We love gravure and AV idols, but not just the ones currently in fashion. We also like learning about the thousands of women working in gravure and AV do after their careers are over.
Some go into prostitution or working as a hostess. Some become mainstream TV presenters or actors -- or even politicians. If they're lucky, some snag the right man and settle down to a quiet life of marriage and family. Some, though, fade into obscurity and poverty.
The actress Hikari Mitsushima is an acclaimed and popular talent today but started her career as an teen idol. The porn star Nayuka Mine is now a ...
We have a confession to make. Like a lot of young boys, we used to be a bit geeky. In particular, we loved models.
It probably started with building models of F14s and the like, before progressing on to the more hardcore delights of collecting and painting whole armies in the sprawling Games Workshop universes. And then somehow, we went beyond it and started doing more "grownup" stuff.
But we got a very large and very welcome burst of nostalgia when we spotted these two masturbator toys based on aircraft and battleship models.
The Blue Frame Uminari Battleship Masturbator and Blue ...
Is Japan's naughty knotty BDSM scene too dangerous?
This was the question asked recently by Jake Adelstein, the Tokyo-based reporter who has made a career out of being the foreign media's go-to guy for yakuza stories and gossip.
Adelstein's article for the Daily Beast website is an interview with Golden-san, aka Golden Rule S.M. or Doctor Golden, who is calling for a "gentler, wiser, and kinder BDSM."
Doctor Golden, who is an S&M practitioner and also a chiropractor, has been taking care of people, mainly women, injured in the pursuit of their pleasure for over two decades. Next ...
There are more than a few bars and hostess clubs where you can have your drinks poured for you by AV actresses. There is also a new bar in Kabukicho by Weekly Playboy, where patrons are served by famous gravure idols.
But until now there hasn't been a bar directly operated by an AV production company. In March, that all changed when a well-known AV maker opened a small girls bar in Kabukicho.
For the uninitiated, a girls bar is a kind of cheap hostess club, where there is a modest cover charge and the drinks are a bit more expensive than usual.
Nikkan Spa recently paid a visit to Vivi, ...
Earlier in the year we wrote about the upcoming porn debut of NMB48 idol Risako Okada. The 21-year-old did a full-frontal photo shoot to celebrate her AV release on the Muteki label under a new performer name, Miko Matsuda.
Okada/Matsuda (aka Risapoyo) was a member of the Osaka-based AKB48 sister group from 2011 to 2012.
She now joins a growing list of former AKB idols who have "graduated" on to porn careers.
Now the first pictures have appeared from here adult video, "Number 01". While the set-up of the AV seems very straightforward indeed and hardly seems to have much of a budget ...
Every few months along comes another one: a sensationalist English-language news wire article about Japanese sex dolls that appears everywhere, eager for clicks and comments.
This time it's an article with the very sensitively headline "Silicone Sally: Japanese men find true love with sex dolls". It comes courtesy of AFP, about physiotherapist Masayuki Ozaki turning to a silicone sex doll, Mayu, when romance in his marriage dried up.
Lonely guy buys sex doll. Hardly news. Goodness knows how AFP found this story or if it's even true. We are naturally somewhat suspicious of someone who ...
Once again we have been trawling some of Japan's postwar history for insights about the sexual development of the nation. Here are some awesome vintage images of classic love hotels.
Fans of love hotels and this blog will immediately spot that this one is the Meguro Emperor, a pioneering love hotel from the 1970s that has since re-opened.
The other two are, apparently, the Ichinomiya London and Olympia hotels.
It was around this time that love hotels started to become very elaborate, adding castle-style "battlements" and turrets. The results are bizarre, lurid and wacky, ...
This video by i-D features interviews with young people who identity as genderless.
The makers say that this "hypnotic youth movement are [sic] rejecting ideas of fashion defining sexuality" and call it "Tokyo's most boundary-pushing scene". The interviews are with four people -- Yutaro, Muyua, Yoshiaki, and Satsuki Nakayama (pictured below) -- who all have quite large followings on social media.
Genderless identity has particularly risen to the fore in the Japanese media recently with the popularity of the model and television personality Ryucheru.
"When I first wore a skirt, my ...
Shocking. Fluorescent. Gaudy. Loud. Vular. Neon. Flashy. Tacky.
There's a lot of epithets that can be applied to this new cosplay style that is like body art on psychedelic drugs, though none of them quite capture it.
Inspired by strange characters from anime, cinema and video games, behold the new Japanese subculture of ishoku-hada.
Certain sections of the Interweb are currently abuzz with breathless talk of this bizarre body painting and cosplay niche, which literally means "unique skin" or "unusual skin".
Like an "alien" version of gyaru, ganguro or yamanba trends, women dress ...
We're suckers for combos. Put two things that we like together and we get a "double-like" feeling.
And so it is with the lovely idol Erina Mano and Tenga. What more is there to say?
We've once again trawled the archives a bit with this one, but a TV drama featuring Erina Mano also had her lying on a bed filled with Tenga onacups, which have seemingly been used.
For good measure, she's also hugging a dutch wife (dakimakura, or hug pillow sex doll), though somewhat disturbingly it has a red mask on it (a traditional oni, or demon). Would that put you off?
We're ...
