TOKYO (TR) – In February, publisher Saitosha released Hiroki Terai’s new book “Highly Educated AV Actresses,” a collection of interviews with past and present figures in the adult video (AV) industry who have a lot going for them when it comes to formal education.
In the third of a three-part excerpt, The Tokyo Reporter features interviewee Kaho Shibuya, who says that her past career in the AV industry may in part have been due to her strict upbringing by her parents.
After graduating from Aoyama Gakuin University, Shibuya joined a newspaper company, but a few years later she left and made her AV debut.
Around that time, she achieved a Grade 1 ranking on the EIKEN Test in Practical English Proficiency and a perfect score on the Test of English for International Communication (TOEIC).
“I liked spending time alone. So, I often went to the library and read books and manga all the time,” she tells Terai of her youth. “I was shy and had trouble talking to strangers other than my family, let alone friends. I can switch to that now, but I still like spending time alone. I have an older brother who is two years older than me in school, but he loves sports and has lots of friends. So, he’s the complete opposite of me.”
Family has a long history
Shibuya attended a girls’ school from kindergarten to high school. Her father is a doctor, specifically a ring doctor at martial arts events. The family has a long history.
“I don’t know how much of this is true,” she says, “but it seems like my family has been in the business for generations. There is a family tree that has been preserved. According to it, [the family] has been in the business since the Azuchi-Momoyama period. My father is the 16th generation. His older brother didn’t take over, so it went back to my father. The family crest is a Japanese ginger, which can be used in medicine.”
Shibuya went to Toyo Eiwa Girls’ School Elementary School from kindergarten to high school.
“I think that was probably because my mother wanted me to be [a Christian],” she says. “Now that I think about it, the gap of not having proper contact with boys there may have led to me getting into AV.”
The school is next to WILL, a company that controls the DMM-affiliated AV makers. “After I entered the industry, I was surprised to find that there was an AV production company so close,” she says.
Not from the countryside
When Shibuya made her AV debut, she said to be from the countryside. However, she was actually born in Ichibancho, Chiyoda Ward. Her mother was a housewife.
“My mother graduated from junior college and did some work related to the entertainment industry, but after she had her children, she became a full-time housewife,” she says. “She’s from Oita in Kyushu, and maybe because of the area she’s from, she has a very Showa-era mentality of ‘the man earns the money and the woman supports him.’ I was often told since I was little, ‘You should find a man like your father and support him.'”
She says that her parents were the type who wanted their children to call them otosan and okasama, the honorific forms of father and mother.
“I kept calling them that until kindergarten, but my classmates laughed at me and said it was weird,” she says. “So I corrected that.”
They also made her use the noble title onīchama when addressing her older brother.
“I think my mother probably thought that this was how a rich girl should speak,” she speculates. “My mother tried not to use her dialect. She was proud of it. She said, ‘People often think I’m from Tokyo.’ Maybe she had a bit of a complex about it.”
“Delayed rebellious phase”
Shibuya later realized that her parents were overbearing.
“They would organize omiai [arranged marriage] meetings for me, and they would force their values on me, saying ‘the way to be a human is to get married and have children,'” the ex-AV actress says.
However, she wanted nothing to do with that way of life.
“I think I did a lot of things in rebellion against that,” she says. “I’m embarrassed to think that my life was a typical ‘delayed rebellious phase.'”
