An interview with ex-porn star Kaho Shibuya

The former Japanese adult video star Kaho Shibuya recently sat down for a candid and insightful interview with Tokyo Weekender, where she talked about her porn career and subsequent work.

Kaho Shibuya (not to be confused with similarly busty former gravure idol Yuri Shibuya) has actually had a lot of jobs in her time, including a baseball reporter, English teacher, and adult toy reviewer.

It was this last job that led to her four-year stint in JAV. As she outlines in her cautionary book about the industry, Everything Girls Should Know About the JAV Industry, her agency pushed her into little jobs in porn productions, initially in supporting parts where the performer’s identity is hidden and the role doesn’t involve actual sex. Eventually, things developed into her accepting jobs as a full performer.

Now retired from porn, she runs a shop and indulges in anime and manga “passion projects.” She works as a cosplay model, a judge for anime conventions, and live-streams her gaming antics on Twitch, where she has 220,000 followers. “I thought that if I stopped taking my clothes off, that would be it. But many of my fans are happy to chat with me for hours about anime or general things about Japan.”

The truth is, she’s a self-professed geeky bookworm.

“The truth is that I’m an introvert,” says Shibuya. “I don’t drink alcohol; I don’t smoke and I love to read. Back in elementary school, I was that girl who was always in the library. The world of fantasy was my safe spot.”

Shibuya says an English translation of her book, which came out in Japanese in 2020, is currently in the works.

Read the full interview over at Tokyo Weekender.