Sakura Ando shows off gorgeous body in Shoplifters nude scene

Last year, Hirokazu Kore-eda’s film Shoplifters attracted a lot of critical buzz for its socially engaged nuances and rightfully won it several big awards and nominations.

Call us boring. We couldn’t help but take a different interest in the film: for its brief but welcome nude scene with the lovely Sakura Ando.

Ando is shown lounging naked on her stomach on the floor, displaying her slinky body and beautiful tanned skin. We don’t get to see much flesh, just her buttocks and a flash of her breast as she quickly turns over to cover herself up.

Want to see more? Then you will be pleased to hear that this was not Sakura Ando’s nude debut. We also know of her nude sex scenes in the 2015 film adaptation of the Banana Yoshimoto novel Asleep (Shirakawa yofune) and it seems like she’s stripped for some other roles, too.

More visually inventive, though, was this steamy (as in, bathtub-steamy) nude photo shoot she once did.

The 33-year-old Ando was long the darling of small dramas in Japan but has now broken out into mainstream success, in part thanks to Shoplifters but more importantly her starring role in the current NHK Asadora morning drama series, Manpuku.

All this fame means she is less likely to take challenging roles in edgy dramas — and that almost certainly means no more nudity or sex scenes. Well, we can but hope.

Incidentally, Ando is related to Inukai Tsuyoshi, a former prime minister of Japan, and her sister, Momoko, is an acclaimed film director. Quite a family.