In the late 1990s an AV-background woman moved into prime-time national broadcasting. This was Ai Iijima.

Ai Iijima (飯島愛, Iijima Ai; 31 October 1972 – December 2008) was a Japanese AV actress, television personality, and essayist. After appearing in AV in the early 1990s, she gained national recognition through the late-night programme Gilgamesh Night and, after retiring, worked as a host and commentator on terrestrial television. Her autobiography Platonic Sex (2000) became a bestseller of over two million copies and is positioned as a forerunner of the broad public reception of AV-actress self-narration as mass publishing. This article describes only matters confirmable in her own books, contemporaneous reporting, and secondary research.

Overview

Iijima was active in entertainment for roughly fifteen years, from her AV debut around 1992 to her effective retirement in 2007. Her career runs through several phases: AV actress, regular on late-night programming, host and commentator on prime-time programmes in general media, and a final phase of retirement and social activity. Rather than a single-track “graduation” from the AV industry to mainstream entertainment, she passed through a period of existing in both fields at once, which distinguished her from the AV actresses of earlier generations and is why she is referenced as a model case for later generations.

In industry history and contemporaneous media research, her name is frequently cited not merely for her commercial success. She is referenced from several fields at once as a figure who symbolises the structural change in Japanese media culture from the 1990s into the 2000s: the social visibility of AV actresses, the public circulation of self-narration, and the discursive activity of women personalities.

Career

Background

Iijima (real name Matsue Okubo) was born in Tokyo on 31 October 1972. According to her own account in Platonic Sex (2000), she left her home environment in adolescence and rebuilt a life base in Tokyo. This article takes only the scope she set down in her own publicly published book and does not go further into her private life.

AV debut and the late-night period

Iijima began working as an AV actress around 1992. The early-1990s Japanese AV industry was in the expansionary phase known as the AV bubble, with a rapid rise in monthly titles, the build-out of the exclusive-contract system, and competitive differentiation among labels. Her debut is situated within these structural shifts.

In the same period, the late-night programme Gilgamesh Night (1991–1998) on the TV Tokyo network regularly featured AV actresses, gravure models, and figures from the strip-show world, forming a transitional contact surface between the AV industry and general television. Iijima gained national recognition as one of the programme’s regulars; the “T-back Girls” segment in which she appeared is recorded as a representative component of the show in the cultural history of late-night broadcasting.

Move into mainstream media

From the late 1990s into the early 2000s, Iijima expanded into terrestrial prime-time programming. She appeared as a regular or semi-regular on several variety programmes and showed a presence with a frank speaking style that earned her the description of an “outspoken talent.”

In this period, the very fact of a person from the AV industry sitting in a host or commentator’s seat on terrestrial television remained exceptional. Her casting became an occasion for reshaping an implicit boundary regarding a personality’s background in Japanese broadcasting: a mode emerged in which one did not conceal or erase an AV-industry past but referenced it as a given while engaging in discourse in general media.

Retirement and later life

In March 2007, Iijima cited health reasons and announced her retirement from entertainment. Her blog and contemporaneous reporting gave the accumulation of fatigue from years of activity and changes in her health as the reasons for retirement. She kept a low public profile thereafter. In December 2008 her death was reported by the major newspapers. This article does not pursue the matter further, out of respect for her.

Writing and self-narration

Platonic Sex (2000)

In July 2000, Iijima published the autobiography Platonic Sex through Shogakukan. The book narrates her own history in the first person, from birth and adolescence through her AV appearances to her move into television. At the time of publication, it was itself rare in Japan for a person from an AV background to publish their own life as a hardcover from a major publisher.

The book grew rapidly in sales after release and ultimately became a bestseller of over two million copies. That it gained broad reception centred on female readers of the same generation was noted by both the publishing industry and media research as a phenomenon qualitatively different from the earlier publishing culture surrounding AV actresses. It was adapted into a film in 2001 and a television drama in 2002.

The sociologist Suzumi Suzuki’s The Sociology of AV Actresses (Seidosha, 2013), based on her doctoral dissertation, discusses Platonic Sex as a precedent when treating the theme of AV-actress self-narration. The book situates Iijima’s autobiography near the origin of a lineage in which the practice of AV actresses narrating their own careers publicly broadened through publishing, blogs, and social media from the 2000s onward.

Later works

After Platonic Sex, Iijima published several further works, including Sun and Moon (2002), and continued as an essayist. These works share the basic stance of first-person writing that takes her own life as its subject.

Industry-historical and cultural significance

Mainstream-media entry by an AV-background talent

Iijima is situated in industry history as one of the earliest figures to move into terrestrial prime time while retaining an AV-actress background, and to work for an extended period as a host and commentator. AV actresses of earlier generations had often either left entertainment after retiring, or moved into another field while concealing their background to a degree; a mode of activity bridging both fields had not been established.

Her activity provided a model for the AV-background talents of later generations. Cultural phenomena from the 2000s into the 2010s, such as the discursive activity of gravure idols and AV actresses and self-communication via social media, can be organised as developments in the continuous space she opened.

Contribution to self-narration culture

The figure of over two million copies for Platonic Sex demonstrated that an autobiography by a person from the AV industry could reach a broad readership across boundaries of gender and industry, and the book is referenced from both publishing history and women’s media history. Independently of any assessment of its literary value, it succeeded in bringing self-narration into the arena of public discourse and influenced the lineage of essays and autobiographies by women personalities that followed.

See also

• AV bubble
• History of AV
• Gravure
• Adult video