Celebrating the fortieth anniversary of top gravure magazine Weekly Friday, the Grademy Award was announced last autumn and votes collected online to find what was billed as Asia's top gradol.
Almost all of the 232 candidates were Japanese, though, so the "Asian" claim was slightly disingenuous. But quibbles aside, the public votes have been counted and the results -- and awards -- finally announced online earlier last week.
The top prize -- billed as Most Valuable Gradol -- went to leading gravure idol Ina Enohara.
Best Newcomer (also billed as Best Gradol Debut) was shared by ...
Here's some very good news for fans of gravure idol and actress Yuno Ohara, and we know that there are hundreds of thousands of them out there.
The 25-year-old gradol has just released her fourth photo book, which marks her fifteenth anniversary as an idol (she began her career as a dancer way back in 2009.
Titled √25 and published on February 7 by Shogakukan, it's her most nude release to date.
And what's really interesting is that the model teamed up with Okinawan actress Fumi Nikaido for the photo book.
The 30-year-old Nikaido is an established photographer in her own right, ...
The gravure idol and actress Ayano Sumida has released a statement about inappropriate physical contact at a launch event she recently held.
On January 27, Sumida posted on social media about "contact" with someone that wasn't included in the "perks" that attendees had purchased.
The incident took place on January 25 at a launch event for her third DVD, Secret Paradise. She was coy about the exact details and circumstances, but we are assuming that there was some degree of physical contact that was inappropriate or not allowed (perhaps a hug or attempted hug).
"Should such cases arise, I ...
An Anzu is advertised as a former gravure idol who has made the switch to adult video.
These cases are actually quite common and sometimes it's just marketing guff, or -- as recently with Kanna Seno -- the initial gravure "career" was already planned as a publicity boost for the AV career.
An Anzu does seem to have worked in gravure, but either under another name or without much success. We could find some info on her first image DVD, released last July, but not much else.
Boasting I-cup breasts, it's not difficult to see why 20-year-old An Anzu would appeal to porn producers.
Her ...
When you're languishing behind bars, there's probably a lot of things you miss from your life on the outside. Nice good and booze, for a start. Sex and intimacy too.
No doubt you'd find yourself thinking a lot about hot girls. Without a phone or access to the internet, you're probably starved of stimulation in this regard, but perhaps the occasional magazine or newspaper might provide glimpses of attractive models to give your fantasies food for thought.
And how about a letter from a gravure idol?
Chihiro Midorikawa is a 31-year-old gradol who won the Miss Tokyo Sports Grand Prize in ...
Weekly Playboy has announced the top gravure idols of the year.
The winners of the Gravure Japan Award were Hina Kikuchi and Cocoro Toyoshima (joint winners of Grand Prize).
Leyla Ikeda and Ina Enohara were the joint winners of Best Newcomer.
No one who has followed the gravure scene in 2024 will be so surprised by these winners, especially the Grand Prize winners. All have been a dominant presence in gravure magazines this year.
Best Work was awarded to Yuka Iguchi, the voice actress in her late thirties who has made a big splash in gravure this year.
Best Photo Book went ...
We love a good comeback story at Tokyo Kinky. And we especially love comebacks that defy mainstream expectations about women and beauty.
Why shouldn't older women still be sex symbols? A year ago, we wrote about Fumie Nakajima's image DVDs that prove a woman can still look great in her mid-fifties.
Now here's another 55-year-old Japanese woman who returned to our lives.
Reiko Kato was something of a legend in the later 1980s and early 1990s. She has answered our Christmas wishes and come back to gravure with her first such shoot in 26 years.
Kato's past photo book and shoots -- often ...
In Japanese idol world (gravure, AV, and music), plastic surgery is something of an open secret. The occasional models and idols who admit to it -- Haruka Kodama being a recent one, as is porn star Ichika Mogami -- are exceptions that prove the rule, so to speak.
Formerly known as Tenka Hashimoto, Tenchim (てんちむ) is a 31-year-old Chinese-Japanese tarento and model, and a rare example of a celebrity who openly admits to having had surgery on her breasts.
In 2021, she made a comeback after a double scandal that saw her career as a model and tarento derailed, so much so that she took to ...
The internet recently went bonkers over the arrival of former Morning Musume idol Maki Goto's nipples, not least because she is almost 40 and it might be her last hurrah.
But a younger star, 25-year-old Rui Shido (紫藤るい), has set a precedent for doing nudity early on her career with her new photo shoot, which appears in Weekly Friday.
The gravure idol used to be known as Yuuri Rukawa, under which name she worked as a junior idol from the age of eight.
She is also a former cram school teacher, though her shoot reveals assets that surely would have distracted her students, ...
Who's your favorite gravure idol? Who do you like to see grace the covers of the tabloid magazines every month?
These are the questions constantly running through our minds on an almost daily basis -- and we're clearly not alone.
If you want to let the world know which lady you love best, you can now do so via a contest run by gravure magazine Weekly Friday.
The Grademy Award seeks to find Asia's top gradol. Celebrating the fortieth anniversary of Friday, voting is now open online via the dedicated website.
Friday is taking a broad definition of gradol -- basically anyone who does ...
