TOKYO (TR) – Last Friday, celebrity Reiko Kato, 55, updated her Instagram to announce her first appearance in a gravure (pin-up) photo spread in 26 years. In showing off her shapely figure after all those years, Kato added the short message, “I hope you’ll take a look!”
The photos are from weekly tabloid Friday (January 3, 10 and 17). Why did she decide to return to gravure at the age of 55?
“The biggest deciding factor was when I received an offer from a female editor in her 30s who didn’t know me,” Kato says. “She said, ‘I’d like to see you in gravure. Let’s make a work that will be great for both men and women.’ I couldn’t imagine what it would be like, so that made me excited.”
Kato got her start in show business when she was chosen as a Clarion Girl in 1989. She also was as an image girl for Asahi Beer two years later. She eventually became enormously popular as a gravure idol in the early 1990s. Kato was attached to agency Yellow Cab, which also had Fumie Hosokawa, 53, within its roster of talent.
“She was the originator of the ‘big-breasted idol,’ which led to kyonnyu [big breasts] becoming a common expression at the time. This was not the case before,” a writer covering the gravure scene tells evening tabloid Nikkan Gendai (Dec. 24).
She was active as a singer, music show host, actress and variety show talent. However, her gravure activities decreased beginning in the mid-1990s, with her being seen in a swimsuit becoming uncommon. Then, in December 2001, she married professional golfer Kaname Yokoo, 52, and retired from the entertainment industry to become a full-time housewife.
In 2011, she appeared on a music variety show in an effort to make a comeback to the entertainment industry, but she never talked about doing gravure-type work.
An entertainment industry insider says: “Kato originally entered the entertainment industry to become a singer. So, after she retired, it was rumored that she might return as a singer, but would never do gravure. There was even an episode where she was reluctant to be filmed because she felt uncomfortable about being forced to wear small swimsuits with her large breasts. After her retirement, her past footage was rarely used on telecision, so I never thought she would return to gravure.”
