The adult video industry is, relatively speaking, a part of everyday life in Japan’s mainstream: Only there would you have a porn actress attend an expo to promote an online video game! Still, with the age-old taboo inevitably attached to pornography, do its female stars find it difficult to start anew after a flesh-filled career? CNNGo interviewed AV idols, retired and still in the game, to find out; we’ve provided the most illuminating excerpts below:

Akifumi “Aki” Matsuoka, chief manager at Prime Agency Inc — which represents AV superstars like Sola Aoi (pictured above; link NSFW) — said that “not an insubstantial number” of women who exit the adult industry have the savings to start their own businesses, such as a bar. On the other hand, there have been “cases where they have been discovered at work and fired from their new jobs,” but Matsuoka describes them as “quite rare.”

As for relationships, he indicates that industry incest surprisingly doesn’t occur; more and more, the ex-stars’ partners are regular everyday citizens — and so are the women themselves, he says:

“These girls are surprisingly normal girls. They have friends and really aren’t out of the ordinary. And a lot of urban men these days don’t seem to mind. Perhaps in rural areas of Japan they would. But now, they are more open-minded.”

Retired porn star Saori Tsuchiya told CNNGo that she’s now a university student at the same school she stopped attending when she first entered the adult industry. Though Tsuchiya keeps her past experience a secret, she noted that “these days fewer and fewer girls feel the need to hide their background and only a few slip back into total obscurity.”

For nine-year veteran Sola Aoi, her fame has become so ubiquitous that she will keep using her performer name outside of the industry, and remain candid about her AV background. Though her porn star role is a persona of sorts, Aoi suggests the line between her private and professional identity is (or has become?) indistinct:

“I still use my non-business name in my private life but I really don’t have any desire to fully return to it. Maybe in many ways Sola Aoi is a character I play, and I don’t really differ so much from her in my private life, but Sola is the name that I feel comfortable using in many professional arenas, not just AV. I have no desire to erase or deny my history.”

In the United States, we’ve seen the inklings of a similar trend with pornstar Sasha Grey making mainstream appearances in the likes of Entourage and Stephen Soderbergh‘s film The Girlfriend Experience, though nowhere to the degree of success Japan has enjoyed: One ex-AV idol, Ai Iijima, was such a well-known TV personality that some weren’t even aware she was once paid for having sex on camera!

In any case, it’s a fascinating look at pornography’s drive towards the mainstream. Are we really starting to foster a openness toward our so-called perversions?

[CNNGo via @bournecinema; image via Abjit]

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