If you want to recover from a scandal and rebuild your career, one tried-and-tested method is to reinvent yourself: take a different kind of acting role, do something more provocative.
Previously, female Japanese idols, actors, and models in a career slump have dropped their clothes for sexually explicit roles or have appeared in nude shoots. Angelica Michibata’s nude photo book after her scandal is a case in point, as was Maki Goto’s after her rumored affair.
Former AKB48 Mariko Shinoda found herself in a personal and professional pickle when her alleged adultery was exposed in 2022. The mother-of-one eventually ended up divorced and struggling to recover her reputation.
A year on, the 37-year-old ex-idol has turned to acting to restore her fame, though in a savvy way that plays on her newly acquired notoriety.
She plays the lead role in a new adultery-themed TV drama Rikon Shinai Otoko (The Man Who Doesn’t Divorce) in which a married mother — a former idol — has an affair with an idol/entertainer agency manager. It’s almost like art is imitating life.
Like most Japanese TV dramas, it’s acted in an exaggerated style closer to anime or kabuki, which is strange considering certain scenes are aspiring to be genuinely erotic.
This being mainstream Japanese TV — it’s broadcast on TV Asahi — we should also provide a disclaimer that there is no actual nudity on display (at least, so far). But Mariko Shinoda is shown in several sensual and sexy scenes with her lover (played by Teppei Koike), giving him a nice tonguey kiss or letting him take her from behind.
Netizens have been quick to share these scenes and closeups of Mariko’s “sex face,” imaging this is what she looked like when she was allegedly cheating on her ex.
The first episode of Rikon Shinai Otoko, which is based on a manga published by Kodansha from 2022, came out last weekend. We look forward to catching the next one, which promises to have a scene in which her lover goes down on Mariko!
