Asia in 3 minutes: Japan’s 80-year-old porn star quits, Indian rivers get human rights, and face scanners flush out China’s bathroom bandits
‘No regrets’ says former opera singer Maori Tezuka as she quits the ‘silver porn’ industry
Japan’s oldest porn star, former opera singer Maori Tezuka, 80, retires
After a decade in X-rated films, a Japanese porn actress famous for being the country’s oldest has called it quits at the ripe old age of 80. Maori Tezuka, a former opera singer who made her debut in Japan’s flourishing “silver porn” industry at a sprightly 71, blamed her decision partly on a lack of red-blooded lotharios able to keep up with her. “Once the lights go on, you just do your best,” she told local media. “I have no regrets, but shooting became difficult when the actor wasn’t my type.”
What next? Tezuka, in true showbiz fashion, left the door open for a possible return. “It was never about the money for me. I’ve already been asked about returning in two or three years – I said I’d think about it.” Japan’s porn industry rakes in about US$20 billion a year, with movies featuring rambunctious geriatrics (geronto-porn) accounting for around a quarter of that market, industry insiders say. In recent years sales have soared as more of the country’s perky seniors celebrate their mojo. The genre took off thanks largely to the exploits of Shigeo Tokuda, an 82-year-old actor who appeared in hundreds of porn videos with titles such as Forbidden Elderly Care.
China overtakes Japan in S.Koreans’ least favoured countries list
The row between Seoul and Beijing over the deployment of a US missile system has seen China overtake even former coloniser Japan in a ranking of South Koreans’ least favoured countries. Japan has consistently been the most disliked country after North Korea, mainly due to disputes over Tokyo’s wartime atrocities. But now South Korea and the US have begun deploying the Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) system to guard against missile threats from the nuclear-armed North, infuriating China, which says it interferes with its radars.
What next? Beijing launched a series of measures against the South seen as economic retaliation, forcing dozens of South Korean retail stores in China to shut their doors and banning Chinese tour groups from visiting. China’s rating in an opinion poll by the Asan Institute for Policy Studies slumped from 4.31 in January to 3.21 in March, on a 0-10 scale, with 10 representing the most favourable. Japan’s rating also fell, amid a diplomatic row over the country’s use of sex slaves in wartime military brothels, from 3.56 to 3.33. “The only good news for President Xi Jinping was that his rating remained higher than [Japanese] Prime Minister [Shinzo] Abe’s,” Asan said.
Vietnamese drinkers cause devastating flood
A boozy prank that saw three men open the floodgates of a reservoir in central Vietnam resulted in crops being destroyed, officials said. The men were detained after their drunken high jinks in south-central Phu Yen province unleashed two million cubic metres of water, equivalent to about 800 Olympic-sized swimming pools. Officials said several hectares of sugarcane fields were washed away and thousands of tonnes of crops destroyed in two nearby hamlets on account of the men’s antics.