Japanese Gravure: The History and Aesthetics of Portrait Photography, Magazine Culture, and Idol Culture

1. Gravure Printing and the Emergence of Photographic Magazines#

Before the word gravure came to denote a field of portrait photography in Japan, it was first the name of a printing process. Gravure printing is a form of intaglio printing in which ink is held in minute recessed areas on a printing plate and transferred onto paper or another surface. Because tonal variation can be expressed through the amount of ink contained in these recesses, the process was well suited to reproducing deep shadows and a rich range of photographic tones. It was consequently used as a means of printing photographs precisely and in large quantities. ^[2]

The photogravure process was developed by Karel Klíč during the latter half of the nineteenth century, and rotary photogravure appeared around 1890. Efforts to introduce the process in Japan advanced during the Taishō period. Shūgorō Tsujimoto of the Tsujimoto Photographic Arts Company collected and studied technical literature and worked to manufacture both printing machinery and ink domestically. He succeeded in printing by the autumn of 1920. In the following year, Asahi Graphic was launched as a Sunday supplement to the Osaka Asahi Shimbun. The Printing Museum in Tokyo describes it as Japan’s first magazine produced using rotary photogravure. ^[3]

Separately, the daily Asahi Graph was launched by the Asahi Shimbun Company in January 1923. After publication was interrupted by the Great Kantō Earthquake, it returned in November of that year as a weekly pictorial magazine. Publications of this kind communicated current affairs, social customs, cities, everyday life, entertainment, and sport primarily through photographs and illustrations, becoming important media for visually circulating both contemporary events and contemporary personalities. ^[4]

As gravure printing came to be widely used in magazines, photographic frontispieces and picture sections at the beginning or end of a magazine also came to be called gravure or gravure pages. Colour gravure began to be used in Japanese magazines during the late 1950s and early 1960s, broadening the colour and expressive range of photographic pages. The name remained even after offset printing became the principal method used for magazine production. The National Diet Library explains that photographic pages printed by offset continued to be called gravure because of the earlier widespread use of gravure printing for magazine photography. ^[2]

The meaning of gravure thus expanded from the name of a printing process to the name of a photographic section within a magazine, and eventually to the name of a visual genre centred on portrait photography. Modern gravure continues to retain this name even as it extends beyond paper into photobooks, moving images, and digital media. The word itself therefore preserves a memory of Japan’s printing and magazine cultures.

2. Ukiyo-e and Gravure: Cultural Resonances with Actor Prints and Bijin-ga#

Modern gravure can fruitfully be considered alongside Edo-period ukiyo-e, particularly actor prints and bijin-ga. Both are forms of visual culture that have circulated reproducible images of contemporary people—their appearances, clothing, expressions, and reputations—in forms accessible to a broad audience. A further resonance can be found in their response to the viewer’s desire to feel closer to an admired performer or popular figure, to discover a new aspect of that person, and to preserve a memorable image of them. ^[5][6][7]

Although ukiyo-e is now frequently encountered in museums, during the Edo period it formed part of an accessible publishing culture that communicated popular interests, entertainment, fashion, and the subjects of everyday conversation. Ukiyo-e prints were created collaboratively by artists, block carvers, printers, and publishers, whose ingenuity in composition, colour, and the depiction of people brought the works to a broad viewing public. Although the media and technologies differ, this collaborative shaping of a person’s appeal through publication has meaningful parallels with modern gravure, which may involve models, photographers, editors, stylists, and designers. ^[5]

Among the various forms of ukiyo-e, yakusha-e, or prints of kabuki actors, are especially suitable for comparison with modern gravure and idol culture. Actor prints communicated a performer’s stage appearance, dramatic roles, facial features, and individual qualities, and were sold particularly actively while the depicted actor’s production was being performed. Art historian Masato Naitō discusses kabuki actors as representative “idols” of Edo society and situates actor prints within the visual culture that sustained their popularity. ^[6][7]

Actor prints did not convey only the splendour of the public stage. Some works depicted performers preparing in their dressing rooms, reading scripts, rehearsing, resting, or going on outings with fellow actors. The National Diet Library compares such pictures to modern “off-shot” photographs that reveal aspects of a performer not normally visible onstage. The viewer’s desire to encounter both the accomplished stage performer and a more relaxed presence has recognizable parallels in modern idol magazines and gravure. ^[6]

