TOKYO (TR) – Rurutan is a wildly popular influencer and adult entertainment star who currently rakes in a staggering 100 million yen a month.
In an interview with Nikkan Spa! (Oct. 14), she says the secret to her massive success and ruthless work ethic is rooted in a childhood habit of reading up to 500 books a year.
The star has been on an unstoppable streak. In September, she headlined at the legendary Asakusa Rockza strip theater, drawing massive lines daily. She has also co-authored a smash-hit book titled “Rurutan & Osamu’s KPIs of Desire,” which controversially — and profitably — marries the worlds of sex work and corporate marketing.
But behind the glitz and the massive paychecks is a fiercely calculated mind.
“I’ve been a bookworm since childhood,” Rurutan revealed. “Reading one book a day was normal. I read between 365 and 500 books a year, covering everything from picture books to novels and philosophy.”
Self-reliant mindset
She credits James W. Young’s 1940s classic A Technique for Producing Ideas for her sharp business acumen. The book taught her that new concepts are merely combinations of existing elements — a principle she ruthlessly applied by crossing the adult industry with hardcore marketing strategies.
She also pointed to Richard Wiseman’s “The Luck Factor,” which she read in high school, for forging her self-reliant mindset. Dismissing modern internet excuses like the “parent lottery” (the idea that success is determined by birth), Rurutan says the book taught her to stop blaming bad luck and start taking strict accountability for her own actions.
“Justice clashes sometimes”
However, it was Michael Sandel’s renowned philosophy book Justice that helped her navigate a bitter industry feud.
After dominating as the number-one earner at her former adult shop for 18 consecutive months, Rurutan made the controversial decision to pivot to indie adult videos (doujin AV). The move sparked a fierce clash with her shop’s president, who demanded she stay and continue generating revenue for the establishment.
“Justice clashes sometimes,” she explained, noting that Sandel’s book taught her to question her own righteousness. “The shop’s justice was keeping me there for sales. My justice was leaving to reach the next level. Neither of us was wrong.”
Rather than villainizing her former boss, she used this philosophical perspective to accept the split. Now, having vastly expanded her empire, she has since reunited with the president for new business ventures.
“Ugly woman theory”
Finally, the adult star shared a bizarre but effective mental exercise gleaned from comedian Kei Yamazaki’s book, “Recommendation of the Just-Right Ugly.”
Rurutan utilizes a “hypothetical ugly woman theory,” where she forces herself to imagine she is physically unattractive. She then acts in a way that an “ugly” person would need to in order to be valued — such as smiling constantly, replacing the toilet paper, and picking up trash.
“If you remove the ‘ugly’ assumption after doing all that, you are left as a truly beautiful woman,” she said, adding that this brutal thought experiment dictates her professional aesthetics and behavior.
For a girl who once begged for bookstore gift cards for her birthday, those 500 books have paid off — quietly funding a 100-million-yen-a-month empire built on far more than just looks.
