Last month, we reported on the controversy over a new gravure idol who was supposedly AI-generated but seemed to be just a slightly different version of a flesh-and-blood gradol. The publisher eventually withdrew its much-hyped photo book featuring Ai Satsuki.
As we noted in a follow-up post, artificial intelligence has major implications for gravure, making it possible to churn out cheap photo books with almost now overheads (no expensive photo shoots, no model fees, etc.). It has meant the market is currently flooded with cheap or even free photo books.
The issue of AI and gravure has ...
Over four years ago, the media in Japan and globally went bananas about a Japanese man who "married" a virtual character.
These stories are catnip to editors who love "sexless Japan" and "wacky Japan" content. The tale of Akihiko Kondo and his love for popular Vocaloid idol Hatsune Miku was too much to resist, and the world lapped it up.
For little discernible reason, Kondo (who is now 40) is back in the news.
The Mainichi Shimbun sat down for a fresh interview with him and find out how his "marriage" is going. (The newspaper also published a follow-up story in January 2022.) Apparently, ...
Japan's obscenity laws about not showing genitalia apply to you, even if you are supposedly an amateur and not a professional porn production company churning out DVDs and streaming releases.
On June 30, Japanese media showed police giving 21-year-old Yukino Kimura the perp walk.
Her crime? She had sold unedited videos on Twitter to people who sent her a message on the platform. Her account was apparently reinya3_, which is still active at the time of writing but has not been updated since early June.
The cutie worked by day as a company employee in Kyoto but had a Twitter account ...
We recently wrote about AKB48 idol Mion Mukaichi's somewhat surprising decision to do a semi-nude photo book while still a member of the supergroup.
As we mentioned in our post, most music idols wait until graduating before posing semi-nude or nude. And in fact, they are often forced to do something like that to build any sort of career in a crowded marketplace.
A case in point is the ravishing Satomi Kaneko, who carved out a name for herself as a provocative, sensual model after a brief stint in AKB48 in 2007.
She started doing gravure in 2014 after an acting role in a sexploitation movie ...
Everything changes, except the avant-garde, or so the saying goes. Now in Japan, perhaps it's rather nothing changes, except for sexual mores.
For years, Japan seemed to lag behind other major nations in the Global North in terms of access to emergency birth control or even use of contraception.
Basically, people just don't use condoms, inspired by the Fuji-sized mountains of porn they consume in which condoms are never seen (but generally are used), leading to lots of shotgun weddings (it seems like most celebrities seem to marry this way) and a STDs/STIs crisis, especially syphilis -- in ...
With music sales down, fewer meet-and-greet events like before, and far less general public interest in its current members (which means fewer TV appearances and fewer lucrative advertising campaign contracts), AKB48 is in, well, perhaps not quite a state of decline but certainly a period of less prominence in popular culture compared to the glory days of the early 2010s.
Is this why its members are doing semi-nude photo shoots even before graduating the group? The AKB overlords used to be very exact about how much flesh the members could show, determined to keep things tantalizing and ...
Unlike the members of AKB48 and Nogizaka46 and all their sister groups, the fine young ladies of the somewhat tamer Momoiro Clover Z have not indulged in gravure shoots during their long careers as performers.
Now as they edge toward 30 -- a significant milestone for music idols -- and even start to get married, it seems even less likely.
Or so you would think.
Reni Takagi, a member of the color-coordinated group, announced her marriage last year, though thankfully not her retirement from the group.
She is now set to release her first solo photo book on August 29 at the ripe age of 30. ...
Miri Hanai (花井美里) turns 39 this October but these recent photos prove that she's as alluring as ever.
The mature gravure idol and musician has firmly entered jukujo territory, and though she's no longer enjoying the success of her twenties, when she pumping out photo books several times a year at one point during the mid-2000s, she's still got her fans and released a new photo book in 2021.
Known for her busty looks (a J or H cup, depending on the marketing), she made her debut in 2003. That's a 20-year career, a milestone few in her competitive industry achieve, and one that ...
Frequent porn crossovers, where female celebrities from other walks of life (music, acting, sports, etc.) move into adult video, mean the JAV industry is populated by quite a varied roster of talent.
Likewise, established porn stars sometimes branch out into other fields like mainstream acting and even writing (several porn performers are novelists, for example, such as Mana Sakura).
But off the top of our head, this is the first instance we know of a JAV star who is also a translator.
Riasu Mizutani (水谷梨明日) made her porn debut in April on Moodzy, but her regular job is as a ...
As regular readers will know, Osada Steve is a true rope master who practices the Osada-ryu school of shibari (kinbaku) bondage and is something of a legend in the Japanese BDSM scene.
We interviewed Osada-sensei about six months ago to find out more about his amazing career, how he entered the secret world of shibari rope bondage, and his insights on the future of kinbaku.
Now he has let us know about a new project he recently launched: a "toy salon" where top-quality Japanese female pleasure items can be tested under the expert guidance of trained counselors.
In addition to the various ...