Bijin-ga expressed more than the beauty of the human figure. It also formed a visual culture through which contemporary clothing, hairstyles, fashions, gestures, and the atmosphere of daily life were communicated. Alongside idealized figures, bijin-ga portrayed identifiable women who were widely known for their beauty, style, or public reputation. Through clothing incorporating the latest designs, fashionable hairstyles, understated gestures, and expressive details, ukiyo-e artists represented both the aesthetic sensibilities of their period and the individuality of particular figures. Some accounts compare bijin-ga with modern gravure and interpret the people depicted as fashion icons of their time. ^[5][8]

Figures such as Kasamori Osen, Naniwaya Okita, and Takashima Ohisa became widely known through ukiyo-e. Their names and images appeared not only in prints but also across reading materials, theatrical works, popular songs, and everyday objects. The process by which the appeal of one person was shared across several media and became part of the cultural memory of the period can be compared with modern idol and gravure culture, which extends across magazines, photobooks, moving images, events, and digital media. ^[6]

Actor prints, bijin-ga, and modern gravure can also be compared in their ability not merely to record an individual but to shape that person’s appeal through a particular visual style. Clothing, hairstyle, expression, gesture, season, location, and composition all help construct the viewer’s impression of the subject. The apparent “naturalness” or informal presence of the person depicted is itself a form of representation selected and composed by the performer and other creators.

Ukiyo-e and modern gravure naturally arose under the social institutions, publishing environments, and representational conventions of different periods, and the two should not be treated as identical. Nor has a direct historical lineage from ukiyo-e to gravure been demonstrated. Nevertheless, it is meaningful to compare them as visual cultures that circulated the appeal of contemporary figures through reproducible images and used those figures to express fashion, seasonality, personality, and admiration.

From this perspective, modern gravure is not an isolated culture that appeared suddenly with modern photography and magazine publishing. The practice of observing people, expressing their appeal, circulating their images through reproducible media, and receiving those images with familiarity and admiration has recurred under different technologies and forms. Gravure may therefore be situated within this longer underlying current of Japanese visual culture.

3. Popular Figures Through Photography: Portrait Culture from the Meiji Period to Prewar Shōwa#

Even before the emergence of modern gravure, Japan had developed a culture in which photography communicated the appeal of individuals and circulated their images among a broad public. From the late 1880s onward, processes such as halftone reproduction and collotype made it increasingly practical to print photographs on paper. Prominent people, entertainers, widely discussed personalities, and film actors consequently appeared before growing audiences through newspapers, magazines, postcards, and bromides. Photography became more than a means of recording a person: it developed into a popular visual medium for communicating contemporary fame, clothing, and individuality. ^[2]

An early and well-known example was the Tokyo One Hundred Beauties, held at the Ryōunkaku in Asakusa in 1891. Portraits photographed by Kazumasa Ogawa depicted Tokyo geigi—professional performers involved in arts such as music and dance—and were displayed within the building, where visitors took part in a popularity vote. Newspapers repeatedly reported the exhibition’s changing results and public reception, and similar photographic votes were subsequently organized in other regions. A single portrait exhibition had become a media event capable of generating widespread public discussion. Hand-coloured photographs created for the exhibition survive in the collection of the Yokohama Museum of Art. ^[9][10]

From the late Meiji period through the Taishō era, postcards and bromides depicting actors and entertainers also became widely produced. These were accessible forms of portrait media through which admirers could keep an image of a favourite performer close at hand, view it repeatedly, and sometimes exchange it with others. They helped sustain a sense of familiarity with performers beyond the immediate space of a theatrical or musical performance.

