The gravure idol Ayaka Sayama is commemorating ten years since she made her debut with a lavish shoot in the November 18th issue of Weekly Playboy. It is, however, also intended to mark her retirement from gravure at the age of twenty-six.
In the issue, she also gives an interview that may well radically change your views on Sayama. She confesses that she is actually almost entirely bald, having started to lose her hair for reasons unknown at the age of twenty. She would wear a wig for her shoots.
The stress of this led her to take eighteen months off gravure and spend time studying in Australia.
In the interview, she also sheds light on the reality of the entertainment industry. One day her agency got a phone call from a magazine, which claimed to have a compromising picture of Sayama and a man — whom she thinks she just met once at a party and that the photo was something casual taken with other people — that it would publish in the next issue. The agency decided that the only way to stop the photo being published and damaging her career was for Sayama to strip for an all-nude shoot. She put her foot down, though, and refused to show her nipples.
This shoot is probably her final one. An image DVD and photo book will go on sale early next year.
We have always had a soft spot for Ayaka Sayama’s curves and particularly look back fondly on her nude shoot at the ripe old age of twenty (this was the shoot that resulted from the scandal above).
Including that famous shoot, here are a few of our highlights from her career.
The gravure idol world is entering a transition period, it seems, with several high-profile retirements recently. This is always a sad thing for fans but it’s better than the “graduation” is officially announced, so to speak, rather than just the idols fading from view when the phone calls from the weekly magazines stop ringing.
Joining Sayama in the post-gravure landscape is the slinky Aya Kawasaki, while Yuka Ogura and Rena Takeda have also indicated shifts away from magazine shoots.
