How consensual is porn?
The upcoming change to the age of adulthood in Japan and its implications for people signing contracts to do porn has prompted politicians to scramble to make legislation protecting teenagers from embarking upon an adult video career. (Opposition lawmaker Ayaka Shiomura, however, has faced male laughter when addressing the issue in the Diet.)
The situation has reignited the issue of consent and coercion in porn, with some arguing that women as young as 18 or 19 shouldn't be allowed to sign contracts independently due to the complex nature of the legal clauses and ...
Michaela Wako Sato (佐藤ミケーラ倭子) is the proud owner of probably the longest tongue in Japan, and possibly one of the longest in the world.
The 25-year-old is a former fashion model and member of idol group Idoling!!!, whose members included Ai Okawa and Rena Sato. As her name suggests, she is biracial (half Japanese, half Brazilian).
She is also very attractive, which gives her a consideration advantage when it comes to standing out among the host of other online personalities, each with their own schtick competing for clicks.
Naturally, such a long tongue has its merits -- ...
Former porn star Saki Otsuka has reached a settlement with an adult toys maker over the sale of products featuring her.
Though seven years have now passed since Otsuka -- once a top performer in the JAV industry -- retired, "new works" continued to appear on the market and be sold without her consent. Otsuka had sued, seeking damages (and, of course, to set a precedent for other ex-performers).
The legal challenge has taken two and a half years, but was apparently concluded in January, reports Bengo 4.
Otsuki first learned that "new" products were being released with her name and image in ...
One of the regular themes of this blog is the after-lives of gravure idols, models, adult video performers, and so on. What happens after they retire? What can do they do after their time -- often only brief -- in the limelight?
We had Reiko Nagaoka (永岡怜子) on our radar for a while in this regard, because she presents an interesting example. And then her story took an intriguing twist recently and we felt it was time to share.
She first worked in gravure in the 2010s under a different name: Una Shirakawa (白川卯奈).
Shen then switched to Reiko Nagaoka in around 2016, ...
It took her a while but former SKE48 idol Kanako Hiramatsu (平松可奈子) has finally got herself a solo gravure shoot.
In the December 20 issue of Weekly Playboy, the 30-year-old poses for a sexy spread more than a decade after her debut.
They say that good things are worth waiting for and we think she looks even better than before. The shoot might just have planted the seeds of a gravure comeback. Alternative shots from it will be turned into a digital photo book.
Kanakana was a member of SKE48 from 2008 to 2013. In the years since, she has graduated college and started her ...
The Lower House election in Japan was held on Sunday -- yes, Halloween. The populace elected a bunch of ghouls and monsters to represent them.
One person who failed in their first bid to win a seat was the former gravure idol Chisato Morishita. Now aged 40 and still looking great, Morishita was trying to get elected in Miyagi as a candidate backed by the conservative LDP (who won the election overall). She got 61,410 votes (the ultimate winner got 81,033 votes, securing their ninth continuous term).
As we reported earlier in the year, she has been campaigning since the spring. (In Japan, ...
Yuko Oshima has really changed in the seven or so years since she graduated AKB48 (writing which makes us feel old!).
She's reinvented herself as a serious actress, like her former AKB stablemate Atsuko Maeda. She went off to study in America and got herself a foreign boyfriend when she returned.
More recently, the 32-year-old got married (not to the aforementioned foreign boyfriend but to fellow actor Kento Hayashi) this year.
But another chapter in her post-AKB career appeared a couple of years ago: she shot her first sex scenes (unless we missed an earlier example) for All the Things We ...
We are late to write about this but Japanese media reported in August that retired porn star Nao Oikawa (及川奈央) had divorced her husband of five years.
She married the man, who is six years her senior, in December 2016 but announced in early August that she had divorced in the spring.
Oikawa was a top adult video performer from 2000 to 2004. Since leaving JAV and now aged 40, she has carved out a modest second career as a "regular" actor, appearing in a major NHK period drama, among various other credits.
Fans have called for her return to the industry, especially now that she is ...
The former porn star and now manga artist Nayuka Mine has interviewed Nanami Kawakami, the actor who this year set up her own agency and announced her upcoming retirement from adult video.
In the article published in Spa!, the two share stories about how they got into porn, both coming from rural parts of Japan and going to not especially reputable high schools before they were scouted. Inevitably, as provincials, they were awed by the idea of moving to be the big city and earning big bucks as porn stars.
In Kawakami's case, it was in Fukui Prefecture. Though she says her first release ...
Retired adult video star Kirara Asuka is hoping to build a second career for herself (beyond her successful YouTube channel and apparel line, CPITO) with a new venture.
She is "producing" a hostess club, which is set to open on August 2 in Ginza, the district of central Tokyo known for its luxury boutiques, restaurants, and, yes, hostess bars.
The club, J-Vogue, is now recruiting its "cast" of hostesses, offering hourly (yes, hourly!) wages of up to ¥30,000.
Asuka, who retired from the JAV industry in 2020, made the announcement on her official social media accounts on Monday, and it was ...
