe out much of the opposition.
After some years of campaigning and failing to win a seat, Morishita finally became a member of the lower house in the 2024 election (and thus, Japan's hottest lawmaker) through the LDP's proportional representation allocation. She was then given a minor Cabinet position in 2025, like other prominent women in the Takaichi government.
This time, she won her seat outright, comfortably ...
