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 ...
Mandarake ordered to cease selling adult products for six months
November 16, 2022
/ Tadashi Anahori
Back in May, we reported on the arrests of the head of Japanese secondhand book store chain Mandarake and four of its employees over the sale of sexually explicit old photo books, which the chain apparently sold online and at two of its stores.
Though "hair nude" photo books with full-frontal nudity have been produced and sold by mainstream publishers for decades, the books in question here were so-called "vinyl books," which are older and more obscure -- and less regulated. They constitute a kind of gray zone in terms of adult publications in Japan: hair nude books are "celebrity books" or ...
Remembering Yoko Shimada for Shogun, nude photo books, and sex scenes
July 27, 2022
/ Tadashi Anahori
The Japanese actress Yoko Shimada (島田陽子) has died, aged 69, from complications of colorectal cancer.
She was best known internationally for her English-speaking role in the miniseries Shogun from 1980, adapted from the James Clavell bestseller.
Shimada rose to fame in Japan in the 1970s as an actress and singer, and then capitalized on her role in Shogun and became a star in Japan (though more international roles were few and far between).
But it all came crashing down in the late 1980s, when an affair with the musician Yuya Uchida was exposed by the tabloids and all her work dried ...
Police arrest Mandarake employees over sale of secondhand erotic photo books
May 30, 2022
/ Tadashi Anahori
People have arrested the CEO of famous Japanese secondhand book store chain Mandarake as well as four employees in connection with the sale of obscene material.
Best known for manga but also offering collectibles, doujinshi, and anime toys, Mandarake was selling so-called "vinyl books," a term referring to pornographic photo books from the 1970s and 1980s that showed genitalia. (The "vinyl" part means the plastic that was used to cover the books.)
As regular readers will know, Japan's strange obscenity laws mean it is nominally illegal to show actual genitalia, hence adult video is ...
Retired gravure idol Reiko Nagaoka (Una Shirakawa) makes comeback with nude shoot
January 19, 2022
/ Tadashi Anahori
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, ...
The best Japanese gravure and celebrity nude shoots of 2021
December 29, 2021
/ Tadashi Anahori
The year is drawing to a close: another twelve months packed full of gravure shoots and photo books. But who did the most memorable nude shoot?
Sure, there were plenty of sexy and semi-nude shoots, but who made their nude debuts? Who looked best without their clothes on?
We look at the best nude shoots in 2021 from gravure idols, models, and other celebrities (not porn stars, since going nude is par for the course).
Former Morning Musume idol and singer Maki Goto make a high-profile comeback to live performance and also released a photo book, where she went nude again -- and proved how ...
Retired Japanese porn star Urara Uraraka to release nude pregnant photo book
November 8, 2021
/ Tadashi Anahori
Like us, you may have noticed that Japanese porn star and stripper Urara Uraraka (うららか麗) had been quieter of late, both in terms of AV releases and her social media output.
In fact, she had retired from adult video and the nominal reason came out on November 3: she's now pregnant, due to give birth very soon.
And she's sensibly capitalizing on her new physical circumstances to make a nude photo book with shots of her pregnant body, which she is selling to fans online. Given how many tattoos she famously has on her body, we can only imagine how hot she now looks while ...
Revisiting Asuka Oda’s nude sex scenes in Anticipation
October 6, 2021
/ Tadashi Anahori
Busty gravure idol and actress Asuka Oda (小田飛鳥) released a new photo book -- her fourth -- in the summer.
We are just catching up with some of the developments we missed and decided also to check out her sex scenes in the film Anticipation (2019).
The movie features some great shots of her large breasts and pert nipples, including a sex scene in which she rides a man. In another scene, her breasts are exposed from under her shirt while her skirt is pushed up and a man fingers her aggressively.
Sorry for the poor quality of the screen grabs.
Anticipation, which is ...
Popular busty Japanese YouTuber Powerful Rumi to make porn debut next month as Mirai Asumi
October 5, 2021
/ Tadashi Anahori
The Japanese YouTuber Powerful Rumi (ぱわふるみ), known for her bakunyu "explosive" breasts, is to make her JAV porn debut as Mirai Asumi (明日見未来).
Rumi, whose channel has 140,000 subscribers on YouTube, is known for her videos where largely does various provocative things while dressed in loose-fitting loungewear. She always wears a face mask to protect her identity, though she is clearly hot (masks have the effect of accentuating a woman's eyes, making them popular even pre-pandemic).
Many, if not most, are shot in her home but she also sometimes ventures outdoors, like ...
Highlights from music idol Meisa Nishimoto porn debut
October 1, 2021
/ Tadashi Anahori
We recently reported on the porn debut of name-changing idol Sarina Toyama, aka Sarina Haru, and now working in JAV as Meisa Nishimoto.
Apparently still an active member of the idol group Once a Chance (which just celebrated its first live music event), Nishimoto is also a porn star, a new career that she launched with a full-frontal nude photo shoot a few weeks ago.
Soon after, we got confirmation of her first release (STARSBD-462), which comes out via SOD Star later in October.
Now we finally have some proper preview pictures to share.
The release looks like a standard fuck-on-a-bed ...