Projects also emerged in which people were discovered and evaluated through photography itself. In 1908, the Jiji Shimpō newspaper company conducted a photographic selection and published portraits of the selected women in Nihon Bijinchō (Album of Japanese Beauties). The circumstances of photographic submission and selection differed from those of a present-day participatory competition, and the project should not simply be equated with contemporary contests. Nevertheless, it demonstrates that photography was beginning to possess the power to communicate an individual impression over a great distance and to make a person widely known. ^[11]

Magazines also experimented early with presenting a single individual through a sequence of photographs. The first issue of Graphic, founded in 1909, opened with a feature entitled “One Hundred Poses of the Celebrated Manryū,” presenting the popular Manryū through a succession of different images. Its use of multiple photographs to show variations in the expression, clothing, posture, and atmosphere of one person anticipates an approach to portraiture that would later become familiar in magazine gravure and photobooks. ^[2]

The girls’ revues that developed from the Taishō period through the prewar Shōwa era are also important to understanding the later cultures of idols and gravure. In addition to the Takarazuka Girls’ Revue’s company magazine Kageki, founded in 1918, girls’ magazines such as Shōjo no Tomo and Shōjo Gahō published stage photographs, portraits, gravure, conversations, personality features, and contributions from fans. Junko Miyauchi examines the star images formed through these publications as the “idolization” of Takarazuka performers. ^[12]

The magazines presented not only the splendour of the public stage but also rehearsals, journeys, meals, friendships, and everyday conversations. They communicated performers’ appearances and activities to readers unable to see the revues in person and cultivated relationships in which fans followed a performer over time. In this respect, the publications performed functions comparable to those of later idol magazines and gravure. For young female readers, the sight of women living and shining actively onstage could provide not only entertainment but also figures of admiration and hope. ^[12]

As cinema culture developed, images of actors circulated across film magazines, posters, production stills, postcards, and bromides. The collections of the National Film Archive of Japan preserve bromides, film stills, behind-the-scenes photographs, and magazines bearing the names of individual actors from the 1920s and 1930s. An exhibition devoted to actress Kinuyo Tanaka titled its prewar section “Kinuyo, the Eternal Idol” and presented photographs from her early theatrical work, bromides dating from approximately 1929–30, film stills, and images showing both film production and aspects of life away from the screen. ^[13]

The actors, singers, geigi, girls’ revue performers, and photographic models of the period cannot be described as “gravure idols” in the later sense of the term. Nevertheless, a culture had already taken shape from the Meiji period through prewar Shōwa in which a person’s expressions and clothing were interpreted photographically, circulated through magazines, postcards, and bromides, and received by viewers through familiarity and admiration.

Postwar gravure did not emerge in complete isolation from this earlier culture. It can instead be understood as a new development, within a new era of magazines, entertainment, advertising, and idol culture, of the practice of communicating popular figures through photography, discovering unfamiliar aspects of them, and preserving their images in cultural memory.

4. The Formation of Modern Gravure: Magazines, Photobooks, and Gravure Idols#

Modern gravure did not begin suddenly with a single magazine or individual. Its present form developed gradually as several kinds of media—including postwar popular-entertainment magazines, weekly magazines, idol magazines, youth-oriented general-interest magazines, manga magazines, and photobooks—cultivated their own forms of portrait photography. This history can be understood as an expansion from a culture in which stars appeared in gravure to one in which some performers made gravure a principal field of creative activity.

In the years immediately following the Second World War, entertainment magazines communicating the appearances of actors and singers became widely read alongside the popularity of cinema, radio, and popular music. Publications such as Heibon and Myojo, founded in 1952, placed film actors and singers at the centre of their pages and brought images of popular contemporary figures into readers’ homes. Rather than seeing a figure pass across a moving screen, readers could repeatedly contemplate a selected expression or style of dress in a photograph held in their hands. ^[14]

During the 1970s, young male and female singers replaced film actors as the principal cover figures of Myojo, and the publication increasingly developed the character of an idol magazine. Rather than merely reproducing television appearances, it introduced idols’ home towns, families, school lives, interests, and shopping habits, communicating personality from a perspective different from that of stage or television performance. This ability to make stars appear more familiar is important to understanding the later relationship between gravure and idol culture. ^[14]

The media carrying portrait photography became increasingly diverse from the 1960s onward. Weekly Playboy was founded in 1966, contributing to the development of a youth-oriented magazine culture combining photography with articles on fashion, entertainment, society, and sport. Within publications of this kind, gravure became more than illustration accompanying written articles. It occupied covers and opening features and helped determine the visual identity of the magazine itself. ^[15]

