Ex-porn star Nanami Kawakami announces marriage and pregnancy

The recently retired porn star Nanami Kawakami has announced her pregnancy and marriage.

The 29-year-old shared the news with fans on August 1 via social media, though she says she actually married her partner on July 7. Her due date is next January.

The announcement tweet included charming pictures at the beach, with her partner (whose face is hidden) slipping a ring on her finger and Kawakami beaming at the camera with her ring on.

Kawakami, who has been candid about the financial pitfalls of her line of work, retired at the start of 2022 after a successful career lasting her twenties (though her AVs, as is common, have continued to be release following her nominal retirement). She changed her professional name kanji from 川上奈々美 to 川上なな実, which have the same reading, but doing so frees her from legal technicalities related to her previous agency contract (which probably banned her from performing under that name — this is why many porn stars in Japan frequently change names over the course of their career).

In additional to publishing an autobiographical novel (which is not unusual in the industry — several AV stars are authors, typically writing work heavily based on their lives), she has also started to build up a list of credits as a regular actress, though the most prominent have been very much the kind of roles you would expect a “sexy actress” (as AV stars are euphemistically addressed in the mainstream media in Japan) to get.

She did nude sex scenes in both The Naked Director (Netflix) and Tokyo Vice (HBO).

Given her advanced pregnancy, it is unlikely she will be taking on any more such roles requiring nudity — though she says in her statement announcing her marriage and pregnancy that she will still be focusing on acting in her future work. So Nanami won’t be disappearing from our lives entirely.

Far from it. A documentary about her is currently in production. It has already followed her work as a porn star and stripper for the year leading up to her retirement in early 2022, but Kawakami wants to include her new life stage in the documentary and completion is now pushed back 12 months. The documentary should finish production in December 2023, with the aim of a release in Japan in 2024.