It seems in the TikTok and Instagram age, the usual route to stardom is not (just) through working as a fashion model, music idol, gravure idol, or something similar.
You can first build up your own following as an influencer on your own platform and then opt to move into lingerie modeling with a photo book.
The influencer Amichi (あみち) is proving that approach can work: with her 190,000 followers on Instagram and a million on TikTok, she is now set to release her first photo book after already spending much of her teens and high school years online.
The previews from the debut ...
The Economist recently reported on the Japan's porn industry as it continues to respond to the coercion scandals that (belatedly) came out in the 2010s, and the legislation that politicians have introduced, in part, to tackle the issue.
Claiming that Japan's porn industry is "coming out of the shadows," the article claims that the 2022 law targeting coercion and allowing performers to withdraw from contracts brought the industry out of a gray zone. We are not sure that's fully true. The industry still operates in murky waters, both in a good and bad sense, and the new law was ultimately ...
Earlier this week, we reported on the latest scandal to hit former Morning Musume member Ai Kago.
A more recent member of the idol group is Haruka Kudo, who is 23 now but joined Morning Musume when she was less than 12 and stayed until late 2017. This obviously meant a large chunk of her teens were spent in the group, which is not a normal way to grow up by any means, but she seems to have recovered well and is now forging a career primarily as an actress.
A few weeks ago, we eagerly wrote about her scenes in the TV Asahi drama around 1/4 in which she strips down to her bra and touches ...
Last week, we reported on the sexual assault that Korean music artist DJ Soda suffered at a music festival in Osaka during a part of her performance on August 13 in which she got close to fans.
Since DJ Soda first went public (initially to her five million followers on Instagram) with her distress over the assault, the case has ignited a furore in Japan and elsewhere.
Netizens in Japan -- who tend to be male, nationalistic, anti-Korean, and not known for their sympathetic attitude toward women -- have accused her of being anti-Japanese because she claimed it was the first such ...
The travails of former music idol Ai Kago continue.
Once a member of long-running female idol group Morning Musume -- she was part of the same generation as Rika Ishikawa and Nozomi Tsuji -- she departed the group in 2004, joining other groups like Hello! Project.
Such young female idols are forced to maintain a wholesome image but this was hard for Kago, who clearly has a rebellious streak. She was suspended from her agency for underage smoking (oh, the horror!) in 2006 and dismissed the next year.
In 2009, she had an affair with an actor and his wife sued them both. In the early 2010s, ...
It's one of the industry's open secret that most Japanese music and gravure idols are poorly paid. While it's natural to assume that a struggling musician or an underground (chika) idol has a day job, the agencies and management for other kinds of idols are very controlling, and prefer their idols to be available 24/7 despite not paying them a living wage.
It leads to scandals sometimes, when the compensated dating that many idols do gets exposed. Such a scandal led to the end of Shoko Takasaki's gravure career in 2015 -- and the birth instead of her porn career, where she enjoyed immese ...
Last week, Japan was hit by Typhoon Lan. While Tokyo just suffered a bit of rain and wind, the west side of Honshu had more serious weather conditions, and public transport ground to a halt. And before that, Typhoon Khanun hit Kyushu and Okinawa. 'Tis the season.
One small consequence that nonetheless caught our attention, though, was for the sacred wooden phallus at Inyoseki Shrine in Miyazaki.
It was washed away by the typhoon and is reportedly floating in a small lake by a dam!
So if you encounter a giant cock in the water, don't panic and try to get it back to where it belongs. Your ...
Japanese rope bondage master Osada Steve has launched the World Kinbaku Federation, a new organization that "strives to protect and preserve authentic kinbaku as practiced in Japan."
Osada notes the rich and layered history of kinbaku (also known as shibari), which traces its origins back to the use of rope in the martial arts and developed into forms of rope torture and, in the postwar period, a type of erotic and BDSM practice. Thanks to the internet, kinbaku is now globally known and practiced, and Osada's own proactive efforts with his online platforms have definitely played a strong ...
VR Instant Box Girls stars Ichika Matsumoto and, as the name suggests, is intended for watching with a VR device like the Oculus.
As far as we can tell, this is a new series of AV by SOD Create and we presume will include other entries with different stars.
Released on August 7, the 87-minute AV (13dSDVR01282) has an eye-catching cover with Matsumoto as a female action figure in a blister pack with accessories like lubricant and vibrators. Needless to say, the action figure is naked and doesn't come with any costume parts!
This is recreated in life-size in the AV, which is filmed in a ...
Firefighters in Japan have a reputation for being pretty macho and sexually active.
This reputation is arguably not unearned, as past scandals have shown. Remember the hunky firefighters who stripped off for charity?
Or the Osaka firefighters who got suspended for appearing in porn?
Or the male and female firefighters in Nagoya who were caught having sex at work?
Now apparently comes the news that two male firefighters in Ichomiya, Aichi Prefecture, have been caught working a side job.
What's the rumpus? Well, the scandal -- and why it got reported in the news -- is that their side ...
