Ethnicity Japanese Name Maiko Yuki | Height 1.58 m (5 ft 2 in) | |
Born January 30, 1977 (age 47) ( 1977-01-30 ) Tokamachi, Niigata, Japan | ||
Maiko Yūki (Japanese: 夕樹舞子, Hepburn: Yūki Maiko, born January 30, 1977) is a Japanese AV idol, actress and stripper. She was one of the top AV idols in the mid-1990s and was named the "AV Girl of the Year" in 1998, but her career in adult videos spanned more than 15 years.
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Early life
Maiko Yūki was born Maki Wakui (涌井 麻紀, Wakui Maki) on January 30, 1977 in Niigata Prefecture to a family in the construction business. Both of her parents had been gang members, and Yūki was also a rowdy student who claims to have never lost a fight with a girl or boy. Family difficulties led her to run away from home several times by the eighth grade. Expelled on her first day in high school for fighting with the teacher, she returned home and began working as a golf caddy at a club. She had been determined to keep her virginity until marriage, however, at the age of 17 she was raped by her boyfriend's brother, the leader of a local gang. Shattered by the experience, she developed a fear of men.
AV debut
Yūki entered an acting school where she met an AV actress manager and she made the decision to perform in adult videos as a way of confronting and resolving her fears. Her debut video was the April 1995 h.m.p. Tiffany release, Shōjokyu Sotsugyo ~Graduation~. Her first day on the set was difficult, and the shooting was delayed for five hours due to her emotional state. Yūki says that the AV staff were understanding, and this helped her to overcome her difficulties with her first video. She contrasts the AV staff's sympathetic attitudes with the more impersonal treatment she has had on television programs and for magazines. At first, her family was against her AV career, but they came to lend support for the signing event after her first AV release. For the next year, Yūki mostly alternated monthly videos for h.m.p. and another studio Cosmos Plan until her final work for h.m.p. Good-bye in May 1996. Yūki also had a role in a mainstream production, the animated science fiction film The End of Evangelion, released in July 1997.
Comeback
She retired from the AV industry for a time, but, principally due to requests from her Hong Kong fans for new photobooks and videos, she traveled to Hong Kong. In an appearance there, she was surprised by the enthusiasm of the local press and her fan-base. An autograph-signing drew a crowd of over 8,000, and she required six bodyguards while in Hong Kong. Her experience in Hong Kong caused her see her work in AVs as a life's calling, and she decided to move to Tokyo to pursue this career full-time at age 21. She began her comeback in April 1998 with a series of videos for the Crystal-Eizou studio starting with Venus Return. At this time, she also appeared in other media, including the V-cinema film Jūyaku hisho kyōka (重役秘書 京香), released November 21, 1998, and the multiple award-winning television drama Blue Fireworks (青い花火, Aoi hanabi) about women working in the porn industry. The TV movie, which also featured AV actress Yumika Hayashi, was broadcast on NHK on November 28, 1998.
Her retirement work for Crystal-Eizou was the January 1999 video Final Maiko - Forever Angel but she later appeared in some S&M productions for the Attackers and CineMagic studios. In 2003 Yūki was the star performer in the first Japanese strip show to perform in the People's Republic of China. An "uncensored" video (one without the mosaic pixelation to obscure the genitals required in videos sold legally in Japan) with Yūki was released by Samurai Porn in July 2006.
Second comeback
In 2010, Yūki returned to the AV industry with Revival - Maiko Yūki, the first in a series of videos for the Das studio's Platina label. Later in 2010, she also performed in a number of videos for the Attackers studio. Back in mainstream film, Yūki played herself in the Hong Kong sex comedy Naked Ambition 2, a parody of the Japanese AV industry, which was released in April 2014.
Yūki's fanbase extended to Taiwan as well and in June 2012, the Taiwanese online news service NowNews placed her at number four in their list of the Top Ten Japanese AV Idols.