Kurumi Morishita

Life and career

Morishita was born on July 29, 1979 in Akita, Japan. In an interview from early in her career she describes her difficult family life. Her father was a physically abusive alcoholic who terrorized her and her brother until her parents' divorce when Morishita was in her junior year in high school. Although she considered her mother her only parent, she remained in touch with her father. She says that her early need for self-reliance caused her not to trust others or be able to open up to people. The interviewer describes her as having an "unusually cold and solitary personality." Morishita attended the Akita Technical High School and then worked as a shop girl in Tokyo. She was recruited into the AV industry in Tokyo's Shinjuku district.

AV debut - SOD

Morishita began her adult video career in September 1998 at age nineteen with the Soft On Demand studio where she began her long association with the director TOHJIRO. For the next three years under an exclusive contract she continued to make videos for SOD, an "indie" studio known for more hardcore activities than some of the more mainstream studios. Morishita has said that she did not think SOD was making her do hardcore scenes, but that her work was more risque than most other AV actresses and "I think the way I do them is better befitting an AV actress." Morishita was considered the studio's most prominent actress during her tenure with SOD when she was called "The Queen of Independent AVs", a title which she says she did not like. In 2002, SOD celebrated her career by issuing a four volume retrospective of her work with the studio Kurumi Morishita - History (森下くるみヒストリー). Each of the 2-hour compilations contained scenes from six (five for Vol. 4) of her SOD videos.

While at SOD, Murishita also starred in an SOD produced V-Cinema production Patty the High School Fighter of Love (恋身女子校生パティ, Renshin Joshikousei Patty) directed by Kazuhiko Matsumoto and co-starring another noted director, Toru Muranishi. The video, based on the manga of the same name, was released in joint adult (90 min) and softcore (60 min.) versions by SOD in July 2000.

Dogma

Dogma studio was founded by director TOHJIRO in 2001 as part of SOD but in 2002 broke off to become an independent company. At that time Morishita left SOD to join Dogma and TOHJIRO as a contract actress. Morishita has starred in most of the genres popular at Dogma which is known for its extreme and sometimes bizarre fetish videos which include bondage, forced fellatio and various S&M themes.

Morishita has won acclaim for her lesbian-themed videos including the December 2002 title for Dogma, Mourning Dress Sisters, Close Relative Lesbian. In this fictional melodrama about two sisters experimenting with lesbian sex after the death of their mother, one reviewer comments that the performances are carried off with such conviction that the scenes become love scenes rather than sex scenes. She also co-starred in a June 2003 production by KMP entitled Forest in Nude. Directed by TOHJIRO, a reviewer call this a "soft, bittersweet story of two friends who remember the days of their youth and the sexual experiences they had". In December 2005 she and director TOHJIRO returned to make peace at their old studio SOD with Stripper, a lesbian love story with SOD star Nana Natsume.

Her popularity as an actress continued at Dogma, in 2003 the major Japanese video distributor DMM ranked her No. 4 in its list of the 100 top actresses by sales. She made the top 10 again in 2004, being ranked No. 9. She is known as "the goddess of Dogma" Morishita also received one of the Channel Actress Performance Awards at the 2005 Adult Broadcasting Awards for the 2004 broadcast season on the Non Stop channel.

She made her first interracial video in November 2006, BLACK・KURUMI, admitting according to the Dogma blurb "I am a bit apprehensive but you have to push your limits to keep going further." In a later video Killer Kurumi, released January 2007 and directed by KINGDOM, there is a rather elaborate fictional plot. In prison for murder, she is offered her freedom in exchange for working for "the company". This consists of seducing targets and then executing them after sex - until she falls in love with one of her targets. She made only a few other original videos for Dogma in 2007 and 2008 and she announced her retirement in her blog in May 2009.

When the major Japanese adult video distributor DMM held a poll of its customers in 2012 to choose the 100 all-time best AV actresses to celebrate the 30th anniversary of adult videos in Japan, Morishita was voted in at number 64.

After AV retirement

Morishita has kept a detailed blog of her life and activities since February 2003, but her literary activities have extended beyond blogging. In March 2007, she published a diary-like account of her life called Subete wa 'hadaka ni naru' kara hajimatte (すべては「裸になる」から始まって). In the book she describes her longing for family love and her loneliness which led her into AV work. She says she intended the book to be read by women and was "a bit embarrassed" that men would also read it. The book was made into a movie of the same name in 2012 with Morishita collaborating with director-writer Saku Nakamachi on the screenplay. The R-18 movie, starring former AKB48 singer Risa Narita as Morishita, was released in Japan in February 2012.

Morishita published a second book concerning life in the AV industry in 2011 titled Rafu - in English "Nude Woman" (らふ). Since her first book involved only her views, she wanted to broaden the perspective by interviewing other AV actresses about their experiences and lives. The eight actresses included Elly Akira and Maria Ozawa.

She has also published fiction, the story Dahlia (ダリア) in Vol. 5 of the literary magazine Esora (エソラ) in August 2008 and a novel, Ryuuka Suigin (硫化水銀), in the February 2008 issue of the literary monthly Contemporary Fiction (小説現代), which was also published in digital form in October 2008. In 2012, she wrote the screenplay for the young Japanese woman director Chihiro Amano's film Koi wa parēdo no yō ni (恋はパレードのように).

Morishita made her first mainstream movie in April 2011, starring in director Yu Irie's Ringing in Their Ears (劇場版 神聖かまってちゃん／ロックンロールは鳴り止まないっ, Gekijouban Shinsei kamatte-chan: Rokkun rōru wa nari tomaranai), a drama about lives being changed by a rock group's upcoming concert. In December 2012, Morishita starred in the romantic fantasy Love Me for Hundreds of Years (死んでもいいの 百年恋して, Shindemoiino hyakunen koi shite) directed by Toshirō Enomoto and written by Shinji Imaoka. Her co-star in the film was another former AV actress, Sasa Handa.

Theatrical films

Photo books

Non-fiction