She promised. She delivered. Now this is what we call a comeback -- and a way to celebrate entering your thirties in style.
As teased in January, veteran gravure idol Ai Shinozaki has returned to what she does best.
And now that her new photo book, "IDEA," is out in Japan from publisher Kodansha, we can share the highlights. Fans have been waiting over four years for a new Ai Shinozaki photo book. They won't be disappointed.
It features a milky-bath shoot that is about as nude as you can get without showing actual nudity. Ai-chan is famous for her huge bakunyu breasts -- hey, this is ...
One of the regular themes of this blog is the after-lives of gravure idols, models, adult video performers, and so on. What happens after they retire? What can do they do after their time -- often only brief -- in the limelight?
We had Reiko Nagaoka (永岡怜子) on our radar for a while in this regard, because she presents an interesting example. And then her story took an intriguing twist recently and we felt it was time to share.
She first worked in gravure in the 2010s under a different name: Una Shirakawa (白川卯奈).
Shen then switched to Reiko Nagaoka in around 2016, ...
She's back. And though in the interim, there have been thousands of Japanese gravure and music idols to keep us more than entertained, we didn't realize how much we missed the slinky charms of former SDN48 idol Serina (芹那) until we saw her again.
And we see a lot of her this time.
Since in her first photo book release in 10 years, Serina has gone semi-nude -- showing off her more mature and experienced, 36-year-old body.
She graduated SDN48 -- remember, the sexier version of AKB48? -- way back in 2012, after which we heard little about her.
Now she's making a jukujo comeback with a ...
It always feels good to welcome back an old favorite.
The gravure idol Ayame Misaki was a regular on this blog in the early 2010s. But then she got married in 2016 (only to divorce the following year) and also started working as a "serious" actress, landing a role in a film by art-house auteur Naomi Kawase.
But she didn't forget her gravure roots, even if her days of doing nude scenes in low-budget movies are sadly behind her.
Now aged 32 and teetering on the edge of youth and jukujo territory in the most alluring of ways, Misaki made a gravure comeback in late May with a shoot for the ...
Former NMB48 idol Rina Kondo (近藤里奈) has delighted fans by slipping off her clothes and lying nude on a bed, her modesty preserved only by a slinky pair of panties.
The 24-year-old has released a digital photo book in which she shows off her sweet girl-next-door features, but with a healthy degree of sex appeal thanks to her naked back. Who says cute girls cannot also be sexy?
Intended to preview and promote the digital photo book release, the gravure shoot was published in an issue of Weekly Playboy in late June -- her first appearance in the magazine in eight ...
A drugs scandal has spelled the end of many celebrities' careers in Japan. Only a lucky few have managed to crawl back into the limelight and it took a lot of time.
As we blogged in late March, the gyaru model and tarento Yukipoyo (Yuki Kimura) seemed to run into an insurmountable snag in her burgeoning career when her apparent boyfriend was busted for drugs -- with her in attendance.
The Japanese-Filipino recently made a tearful apology on TV and, even more effectively, landed a new promotional gig with a gym chain and launched a photo book with even more provocative shots than before ...
People come to gravure from different paths. Not all gradols start off at teenagers fresh to the industry and willing to do anything.
Some dip their elegant toes into the waters of gravure when the fancy takes them, having already establishing themselves as entertainers, singers, or actors. (By contrast, some quickly build strong mainstream careers as actors and would like us to forget the bikini shoots they did when they were 18.)
The former figure skater Mai Asada (older sister of Mao Asada) is one such example of the former. After competing at the international level in the 2000s, she ...
We've said it before and we'll say it again: it's the older ladies who know how to sex things up.
The tarento and actress Chiharu Niiyama (新山千春) has released her first gravure shoots in -- yes, this is quite a gap -- 20 years!
Now aged 40, Niiyama last posed two decades ago. Last's do a before-and-after.
Here is what she looks like now, featured in a recent issue of weekly magazine FLASH.
And here is what she looked like 20 years ago, in 1998.
This is her again in the magazine FLASH but in May last year.
Now that she is firmly in the jukujo "mature" stage of ...
Earlier this year we wrote about the comeback photo book featuring 40-year-old model Asami Kumakiri (熊切あさ美).
Even after entering her fifth decade, the jukujo beauty still looks stunning with her sun-kissed, well-toned body, which she shows off in the modest yet sensual shoot. The appropriately named "Bare Self" is her first photo book in 16 years and has enjoyed good sales.
Now we have more images from that photo book to share as well as a semi-nude photo shoot from a weekly magazine that Asami Kumakiri did recently.
We've also included some images from a 2021 calendar that went ...
The actress Mao Miyaji is to release a new photo book, her first in 10 years.
Aisansan (roughly, Bright Encounter) comes out at the end of December, with preview shots already published in the weekly magazine Friday.
Now aged 36 and firmly entering jukujo (MILF) territory, Mao Miyaji is something of an industry veteran.
After a string of major roles on TV in the 2000s, her career has been quieter for several years. She married a man seven years her senior in 2017.
She has done semi-nude photo shoots before (like below), where she showed off her slender body and butt, though her ...
