Call us morbid, but we have a strange fascination with the afterlives of gravure idols.
This is a competitive, cruel industry, one where young women are discarded after two or three years. From gracing the covers of the weekly tabloids like Spa! and, if you're lucky, releasing digital or print photo books, you might descend quickly into obscurity when the editors and people behind the scenes decide to make someone else a star for another brief run.
Given the open secret of the casting couch, it is hardly a giant leap of logic to see why some, if not many, gradols go on to second (or, let's ...
The immensely popular Japanese gravure idol Nanoka (菜乃花) has hit thirty and released a new photo book. And as she enters another decade, so she arrives at the next stage in her career: one which she is initiating with a nude shoot.
It's not hair nude full-frontal territory (yet), but we do get finally to see Nanoka's ass in all its glory and, as far as we know, it's the most naked Nanoka has ever been.
The photo book, her fourth, "NN" came out in Japan on September 27th. In at least two shots from it, Nanoka is butt naked. We hope to update with more scans and images when they leak ...
Japanese gravure idols are mostly famous for one thing: their busts.
Sure, not all of them have giant breasts but the proportion of busty models is pretty high. There are all kinds of things you can do with such breasts, from groping them to raise money for charity to keeping various objects balanced on them.
If you want a way to accurately check and compare gravure idols' various chest sizes, we recommend the Oppai Zukan, or Full-Sized Gravure Idol Breasts Reference Book.
This hefty book features such gravure idols as Nanoka, Eimi Matsushima, Saki Funaoka, Nonoko, Sayaka Onuki, Mayumi ...
BuzzFeed Japan asked some of the top gravure idols to come into the studio and spill some home truths for them.
Each gravure idol was asked to pose with a notepad telling us what their life was really life.
Here is Nanoka, saying "Life is simple." Apparently she spends her days off just sitting around at home.
Rina Hashimoto dispels one of the myths of her job. "I don't enjoy the locations." While it might seem like paradise to fly to Hawaii or other exotic locations for photo shoots, the reality of the job is apparently less glamorous. You spend all day shooting from morning till night, ...
What's better than one gravure idol? Fifty gravure idols!
In June, Weekly Playboy brought together fifty of Japan's top scantily clad bikini models for what must surely be the photo shoot of the year.
How many do you recognise? Many of the hottest gravure ladies are present and correct, including Yuka Kuramochi, Nanoka, Saya Kataoka, Saki Suzuki, Hikaru Aoyama, Hitomi Yasueda, Miko Terada, Aya Hazuki, Rin Tachibana, Yuka Someya, Iroha Yanagi, Ayuka Terada, Ikumi Hisamatsu, Rina Toeda, Fumina Suzuki, and more.
We've included a sampling of the resulting shoot. You can really see the range ...
