The JAV public identity - a necessary evil

In late June Sora Aoi, the pioneer heralding the coming of the Internet age for JAV released her memoir detailing her early life. As part of her campaign to promote her writings, she wrote an article on her official blog admitting that all current public information about her is fabricated. She is not 36, but 39. She was never born on November 11th but had adopted it as her birhday to appease her fans. She is not a Tokyoite, but a Kanagawanian from next door. All she can say about herself is she is a Taurus born under the Chinese Zodiac of Rooster in 1981. Condiering her ststus in the industry, by her revelation about her true self, she is indirectly implying that public information released about JAV talents is false. While her words may not come as a surprise to anyone who is a veteran to the JAV scene, people don't usually speak about such things out of respect for the girls. What Aoi had managed to achieve is that she had dragged the open secret out to air, and I thought this might be a good chance to talk a bit about the purpose of the alternate JAV persona the talents have adopted and act out throughout their career.

So what purpose does the JAV persona has? The first is obvious enough. As society still has not reached a point that the job of a JAV talent is deemed respectable enough as seen in the case of Ai Uehara, the persona is an identity created to protect the unnamed and unknown debutant who is going to adopt it as her public face for the next several years. if she keeps her cover well enough, she should have a degree of deniability of her alternate identity if and when the time calls for it. While this may seem a hard way to live with the Jekyll-And-Hyde dual identity, the Japanese are no stranger to the concept of Honne and tatemae. It's just another role for the debutant to play out in her public life. To complete the debutant's cover, her agency will essentially do a makeover that usually ensures that even her relatives and friends from her previous life might not even recognise her at first glance. Readers might want to reference my images in my previous Mao Watanabe article for something simple. Others might opt for more extreme measures such as Eimi Fukada. If everything seems to be lifted from the covert playbook of the CIA and FBI.....well, in some way, it is.

Another less thought out angle is that most of the talents are recruited are from a humble, down-to-earth background which is mundane, to say the least. About 2 years prior, there was a massive leak of internal documents from a major studio that includes a questionnaire that an aspiring actress needs to fill up before her interview and audition. Fortunately, this author managed to stumble upon the entire cache. Many of them are school dropouts from rural areas, previously holding on to jobs that don't pay much and got into the industry mainly for the money. Not at all shocking if you think upon it. But what if a studio just presents a new debutant as she is on her first release, by stating outright she came from an unexceptional background and she is only interested in that paycheck after filming wraps. Will people still be attracted to her despite her possessing a pretty face? So just for insurance, the studio might play up the publicity by stating she comes from a well-to-down family, got a little naughty after accidentally popping her cherry and is here so that she can experience what the world has to offer in their official record. The question now is which aspect of the talent do readers prefer? The real pragmatic no-nonsense woman or the fictional idealistic cheeky girl?

And, finally, here's something perhaps not many had thought about. But everything could just be my opinion. The persona can be beneficial to the one roleplaying it and the masses watching her acting it out. Perhaps I should just speak plainly and state on record that a few of those talents are....flawed in their actual and real personality. They have their private issues before being recruited and still carried those over after settling into their persona. Below are examples of 2 current active talents, Sakura Momo and Ai Hoshiina, suffering a setback in their personal life, breaking characters and melting down on their social media platform a couple of years back.

Suicidal thoughts and self-mutilation

A sharp contrast to how lively and cheerful they are in public. My point is that the persona can be used by the talent to escape from their real self and all the problems that came with to bask in the adoration of her followers while she is at work. It can be....therapeutic. For the fans, provided the talent do not break character, they will perhaps never get to see all the chips, rugged edges and blemishes of their idols that can lead to disappointment.

To sum everything up, JAV is one of the few entertainment outlets where reality and fantasy collide. Perhaps even more so than reality TV. But much of it are still rooted more in fantasy, so don't overthink anything in regards to any of the talents. What you see are pure constructs after all, like those larger than life superhero(ines) that are all the rage this past decade. Don't dig too deep into the person acting it out either as they are still human and you might not like what you find in the end. Real-life is often disappointing enough. Just enjoy everything as it is.