Yuriko Yoshitaka’s dad wants her to marry foreigner

We’ve always had a soft spot for Yuriko Yoshitaka, not least because her young debut means she seems to have been with us forever.

She has one of the most recognizable faces in the land, plastered on ads for drinks, banks, and more.

And she remains unmarried, despite being her looks and fame. Or perhaps it’s because of her looks and fame: she may be fussier than others and unwilling to settle down with someone unless they

If so, good for her.

But her father seems to think otherwise. In a bizarre interview with Bunshun last month, Yuriko’s father suggested that his daughter hadn’t married yet because of her devotion to her work.

His solution for her? Marry a foreigner.

Drawing a comparison with actress Shinobu Terajima, who married a Frenchman in 2007, he suggested a foreigner might be more willing to accept her work ethic.

Mentioning that her peers are all already married, her dad might be worried that Yuriko is over the hill now at 34 (turning 35 this year — ripe jukujo territory!) and missing her chance to snag someone.

Incidentally, Yuriko is no nepo baby. Her father apparently runs a convenience store in Tokyo.

Of course, anyone would be lucky to have Yuriko Yoshitaka for a wife. She is quite flat-chested, though, and we wonder if that might be off-putting for a foreigner, though we suspect many of the readers of this blog would be willing to overlook this and step up to do their duty.

She made a breakthrough with a lead role in the film Snakes and Earrings, which famously featured explicit nude sex scenes when she was just 18 or 19 years old. In the erotic drama, she plays a hostess with a self-destructive, masochistic personality who becomes increasingly drawn to tattoos and body piercings. Yuriko shows off her nude breasts and butt, and her co-performer is filmed eagerly licking the former.

If you want to know what she looks like naked, it’s where to go, and it’s why we gratuitously mention her chest (unless she’s changed a lot in that area in the intervening 15 years).

As is common, though, she quickly changed courses and settled into a career of very safe and boring TV dramas that kept her in the public eye, and milking her image as a cutie for TV ad campaigns that made money for her agency.

According to internet rumors and tabloid scoops, her past boyfriends include actor Hiroshi Tamaki in the 2000s, her Snakes and Earrings co-star Kengo Kora in 2015, actors Genki Amakawa and Toma Ikuta, singer Yojiro Noda for several years, male idol Tadayoshi Okura also for several years (ending due to his alleged infidelity with a hostess), and (more recently) Ryo Narita and Kouhei Matsushita.