The tabloids are full of reports that the gravure idol Risa Yukihira has been dating the pop singer Kei Inoo of Hey! Say! JUMP for perhaps as long as two years. The story was first broken by daily sports newspaper Sports Nippon (Sponichi), whose reporters have spotted the pair visiting each other's homes. The past romantic partners of 33-year-old Kei Inoo, who graduated from the prestigious Meiji University, include retired porn star Kirara Asuka and Japanese announcer and model Misato Ugaki. Risa Yukihira is one of the most popular gravure idols right now. With her pale skin and alluring ...

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In mid-January, we wrote about the pleasant surprise that was actress and model Haruka Ayase's return to gravure. Well, this seems to be a bit of a trend right now: actresses and models who were huge in the 2000s and 2010s are going back to their gravure roots. Aya Ueto has done a cover shoot for the February 27 issue of Flash, which is now on sale. Though she made her debut as an actress in the year 2000, Ueto worked in gravure before she became a big mainstream star, including as a junior idol. Ueto now has three children, having giving birth to her most recent one last year, and while ...

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The insanely popular Japanese porn star Eimi Fukada was spotted on a date at a ramen restaurant in late 2023 with Junnosuke Taguchi, who has also been spotted by reporters coming in and out of her home. Sporting dyed-blonde hair, Taguchi is not the former KAT-TUN member of the same name but a 31-year-old cosmetic surgeon who works at a clinic in Roppongi. As seems to be the case with everyone these days, he also has a successful sideline as a YouTuber. They have been dating for around a year and a half, according to a recent report in Weekly Flash, and have even been on a trip to Vietnam ...

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In Japan, voice actresses are as popular as music idols, fashion models, and gravure idols. Despite only displaying their vocal talents on the screen, fans adore these ladies, and it's why so many of them have developed lucrative side lines in event appearances and photo books. Rikako Aida (逢田梨香子) is one examples of a voice actress. Previously known by the stage name Rikako Ito, she is now 31 years old and entering jukujo territory (despite her eternally youthful elfin looks, but this hasn't diminished her fandom. Also a singer, Aida is is best know for her role as Riko ...

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Of all the points of entry into gravure, we are well used to women side-stepping into the industry from other jobs like music idols, fashion models, ring girls, race queens, and convention booth companions. But geisha?! Rino (莉乃) is a 22-year-old from Shizuoka who moved to Kyoto at 16 to become a maiko, or apprentice geisha. She worked in the old capital as a maiko in the Miyagawacho district until the age of 20. She has now made her debut in the rather less glamorous but more modern world of gravure with a shoot for Weekly Friday. And in a very competitive industry in which new idols ...

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We always like to welcome back old friends at Tokyo Kinky. Haruka Ayase's return to gravure, while quite modest, recently put a big smile on our faces. And so it is with a little squeal of glee that we greet the gravure comeback of Miwako Kakei. The Terrace House alum was a big gravure idol in the mid-2010s but has been content to plow a trade as a regular model, celebrity, and actress in more recent times. (Her acting gigs have particularly picked up in the past few years, especially for TV dramas.) For whatever the reason, she has gone back to what she was originally good at, and is ...

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Late last year, we showcased the ageless miracle that is Fumie Nakajima, who looks amazing in swimwear even in her mid-fifties. As they mature, Japanese improve with age like a fine wine. A couple of cases in point: Yoko Kumada and Sayaka Isoyama, who both look stunning in their forties. If further proof was needed, here's another example. Making her debut way back in 1994, the gravure idol Yuka Sawachi (沢地優佳) has managed to survived in a competitive industry in which idols are often discarded after a few months of shoots for the weeklies. She actually retired in 2007 and then ...

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Haruka Ayase is one of the most famous models and actors in Japan. Before she made the transition into mainstream acting and modeling, and seemed to appear in almost every TV commercial or brand campaign, Ayase was briefly a gravure idol. She's got the looks for it: a cute, girl-next-door face, slim body, and (by most Japanese standards) large breasts. This shoot in which she stands alluringly against a window, her body on display except for skimpy swimwear, is one of our all-time favorite gravure pics. She even once shot some sort of video in a bath, and you can find nude grainy ...

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Misato Maeda (前田美里), a former face of Nippon TV, is to make her porn debut on Soft on Demand. She will now be performing as Ema Yano (矢埜愛茉) and her first release (1stars984) was announced officially today and is scheduled for release on February 8. The 27-year-old from Tokyo has already made a nude photo book, released by Kodansha in September. Here are some highlights (which first appeared in the weekly Friday in August), showing off her D-cup breasts and her curvy body. Here are some pics from a semi-nude shoot she did for Flash to ...

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Japanese photographer Kishin Shinoyama has died at the age of 83. As regular readers will know, Shinoyama is regarded as the king of the hair nude (full-frontal nude), and is largely responsible for establishing it as a publishing genre in the early 1990s with his photo books of Rie Miyazawa (Santa Fe) and Kanoko Higuchi (Water Fruit), though Shinoyama and others had already done nudes in the previous decade (notably, a lovely shoot with Aki Mizusawa). Others quickly dropped their clothes in front of the camera (not least, Yoko Shimada and Saki Takaoka), hoping to replicate Miyazawa ...

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