Top 1990s porn star Rui Sakuragi now working as Ginza hostess, releases nude photo book

Rui Sakuragi was one of the biggest adult video stars in Japan in the first half of the 1990s. She made her debut in 1989 and then left the industry in 1996 at the peak of her popularity.

In her subsequent career, she was a stripper until the year 2000, and did some acting on TV during those years.

But in the past quarter-century, fans didn’t know what she was up to and rumors swirled that she had passed away.

That silence ended recently.

So what is the now 56-year-old Rui Sakuragi doing today? She’s working as a hostess at a club in Ginza run by another top ex-porn star, Hitomi Kobayashi.

Sakuragi has been a regular at the hostess club El Princess since December last year, working there five nights a week. This led to a fair bit of social and mainstream media buzz, including her first TV appearance in around 25 years.

Moreover, Sakuragi has even returned to her erotic ways — releasing a self-titled nude photo book in January. The publisher no doubt hopes to cash in on the nostalgia of a certain demographic who grew up jerking off to Sakuragi’s videos, which would sell tens of thousands in her heyday.

In the preceding years, Sakuragi recently revealed in an interview in the March 18 issue of Flash, she had moved temporarily to the Kansai region, had worked in agriculture, as a cashier in a supermarket, and even at a warehouse helping to pack and dispatch items. Humble, hourly paid work was not a problem for Sakuragi, who comes from a poor background, but it was physically grueling. “I walked around 30,000 steps a day.”

She also suffered from ulcerative colitis during this time and continues to deal with the condition.

For the foreseeable future, she is continuing to work at the club with her AV senpai Kobayashi. She gets home very late and sleeps until around midday the following day. “I have to get a good night’s sleep to cleanse the booze from my body.” The first thing she does upon waking is sending her customers messages to thank them for coming. Then she gets ready for her next stint at the club. And when she’s not working? She apparently likes to do oil painting.