It's no secret that the Tokyo Kinky team has a thing for Mariya Nagao.
The former AKB48 hottie now works as a model, actress, and general TV celebrity.
And though it's hardly a surprise that a woman of her age, beauty, and social opportunities would not have lovers, we can't help but feel a bit peeved and sad at the news that broke recently about her new boyfriend.
Apparently, Mariyagi is in a relationship with a former Kabukicho host, having met through a mutual friend.
Fresh off releasing a ravishing photo book earlier this year, she's been spotted by weekly tabloid Shukan Bunshun in ...
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 ...
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 ...
Former AKB48 idol Nana Owada is already celebrating her tenth anniversary in the entertainment world, even though she's still just 23 years old.
Her new photo book marking her decade-long career, encounter, comes out June 15 and the previews are setting the internet on fire.
One image features a curvy Nana Owada standing naked in a bath with her arms covering her breasts.
In other shots, she shows off her naked back, including a great pic where she's lying nude on a bed, though sadly only the top of her butt is actually visible.
In another photo, she's sitting nude on a bed with ...
Just a few days ago, we were celebrating the return to gravure of Rika Adachi and ex-AKB idol Haruna Kojima, and now comes news of another gravure homecoming (of sorts). Clearly 'tis the season for it. The weather is certainly hot enough, at least in Tokyo.
Another AKB48 alumna who has moved on to acting and fashion modeling in subsequent years, Mariya Nagao, is dipping her very delightful toe back into gravure.
Though she has continued to do lingerie shoots, she doesn't do full-blown gravure as much as she used to do (though she did do a shoot for Friday in February and for Spa in ...
The former AKB48 idol Haruna Kojima has returned to gravure with her first shoot in six years.
She appears in a cover shoot for Young Magazine's May 1 issue, which went on sale this week.
As you might expect, the return of the model -- now aged 34, well into luscious jukujo territory -- known for her pale skin and slinky body has generated reams of media coverage. The magazine shoot, which was done in Okinawa, features Kojiharu in alluring, summery swimwear.
We've included some highlights here.
Her last bikini gravure shoot was for Young Magazine in 2017. The comeback is ...
Once one of the most famous idols in Japan, Mariko Shinoda has divorced her husband of four years. The 37-year-old announced the news on Instagram.
A former AKB48 singer who later branched out into acting, Shinoda married an entrepreneur three years her junior in 2019 and gave birth to a daughter in 2020.
As reported on this blog, rumors emerged last year that her marriage was on the rocks due to her alleged adultery. Her husband apparently took their child away from her for a time.
The divorce follows a mediation process due to the alleged infidelity. In Japan, the aggrieved spouse can ...
Hot on the heels of the revelations over Mariko Shinoda's marital problems, allegedly caused by her infidelity, comes news of the nuptial dilemmas of another former AKB48 idol.
Kana Kobayashi is now aged 31 and seemed to have it all. Last March, she announced that she had married a famous investor and given birth to a child.
But then on January 16, she announced on social media that she was already divorced.
In fact, her husband had "another wife." If that wasn't bad enough, he was arrested in October on charges of investment fraud, sparking an online backlash against her.
Her husband ...
AKB48's power has waned of late and it takes a scandal to make us sit up and take notice (though the recent sex scandals involving Nana Okada and Yuiri Murayama, culminating in the former quitting the group, added a little frisson to an otherwise dull media landscape).
Instead, we continue to follow what happens to the many members of the supergroup after they graduate. Though the majority vanish into the post-idol ether, a lucky few carve out careers in acting or TV, some keep on doing modeling and gravure work, and a small yet notable number move into porn.
Makiho Tatsuya ...
This week came the news that Nana Okada would graduate AKB48 after she was found to have -- shock horror! -- a boyfriend (actor Hiroki Ino).
The supergroup's numbers of music idols are vast and most disappear without a trace. While it's well known that some work in porn after graduating, a luckier few go on to forge careers as models, actors, or tarento (talents) -- general dogsbody celebrities.
Nishino seems to fall into the latter. Since leave AKB48 in 2017, she has continued to appear sporadically on TV, such as one show in which she flaunted her cute but out-of-shape body (in contrast ...
