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 ...
Back in May, we reported on gravure veteran Rina Koike's photo book marking her 30th birthday and two decades in the industry.
Having begun her career as a child actor and junior idol, Rina Koike is someone who seems to have been around throughout all the many, many years we have done this blog.
Things had been quiet for her in recent years (so much so that we assumed she had retired) but she has switched agencies and her new photo book (and reaching that milestone) has led to a flurry of attention.
More preview pics from the her upcoming photo book, crave, have appeared in the gravure ...
Actress and model Ayame Misaki (水崎綾女) has been part of our lives since the early 2010s (this was when her career began to really pick up but we were slow to catch on -- she actually made her gravure debut way back in 2005).
Now 35 years old, she gets better and better with age.
As she has got older, she has gotten more beautiful and more athletic. Her sun-kissed body is now very voluptuous and muscular, with a finely shaped butt and waist that looks like she's ready to take charge of things in the bedroom.
Her latest photo book is glossy eyes, which came out from Kodansha a few ...
Earlier this year, we wrote about the surprise yet very, very welcome return to gravure of two major stars now in their late thirties: Aya Ueto and Haruka Ayase.
Indeed, as the likes of Yoko Kumada amply demonstrate, you can continue a career in gravure into your forties.
While the industry is dominated by ladies in their twenties or late teens, we like to see veterans and survivors in there, and love a good comeback story.
But even we were surprised by the return of Erika Yamakawa to gravure after a 20-year break.
Now aged 42 and the mother of two children, the model made her gravure ...
Of all the points of entry into gravure, we are well used to women side-stepping into the industry from other jobs like music idols, fashion models, ring girls, race queens, and convention booth companions.
But geisha?!
Rino (莉乃) is a 22-year-old from Shizuoka who moved to Kyoto at 16 to become a maiko, or apprentice geisha. She worked in the old capital as a maiko in the Miyagawacho district until the age of 20.
She has now made her debut in the rather less glamorous but more modern world of gravure with a shoot for Weekly Friday. And in a very competitive industry in which new idols ...
Earlier in the week, we sang the praises of TV announcer Kasumi Mori, loving her sultry looks and intelligence.
Now comes the gravure debut of someone who definitely has brains.
Asa Kamiya (神谷明采) has done her first swimwear gravure shoot, which appears in the current issue (December 22) of Weekly Friday. Has Christmas come early this year?
She is a fourth-year student in the economics faculty at the University of Tokyo, regarded as the most elite college in Japan. She won the Miss Todai beauty contest in 2020 and was Miss of Miss 2021, essentially crowning her as the most ...
When Kasumi Mori posed for Anan magazine earlier in the year, she proved that female Japanese TV newscasters and announcers are just as sexy as gravure and fashion models (for more proof, see Akane Takiyama and Minami Tanaka -- now if only Mayuko Wakuda would go freelance and answer our prayers with a lingerie shoot!), and that Anan magazine remains one of the great producers of sensual shoots (as our summary of a decade of Anan celebrity shoots amply demonstrates).
The freelance announcer is pushing on with her career as a model.
The 28-year-old former TV Tokyo announcer who graduated from ...
The model, occasional actress, and former AKB48 music idol Mariya Nagao continues to get more alluring the older she gets.
Slinky. Cheeky. Sexy. Mariya-chan has got it all in abundance.
On the verge of 30 (she hits that magic number in March next year), she has thankfully not gone the way of most AKB idols and disappeared into the ether, but still fields regular invites to do gravure photo shoots, model jaw-dropping lingerie, and publish photo books.
In recent months, she has been in the gossip columns because the tabloids found out that she has a boyfriend who is a former host.
In early ...
Actor and model Ayame Misaki is continuing her gravure comeback, which began in earnest in 2021.
This followed her divorce and roles in more serious films, after an early career in gravure and somewhat more frivolous TV roles.
After the success of her sexy, summery photo book earlier this year, she is returning in the autumn with a new photo book in Kodansha.
Some previews of the as-yet-unnamed publication appeared in the September 8 issue of weekly magazine Friday. Not much else is known at this stage, other than it's shot by Akinori Ito. Based on the quality of these previews, we can't ...
The actor Kyoko Fukada is now 40 years old but just as hot as ever, as her cover shoot for weekly magazine Friday amply demonstrates.
Known for her curvy beach body that she was happy to show off even as she entered her thirties, Kyoko Fukada was long a favorite of gravure magazines and this marks her first such shoot like this in some time.
Though usually the kind of celebrity you would expect to see with a smile on her face, Fukada was diagnosed with adjustment disorder in 2021 and took a break from work for several months. She's now firmly back in the public eye and enjoying quite a ...
