Ex-porn star Minami Aizawa to stop using her old performer name

The former Japanese porn star Minami Aizawa has announced that she is to go on hiatus and fully retire her old performer name.

Aizawa worked in AV from 2016 to 2023, and has continued to use her name since retiring.

However, in social media posts on August 25 to her hundreds of thousands of followers on Instagram and X, the 28-year-old announced in English and Japanese that she would stop using the name Minami Aizawa because she was fed up with the limitations of being always introduced as a “former porn star.”

It makes her feel like she is, in her words, “clinging to past glories” and constantly fighting off questions about a potential comeback. “These have become a significant source of stress for me over time.”

She will now be known professionally by the mononymous Minami.

This doesn’t mean she wants to hide her past career. She clarified that “I have no regrets about my work in AV and have no intention of hiding it.”

Nonetheless, she feels “trapped” by her past image and has quit all her current engagements, including withdrawing from an event in Hong Kong. She said she hopes to re-emerge next year “in a different form.”

Aizawa was born in Hong Kong and spent her early years in the United States, and speaks quite good English. Like many Japanese porn stars, she is very popular in other parts of Asia.

The Japanese adult video industry is enormous and it gets through a lot of performers. Most appear in just a small number of releases, sometimes just as an “amateur” performer whose name is not even credited.

After their career is over, invariably quite quickly, a short-lived performer might be able to move on quickly but an established star may face stigma trying to do something new.

In the old JAV days of VHS and DVD, it was surely easier for someone to retire and move on, and even hide their former occupation with a change of name and career. But today, what’s online essentially stays there forever.

The recently retired Yua Mikami has complained about the online criticism she has received over her post-JAV apparel projects, with some netizens disliking the fact that a former porn star is associated with a mainstream brand.

Other porn stars start families, leading to criticism of their life choices and the impact this may have on their children when they eventually find out. Sola Aoi is an infamous example of this and has spoken out about this criticism.

On the other hand, retiring from porn (like with gravure and music idols) allows the performers to more openly date men, since they no longer have to maintain an “available” public image. In 2023, Yua Mikami was said to be dating two singers at the same time, while Shunka Ayami is dating a boy band member.