There was a wondrous time back in the 1990s and early 2000s when the hair nude (full-frontal nude shoot) was commonplace. Hardly a week went by without another female celebrity shedding her clothes and trying to get in on the action, from newbies to more established stars, all trying to emulate the incredible success of photo books like Santa Fe with Rie Miyazawa.
Today, though adult video stars of course commonly do hair nude shoots, the genre has faded and it’s very rare for models and actresses, much less big mainstream stars, to do a hair nude.
Which is why we are so pleased when we do spot a great example.
The gravure idol Biru Otsuka is no spring chicken — she’s already 35 — but has taken her career to the next level with a fantastic full-frontal shoot.
When this happens, it’s sometimes a mark of desperation. The model or idol in question has few options left other than to make that leap into nude shoots or even porn. That might be the case here, but Biru Otsuka’s slinky body has such a healthy tan and her bush such a fine trim that we can’t help lapping up every inch of the images.
Otsuka announced the hair nude at the start of the year and anticipation quickly started to build. The photo book eventually came out via major published Kodansha in March. It’s her first photo book. That’s quite a way to make a debut!
Though she’s been modeling and acting since 2007, she only made her gravure debut at the age of 27. She specializes in swimsuit shoots, which is clear even from this nude photo book.
Today the preserve largely of models and celebrities trying to make a comeback (especially after a scandal) or those with previously established reputations for nudity (hello, Yuka Someya), the hair nude is a bit recherché, though nude shoots remain relatively common: all sorts of female celebrities are willing to show off their butt, side boob, and even breasts at various stages of their career.
Perhaps the last occasion we were really surprised by a major female celebrity’s choice to do a full-frontal nude shoot was the singer KOM_I.
The hair nude is also able to circumnavigate Japan’s bizarre obscenity law, which is typically interpreted as not allowing pubic hair, because they are supposedly artistic instead of pornographic. That said, it’s a different kind of marketplace to the 1990s, and print books don’t sell as well as they used to, making publishers more risk-averse.
It’s not the first time that we have speculated about a revival of the hair nude genre (a bevy of summer releases last year prompted us to say much the same). Let’s hope Biru Otsuka does more of this and inspires others to follow suit.
