As announced earlier in the year, the immensely popular Japanese porn star Yua Mikami is to return in August and her final release has just come out from S1 No. 1 Style. The 147-minute release (SSIS00834) comes out on physical format on August 15, following its streaming release at the end of last week. The JAV stunner turns 30 this month and has enjoyed an eight-year career, which is very long by industry standards. She is also probably the most successful and famous example of a Japanese music idol who switched to adult video; in her case, SKE48, where she was known as Momona ...

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Japan's porn giant Soft on Demand seems finally to have recovered from one of the most bizarre and shocking screw-ups in their history. SOD Land in Kabukicho suddenly closed down in March this year after police discovered it was violating the law on fuzoku ("amusement businesses") establishments, which covers hostess clubs, brothels, and so on. Billed as an "adult theme park," SOD Land allows visitors to meet and interact with actual Japanese porn performers (and others like sex workers and hostesses) in various ways across five floors, including bars and a space for viewing performers in ...

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Japanese politics, a dull place populated by staid old men in gray suits. Right? Think again. Look beyond the geriatric male statesmen and discover a fascinating example of models and celebrities enjoying well-paid second careers. From former gravure idols like Renho and Ayaka Shioyama to nude performance artist Rena Masuyama, there are plenty of instances of women with rather questionable experience moving into politics. The one-time top gradol Chisato Morishita is bidding to be a politician for the ruling conservative party, the Liberal Democratic Party, possibly making her the hottest ...

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Kaho Shibuya was a big name in porn during her time as a performer and she's also a rare example of someone who has managed to retain her fame since retiring from adult video in 2018 by carving out a successful second career. She also takes no prisoners, prepared to spill the beans on the dark side of Japanese porn, and sue a production company for leaking her old videos. Now active as a cosplayer, Twitch streamer, and author, Shibuya speaks English fluently, which has helped her a lot to keep an international profile. She recently sat down with Tokyo Weekender for an interview about her ...

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Last month, we reported on the controversy over a new gravure idol who was supposedly AI-generated but seemed to be just a slightly different version of a flesh-and-blood gradol. The publisher eventually withdrew its much-hyped photo book featuring Ai Satsuki. As we noted in a follow-up post, artificial intelligence has major implications for gravure, making it possible to churn out cheap photo books with almost now overheads (no expensive photo shoots, no model fees, etc.). It has meant the market is currently flooded with cheap or even free photo books. The issue of AI and gravure has ...

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Japan's obscenity laws about not showing genitalia apply to you, even if you are supposedly an amateur and not a professional porn production company churning out DVDs and streaming releases. On June 30, Japanese media showed police giving 21-year-old Yukino Kimura the perp walk. Her crime? She had sold unedited videos on Twitter to people who sent her a message on the platform. Her account was apparently reinya3_, which is still active at the time of writing but has not been updated since early June. The cutie worked by day as a company employee in Kyoto but had a Twitter account ...

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Before we had streaming and downloadable formats, we had Blu-ray and DVD. And before that, back in some period lost to the mists of time -- namely, the 1980s and 1990s -- we have VHS video tapes. The arrival of VHS marked the full birth of the Japanese adult video industry, hence the name. The new format had incredible commercial potential for widespread distribution of content and meant hardcore porn was no longer a niche but an easily accessible, widely consumed form of porn (as opposed to the simulated sex in "pink" sexploitation, whose decline was hastened by AV). VHS was the heyday of ...

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The ero-cosplayer Yuko Haruno (春野ゆこ) will make her porn debut in an adult video that comes out digitally on May 30, followed by a physical release in July. The epic, 217-minute AV production (1STARS00799), filmed in 4K, from SODstar promises to make much of her pale skin and beautiful, massive breasts (supposedly an I cup). The publicity is also emphasizing Haruno's versatility with cosplaying a wide range of characters, which puts her in good stead for different porn scenarios. They say that all newbies looking to break into an industry now need a platform to sell ...

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Let's do a quiz. How well do you know your Japanese porn stars? Can you identify an adult video performer just from close-ups of their body parts? The pics show only key parts of the JAV performer's naked body (namely, breasts, butt, bush, etc.). No faces, natch. The "quiz" has been doing the rounds on the Japanese interwebs recently and we thought we would share it with readers so they can try it for themselves. If we're honest, we think this is quite hard. Scroll slowly to avoid showing the answer before you're ready to check! Here's the first question. So who is it? The answer is ...

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Ah, April. The glorious month of the cherry blossom (depending on where you are in Japan) and new starts, because both the academic and fiscal years begin. During April, youngsters up and down the land enter school or college. It is also the time of year when the fresh intake of corporate hires kick off their careers at the company they chose. These people are typically in their early twenties and straight out of college. Many corporations hold an entrance ceremony of some sorts to welcome the newbies, who sit in formal suits looking forward to becoming corporate drones. In the adult ...

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