A veteran Japanese porn star street scout shares the secrets of his job

We recently read a report in the Asahi Shimbun about the adult video scouts who operate on the streets of Tokyo, searching for the next porn talent to come walking by. If you’ve ever wondered how a lot of the women, especially the anonymous stars of AV with large casts, get into their jobs, it’s often because they are aggressively scouted (many are also “persuaded” to move into porn from careers in modeling, gravure and hostessing). The result is an industry with an almost literally countless number of women working in it as performers at various levels.

The article was an interview with a certain former scout who started off in the 1990s, having met a porn actress at a party and hearing that you could earn ¥1 million a month.

The job of the scout is to spot a potential woman and then befriend her and convince her to come along to the AV production or talent office for an interview. This is a murky world and coercion is common — in which the scouts also play their part.

Once the woman you scouted is signed up, you get a “finder’s fee” every time she appears in a porn release. As such, it can be a lucrative job.

In the 1990s, the scout was making ¥3 million a month. In the 2010s, he was introducing over 40 women a month to the production company, of which some 15 would take the plunge into AV.

To achieve his results, he walked the streets all over the city, especially the major districts.

Since 2005, however, a Tokyo ordinance has banned AV scouts from operating on the streets. For this reason, he had to use a ruse at first by claiming to be scouting for other work, such as modeling.

So as not to put anyone off, he wouldn’t himself say it’s for AV. Instead, he would get the women to ask him if the production company is involved in porn, and then he could reel them in by saying they were opportunities to do all kinds of things, including porn, if contracted women were interested. He was always sure to have magazines for gravure models and movie extras ready to show them examples of the range of possible jobs.

This means he was safe from accusations of fraud and outright deception. However, when it comes to the contract, the word “AV” is never clearly written, and this is when it becomes very ambiguous. Instead, a clause will say something like “adult content”.

He was sometimes called to shoots to comfort and persuade reluctant women. Needless to say, he became very skilled at saying the right things to get them to relent.

Now retired, the scout’s handiwork is visible in numerous porn releases from the past 20 years.