You may never have heard of Marie Tachibana, but pretty much everyone in Kabukicho seems to have heard of her. Perhaps the first thing to remark about her is that she is biracial (her father is American). The second is that she comes from a Christian family (that father was a missionary) -- and a big family at that, with seven siblings. Instead of pursuing the conventional academic path, none of the children went to high school. Marie went to volunteer in India when she was 15, for instance. If you were following J-Pop closely in the 2000s, you might have already seen Marie Tachibana ...

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In the age of #MeToo, the job of the intimacy coordinator in film and television has risen to prominence in the West. What about Japan? With the recent scandals over the likes of directors Sion Sono and Hideo Sakaki, documentary filmmaker Yu Kaneko, and actor Houka Kinoshita, concern over sexual predators and harassment is higher than ever (albeit much more belated than in the United States and Europe). Intimacy coordinators do exist, though are a rare species indeed. Gendai Media recently published a two-part interview with Momoko Nishiyama, one of only two professional intimacy ...

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Kinbaku (shibari) rope bondage sensei Steve Osada, formerly known as the photographer Dr D Vice, is the inheritor of the Osada name and tying style (Osada-ryu) from Eikichi Osada. The late master is one of the people responsible for making kinbaku known in the mainstream. He staged his first kinbaku performance at a ballet school in Asagaya, Tokyo, in 1965, which ushered the previously hidden world of rope bondage into the open. He subsequently moved his performance act to the strip show venue circuit in the late 1970s. In the 1980s, he did many shows with pink movie legend Hiromi Saotome, ...

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About two years ago, we published something about busty gravure idol Hikaru Aoyama's semi-nude photo book debut, and it was an unexpectedly popular post. There has been a kind of subtle shift in the industry away from the bakunyu mega-bust gradols toward more slimmer beauties like Kazusa Okuyama and Risa Yukihira, though ladies like Hikaru Aoyama, Jun Amaki, and, more recently, Aoi Fujino, prove that large jugs are still a hit. Aoyama and her I-cup breasts are certainly still going strong, as a new shoot amply demonstrates. The 29-year-old, who is also part of a five-member gravure music ...

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Turning notoriety into profit is an age-old trick, and 31-year-old YouTuber Yu Hirose has done it. After the sexy YouTuber, who boasts over 450,000 subscribers, got arrested for public indecency for live-streaming nude sex acts on FC2, she has made a comeback. And she's decided to go the whole hog by doing porn. Her debut, a 131-minute AV (LZDQ00025) from Lezre!, came out on August 20 (streaming) and August 23 (physical release). She is credited by her online name, Yu Hirose (広瀬ゆう). Form the looks of things, she stays masked throughout proceedings, which seem to involve a bit of ...

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People like to bang on about the supposed Protestant work ethic, but one of the first things you notice about Japan when you visit or live here is how seriously locals take their jobs. They work (or are pressured to work) very long hours. In general, this is not a good thing, though it does at least foster a real commitment to professionalism and providing good service. But there's dedication to service and then there's dedication to service. And wildly popular Japanese porn star Eimi Fukada is very much all about providing fan service. She recently held a 24-hour free hugs event for her ...

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We are not as obsessed with haafu models and actors as the Japanese fashion world and mainstream media seems to be, but we do love certain biracial celebrities. One of them is British-Japanese Sonoya Mizuno, who has carved out an impressive career first as a dancer and lingerie model, and then as a serious actor in both film and television. She has a nude sex scene in the new HBO TV series House of the Dragon. She shows off her butt in several shots during the scene (which you can find in episode one of the Game of Thrones prequel) as another character has sex with her behind, plus a bit of ...

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As we get older, we appreciate the charms and beauty of older women more. But it's far from the case that we ignored jukujo during our own salad days. Far from it, we have long sung the praises of Japanese cougars and MILF on these digital pages, as regular readers will know. A jukujo (roughly, "mature woman") is rather loosely defined, and is often applied liberally to any woman past her "prime" (i.e., her twenties). This is nebulous, of course, and most Japanese women in their thirties would shirk from the label, though various celebrities have embraced it and turned it into their whole ...

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It's not just top businessmen and politicians who frequent the pricey hostess bars of Ginza and elsewhere. Male celebrities also have expensive tastes, including spending time with the attractive younger ladies who (as long as you keep buying them over-priced drinks) will pretend to find your conversation interesting and hint that they might be willing to sleep with you. However, large consumption of alcohol and the sense of privilege that comes from paying for a woman's time can lead to trouble. One of Japan's most famous and popular actors, Teruyuki Kagawa, was forced to apologize on ...

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Sometimes, things do have a happy ending. When AKB48's Minami Minegishi shaved her head back in 2013 to apologize for a sex scandal, it prompted immense controversy over the control that management has over idols' private/person lives, and sparked headlines around the world. Her tearful video, head shaven like a nun, was painful to watch (though images of Miichan seeming to pose happily for photos with her peers either just before or after suggested to some that the video was purely performative). As a 20-year-old, she had to undergo a traumatic and humiliating experience in public just for ...

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