TOKYO (TR) – A 26-year-old advertising agency employee who won a prestigious university beauty pageant says she moonlights as a weekend photography model not for the cash, but to maintain her beauty.
In an interview with Nikkan Spa! (Sep. 14), Aoi Furuhama, crowned the 2022 Miss Kyushu University Grand Prix winner, says she also strictly bans fans from falling in love with her.
The way she tells it, Furuhama currently lives a lucrative double life. Despite pulling in a corporate salary that puts her in the top one percent of her age bracket, she spends her weekends posing for amateur photographers.
However, Furuhama insists she flatly rejects the irokoi (fake romance) business tactics commonly used by underground idols and hostesses to milk cash from obsessed male fans.
“I publicly state that I’m a corporate worker doing this as a side hustle, and I explicitly tell my fans, ‘You are not allowed to fall in real love with me,'” Furuhama said. “To avoid any misunderstandings, I never use the word ‘like’ with individual fans, and I avoid telling them to only support me.”
Bitter history
Furuhama’s strict boundaries stem from a bitter history of interpersonal drama. Upon entering Kyushu University, her naturally egalitarian demeanor backfired when multiple male students falsely assumed she harbored romantic feelings for them, leading to soured relationships and social friction.
Long before her university glow-up, Furuhama battled a severe inferiority complex regarding her physical appearance. Raised in Oita Prefecture, she attended a local public high school with an average academic ranking, throwing herself into her textbooks out of pure anxiety.
“I was heavily devoted to my studies because I thought, ‘If you’re ugly and don’t study, you won’t be able to earn any money,'” she revealed.
Her transformation began in university when frequent use of cosmetic glue permanently gave her double eyelids. Combined with a sudden seven-kilogram weight loss brought on by the exhaustion of university life, Furuhama finally looked in the mirror and accepted her appearance, paving the way for her beauty pageant victory.
No to showbiz
Today, Furuhama harbors no illusions about the dark reality of the entertainment industry. A self-proclaimed idol otaku who recently dropped 400,000 yen on a high-end camera just to photograph other attractive women, she refuses to trade her stable corporate life for fleeting showbiz fame.
Her previous employer banned side jobs, leaving her exhausted and feeling her youthful beauty fading away in a miserable cycle of commuting and sleeping. Now, she uses her weekend modeling gigs purely as a venue to refine her looks and enjoy her hobbies, completely independent of financial need.
“I never had any sweet delusions about making it in the entertainment world,” Furuhama said. “I went to the trouble of graduating from Kyushu University and building a corporate career, and I’ve decided this is the path I will stay on.”
