From JAV to Prostitution

Are More Porn Stars Working as Prostitutes on the Side?

After one of our commenters pointed out that recently retired Nao Yoshizaki appears to be working in a soapland, (you can see the original comment here), I started thinking that recently there has been a lot of news of AV girls working as escorts on the side, and also girls going into prostitution after retiring from JAV (as in the case of Nao). I was planning on doing a piece on it, but the Tokyo Reporter beat me to the punch. His article is based on an original article from the Nov. 23rd edition of the Japanese magazine Weekly Playboy.

As mentioned in the Tokyo Reporter article, one of the biggest names to go the escort route to supplement her income is none other than Maria Ozawa. When I first heard the news myself a while back, I didn’t believe it at first. But with her sliding popularity and the falling economy, Maria could be looking to supplement her income. She has really increased her movie output this year and she has also been doing quite a few strip club performances the past couple years. Surely she doesn’t need the extra cash from working as an escort, but her reported rate is 150,000 yen for 70 minutes! That’s in the neighborhood of $1500 US. She likely doesn’t get all of that, but that’s still some serious extra spending dough. And she’s not necessarily having sex with her clients.

Maria is working out of a club called Club Tora no Ana, which also features other girls who have worked in AV. Among the girls there I noticed YOKO, (aka Kaede) who is one of the more famous girls in the reggae dance genre of JAV. Other former AV stars that have been spotted on soapland/deli-health sites are the aforementioned Nao Yoshizaki and Haruka Sanada. The Tokyo Reporter article mentions Hiyori Shiraishi. Going way back, the first ever AV girl I ever remember reading about going into the soap business was the beautiful half-Dominican Emily Yoshikawa.

Now, are we to believe all of those reports? I mean, I’ve seen ads featuring the likes of Sora Aoi available for an out-call service in England. I kinda doubt she’s flying out there to fuck some dudes for a couple hundred bucks. But if they’re using a famous JAV star’s photo in Japan, the customers are going to know who these girls are, so they can’t just switch them with some nobody when the client shows up. And if a Japanese company used an AV star’s image without permission, I think they would be getting a call from her agency’s lawyers pretty quickly.

However, the Tokyo Reporter article does mention you can’t believe all that you see. Some AV studios have ties to some of the sex clubs, and they will allow the club to use an actress’s image, when in fact she is not really available. The club will say the actress is only available to loyal, high paying clients. So that will bring in more patrons, but in fact the AV actress may not ever work there.

If you’re interested in more details on this topic, be sure to check out the full Tokyo Reporter article.