The Careers of Japanese AV Actresses

With the rise of Japanese AV, which can be described as pornography by any standard, many young girls try to make their mark in this shady business. Yet with the exception of a few famous examples their popularity usually peaks with their first video and then steadily declines as they produce more films. This is largely due to the fact that although an AV actress’s technique (camera awareness, dramatic flare and range, directability, fluency in unscripted dirty talk) can improve with experience, this doesn’t translate into higher pay.

As a result, an AV star’s market value often decreases with each new film even though the demands on her in front of the camera increase with every production. In the meantime, she must continue to work hard to get the next job and maintain her marketability, all while trying to stay alive and pay for rent and living expenses.

But what happens to these women once they leave the world of AV? Do they find regular jobs in other industries or are they relegated to the shadowy underworld of prostitution? This article aims to shed some light on this question by exploring the careers of several former AV actresses.

The AV industry in Japan began with the emergence of pink studios in the early 1980s, which offered a cheaper alternative to traditional theatrical pornography and were able to satisfy the growing demand for private entertainment for men without the stigma that came with showing pornographic movies in public. At the same time, ownership of VCRs increased among Japanese families and this helped AV to sell more videos.

Unlike theatrical pornography, which had to 国产AV be screened in public and was expensive to produce, AV videos could be produced cheaply using simple hand-held camcorders and sold in large numbers because Japanese families now had home video players. The early AV industry was therefore dominated by the pink studios but this quickly changed as the small-scale producers started to gain a foothold.

By the mid-90s, the AV industry was very diversified and it became possible to differentiate between tantai productions, which usually came from the larger companies, were expensive and focused on one star actress, and kikaku videos that generally employed several actresses in a single film and tended to be less polished and more natural.

While working in AV has its drawbacks, such as the constant pressure to produce more films and the need for high quality equipment, it also offers women who want to break into the mainstream of Japanese society the chance to do so with the help of an industry that is not only well established but also relatively accessible. Despite these benefits, almost no empirical research exists on the careers of Japanese AV actresses. This paper aims to fill this gap by analysing the effects of various elements on the career lives of Japanese AV actresses such as debuting age, cup size, whether they are from Tokyo or not, and their ratio of risky-sex A.V. movies.