Meet the Hardest Working Man in Porn
(photo: Jeremy Liebman)
At 35, Shimiken is the king of Japanese porn, a $20 billion industry that produces more than double the number of adult films that America does. The only problem: He’s part of an endangered species—1 of only 70 (maybe just 30, by some estimates) male actors in a business that churns out thousands of videos a year—and while he keeps coming, the reinforcements don’t. Why won’t anybody help this guy out, for fuck’s sake?
On a sunny Saturday morning in eastern Tokyo, a silver Audi pulls into a parking lot and sparks pandemonium. Out of the driver’s seat bounces a small, stocky man with bulging biceps, spiky orange hair, and a broad smile spread across his effulgent, spray-tanned face. He bounds onto the pavement wearing a hoodie and a T-shirt that reads SEX INSTRUCTOR. To his left, the mostly male crowd leans forward, en masse. “Shimiken!” several shout, and a clatter of smartphone shutter sounds follows like a round of applause.
“Let’s go,” Shimiken whispers to a handler attempting to clear a path through the throng. He raises one arm over his head to air-high-five his riveted fans. It’s the morning of the Japan Adult Expo, and the crowd has been waiting for tickets. Inside, they’ll get to meet the stars of their wildest fantasies. Outside, they’ve already caught a glimpse of something rarer: the man who has actually lived them all.
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At 35 years old, Shimiken is the king of Japanese porn, more often referred to here as AV (adult video), and there is essentially nothing he won’t do or hasn’t done while getting busy with more than 7,500 different female costars, including a former teen pop singer, Hungarian exchange students, and a pair of 72-year-old twins. In 18 years and more than 7,000 films, Shimiken has refused only one scenario: having sex with an actress after she had sex with a dog. (He agreed to a rewrite in which the dog merely licked butter off the woman before their scene.)
Shimiken’s catholic attitude toward kink, combined with what—in porn years—is an epic tenure, has earned him the widespread national recognition of a younger Ron Jeremy or a more seasoned James Deen. The 50-year-old driver picking me up from the Tokyo airport hears his name and nods: “Shimiken? Shimiken is famous. Or at least, his dick is.” Everyone in the AV industry reveres both his name and his anatomy (16 centimeters—or 6.3 inches—per an online profile), though the latter is always pixelated. As Shimiken passes through the halls of the convention’s backstage, robed women pop out from side rooms and coo greetings through cigarette smoke, including otsukaresama, which literally means “you must be tired.” It’s a standard Japanese offering of thanks, but in this case, it has an all-too-apt application. Because everyone in the know understands that Shimiken is beset by XXX exhaustion.
A few months ago, in a fit of on-set fatigue, Shimiken went public with his feelings about the stresses of being one of the few male talents in Japanese adult video: “In this industry there are only 70 male porn stars to 10,000 women. The number of male porn stars in Japan is less than that of Bengal tigers,” he wrote in a tweet. “With 4,000 new films every month, the number of male actors simply isn’t enough. This industry is like a hole in the wall that needs to get bigger!” By the time he wrapped up his next money shot and checked his phone, his call to arms, or cry for help, had been retweeted more than 3,000 times.
“The 70 guys refers to the stallions on call,” explains an AV filmmaker named Daeng (who requested that his last name be withheld). High-profile actors, like Shimiken, are in heavier rotation. “It’s a physically demanding job, and if they do run out of juice, it’s not good.” The AV director Michiru Ayashiyama worries that this already overtaxed group of performers will not only tire out but also age out of relevance.“I sincerely hope the younger pool increases,” he says, “because soon these actors are going to get old. Their experience will go up, but their strength will go down.”
And so Shimiken arrives at Japan’s largest porn expo bearing a nation’s libido on his shoulders. He hasn’t taken a vacation in seven years. He’s too busy keeping it up in order to keep an estimated $20 billion industry from going limp.
(photos: Jeremy Liebman)
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Though Shimiken’s count of working male porn actors might seem low, other insiders have pegged the number as even lower, closer to 30. As for their female counterparts, a controversial Japanese article recently asserted that, statistically, 1 in 200 Japanese women had appeared in an AV film, with an industry churn of 6,000 new actresses a year, according to the author Atsuhiko Nakamura. Demand is high—Japan produces more than double the number of porn films as the U.S., though America has more than twice its population.
Even in the U.S., most aspiring men drop out when faced with the realities of porn. “We’re not talking about splitting firewood here, but it is very physically demanding,” says Kevin O'Neal, a former porn actor and a current agent at Adult Talent Managers in Los Angeles. “And you’re going to have to do it with a camera between your legs.” Among AV performers, Shimiken’s stamina is legendary—his workload often has him shooting eight or nine hours a day, seven days a week. “He must be Mr. Magic,” O'Neal concludes.
To maintain the strength necessary to make up to six movies a day, Shimiken exercises 90 minutes a day, four days a week, focusing on heavy weight lifting and deep squats, which he says not only help his thrusts but also build up testosterone. He lives off a go-bag filled with glutamine, branched-chain amino acid, zinc (said to make semen whiter), arginine, and vitamin jelly. He dumps the bag’s contents out for inspection, and nowhere in the pile is the pill that fuels the American porn industry: Viagra. “I haven’t had to use it,” he says. “Yet.”
While the physical requirements are certainly a barrier to entry for most men, Shimiken points out that because the ranks are thin, they stay thin—despite the obvious benefits. “Men say the pool is just too small to risk entering,” he explains. “Anyone who tries it will be immediately recognizable and could rule out ever having a normal life.”
Though a few AV stars (mostly female) have transitioned to success as TV presenters or talking-head personalities, “Shimiken’s concerns do point to very real issues regarding social stigma in Japan,” says Kumiko Endo, an adjunct professor of religion at Hofstra University. “There are definite roadblocks for former AV actors who want to transition into the mainstream.”
Yujiro Enoki, the director of the documentary The Other Side of the Sex, goes further, warning that great fame can bring great shame. “Once you have become an AV star, it becomes very hard to get a ‘normal’ job,” he says. “And it can only become worse if you try to conceal your past. It doesn’t matter whether you are retired or not, you cannot have financial credit from a bank, so it’s really difficult to get, for example, a housing loan.” Several years back, Shimiken found himself unable to rent an apartment. Landlord after landlord judged his occupation objectionable, even when he showed them a full bank account. He was able to sign a lease only when one real-estate agent revealed she was a fan. She offered to get him a place to live if he’d come to dinner with fans from her office.
Continue this story on Details.com.
By Paige Ferrari
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