Haruka Ayase is one of the most famous models and actors in Japan.
Before she made the transition into mainstream acting and modeling, and seemed to appear in almost every TV commercial or brand campaign, Ayase was briefly a gravure idol. She's got the looks for it: a cute, girl-next-door face, slim body, and (by most Japanese standards) large breasts.
This shoot in which she stands alluringly against a window, her body on display except for skimpy swimwear, is one of our all-time favorite gravure pics.
She even once shot some sort of video in a bath, and you can find nude grainy ...
The actor Kyoko Fukada is now 40 years old but just as hot as ever, as her cover shoot for weekly magazine Friday amply demonstrates.
Known for her curvy beach body that she was happy to show off even as she entered her thirties, Kyoko Fukada was long a favorite of gravure magazines and this marks her first such shoot like this in some time.
Though usually the kind of celebrity you would expect to see with a smile on her face, Fukada was diagnosed with adjustment disorder in 2021 and took a break from work for several months. She's now firmly back in the public eye and enjoying quite a ...
In the fast and furious world of gravure, it feels like every month, if not every week, brings a newcomer. Many debut, then quickly disappear. A lucky few endure and build careers.
But every month also seems to bring a gravure comeback of sorts. In mid-April, for instance, we celebrated the return of former AKB48 Haruna Kojima to gravure after years of focusing on fashion retail.
And so we are very pleased to welcome back Rika Adachi, who has recently done a stunning cover shoot for an issue of Weekly Playboy (April 24) with a sunny bikini theme that has us yearning for the summer to kick ...
Ai Shinozaki made a gravure comeback initially in late 2021 and then again in early 2022, and the resulting semi-nude photo book was one of the highlights of the year.
Now aged 30, the famously busty (bakunyu) babe is a very welcome re-entry in our orbit. (In fact, she had been absent so long we presumed she had retired from gravure and entertainment.)
Her 2022 photo book was about as nude as it's possible to be without actually showing tits or ass (besides hints of her butt and plenty of side boob).
She's not resting on her laurels, it seems. Her latest shoot continues her gravure ...
As we were in a bookstore recently perusing the crowded lineup of idol photo books released in the autumn to catch the end-of-year season, we found ourselves returning again and again to the stunning new offering from Yuka Someya.
As regular readers will know, Someya has featured multiple times on this blog.
She has recently established herself as the queen of the hair nude -- the full-frontal nude shoot that is usually allowed in spite of Japan's nominal legal ban on showing genitalia, including bush -- with several such shoots.
Someya is now aged 30 and as sultry and curvy as ever. She ...
Sometimes we see something that makes us feel a bit nostalgic -- and a bit old!
Rika Adachi (足立梨花) was one of our favorite gravure idols about a decade ago, mainly for her nice butt. She made it onto our now-legendary list of "Japanese babes with great asses."
To be honest, we haven't followed all the ins and outs of her modeling and acting career in the years since, though we remember when she was forced to deny having had plastic surgery (which is secretly quite common in Japan).
Well, now Rika Adachi has released a new photo book to mark her thirtieth birthday (what? When did ...
The graduation of various leading members and the restrictions placed on live, in-person events by the pandemic have greatly reduced the presence of AKB48 and its sister groups in popular culture. The groups retain strong followings, of course, but the days when AKB dominated advertising and TV shows seem over.
As such, even the little scandals seem to pass us by. We missed that Yuka Suzuki (鈴木優香) was forced to graduate AKB48 last September due to an alleged romance (oh, the horror!) that first emerged in spring 2021.
Following her ignominious departure from AKB48, Yuka Suzuki ...
Yuka Kuramochi has returned to gravure with her first shoot since she gave birth to a child in 2021.
Kuramochi, who is married to a very successful esports player, chose to make a splash with her comeback. After all, landing a shoot with Yuka Kuramochi alone would be sure to shift copies, but Weekly Playboy elected for a whammy for its May 23 issue.
Joining Kuramochi are Jun Amaki, Fumina Suzuki, Saki Yanase, and Saki Suzuki. So we get five of the most voluptuous ladies in the industry, all in one shoot.
And what a shoot, as the preview images and the behind-the-scenes pics reveal! It's ...
A reader recently chided us for not writing about the Yumi Sugimoto's return to gravure (though we did post pics on tumblr). The truth is, even with "gravure comebacks," there are simply too many idols to keep track of, let alone write about in detail on these digital pages.
But here's one comeback that is certainly worthy of note.
Yuka Hirata (38) made a very welcome return to our lives with her first Weekly Playboy gravure shoot in 14 years, first published in the March 19 issue of the magazine.
Now on the cusp of 40 and steeped in jukujo territory like a finely aged wine, the former ...
Welcome back, Shizuka Nakamura. We've missed you.
We can't think of the last time that we saw a new shoot by the former top gradol. Thankfully, building on the momentum of her role in the high-profile Netflix adultery drama Fishbowl Wives, in which she appears in a sex scene, Shizuka Nakamura has returned to her first career: gravure.
Shizuka Nakamura appears in the March 25 issue of weekly magazine Friday with a nine-page, winter-onsen-themed shoot. Now aged 33 and as a slim as ever (if anything, a bit slimmer than before?), the Kyoto native has matured into a sensual jukujo. (If we're ...
