The Japanese Porn Industry Unmasked: An Insider’s Guide by Kaho Shibuya

Kaho Shibuya became a sports reporter covering professional baseball after graduating from college, but found the field of sports journalism to be a male-dominated world that was unwelcoming to women. Looking for other work that would satisfy her insatiable curiosity and provide her with a novel experience, she responded to an ad recruiting “adult toy reviewers.” This turned out to be her first step toward becoming an adult film actress, a career through which she would appear in some 750 adult film releases until her retirement in 2018. In this book, she reports on all aspects of the Japanese adult film industry from an actress’s perspective, from how young women are recruited to what happens after they retire. Shibuya touches on topics that are extremely serious (the issue of coerced appearances in Japanese porn, how touts and talent agencies take advantage of young women’s dreams of becoming popular entertainers), illuminate peculiarities of how the porn industry has developed in Japan (the three categories of adult film actresses, how and how much actresses are paid), and are highly amusing (why convenience stores near porn studios immediately sell out of the “Morning Banana” yogurt drink, the use of pubic wigs). We see through Shibuya’s eyes why the porn industry proved to be an environment subjecting her to less prejudice and sexism than did her mainstream job, as well as the many ways in which the industry remains in need of further reform despite recent efforts toward cleaning itself up. Also discussed is how the Internet is forcing change on the industry in other ways, and how it is trying to adapt in a world of freely available, often illegally procured, adult entertainment content.