Portrait photography of actors, singers, idols, and models also became established on the covers and opening pages of youth and boys’ manga magazines, including Young Magazine, founded in 1980. Readers who initially purchased a magazine for its manga could encounter a new performer through photography, while another reader might be drawn to the magazine by the person appearing on its cover. Gravure thus created encounters operating in both directions. ^[16]

Miss Magazine, established in 1982, is one project that symbolizes the relationship between magazines and performers formed during this period. According to its official history, it marked its fortieth anniversary in 2022 and was revived in 2018 following a seven-year interruption. It has introduced Yuki Saito and numerous later actors, entertainers, and models. Gravure thus became not only a means of photographing already established stars but also a setting for discovering new performers and allowing readers to follow their development. ^[17]

Most people who appeared in magazine gravure during the earlier postwar decades, however, were not called “gravure idols” in the present sense. Their principal work was generally in music, film, television drama, modelling, or advertising, and gravure was one means of communicating their appeal and increasing public recognition.

It is difficult to identify a single definitive point at which the term gravure idol was created and became established. Against the background of portrait photography involving models, singers, actors, and promotional figures during the 1970s and 1980s, the term gradually became familiar from the 1990s onward as a description of performers for whom magazine gravure pages, photobooks, and image works formed a principal field of activity. Yūji Orita argues that Akiko Hinagata’s prominence during the mid-1990s played an important role in establishing the term. This should be understood as one historical interpretation of the term’s spread, rather than definitive evidence of its earliest use. ^[18]

This change did not separate gravure from other forms of entertainment so much as create additional routes into them. People who first became known through gravure could expand into acting, television entertainment, music, or fashion, while established idols and actors continued to participate in gravure in order to present another aspect of themselves.

The formation of modern gravure should therefore not be described as a simple replacement of “photographs of actors and singers” by “photographs of gravure idols.” Photographs communicating the appeal of established stars, photographs through which previously unknown people were discovered, and photographs recording the development of an individual performer evolved together within the same magazine culture.

5. Male Gravure: Fashion, Personality, and Style#

In Japan, the term gravure idol has conventionally referred primarily to female performers, but gravure as a form of portrait photography is not inherently limited to women. Male actors, singers, musicians, dancers, and models also use magazine, photobook, and digital gravure to express clothing, hairstyle, facial expression, bodily movement, personality, and lifestyle. ^[1][19]

When men are the subjects, the work is often described as male gravure, men’s gravure, or simply as an actor’s or artist’s gravure, rather than through the occupational label “male gravure idol.” Its forms are similarly varied. Some works emphasize fashion and polished styling; others reveal quiet expressions different from those seen in stage performance, communicate energy and approachability, or make use of physical presence and mature composure. ^[19][20]

In 2023, Young Magazine launched Oshi-Men File, which it described as the magazine’s first original male-gravure project. Its first subject was Atsuki Mashiko, a member of the dance and vocal group GENIC who also works as an actor. The series subsequently featured male performers active across several fields, including acting, theatre, vocal performance, and music. ^[19]

The project has included Takeru, who works as an artist and writes music for other performers, and the visual-kei vocalist mitsu. By presenting these figures through clothing, locations, and photographic distances different from those of their stage performances, the works demonstrate that gravure is not fundamentally a professional or gender category, but a method of constructing an individual’s appeal through photography. ^[20]

The existence of male gravure also broadens interpretations that define gravure primarily through one particular kind of bodily representation. Fashion, musical identity, an actor’s atmosphere, personal style, softness, strength, and stillness can all be made visible through collaboration with photographers and editors.

Male gravure should therefore not be regarded as a culture wholly separate from women’s gravure. It belongs to gravure’s wider practice of expressing an individual’s presence and personality through photography, clothing, location, composition, and editing.

6. The Aesthetics and Artistry of Gravure: Portraiture, Staging, and Editing#

Gravure can be understood both as a form of portrait photography and as a composite visual expression in which photography, staging, editing, and design overlap. Its development within magazines, entertainment culture, and commercial publishing does not conflict with its artistic possibilities. When light, composition, colour, location, clothing, expression, and the selection and sequencing of photographs create a particular sense of time and atmosphere around a person, gravure moves beyond the simple recording of appearance and becomes a photographic work.

The Tokyo Photographic Art Museum explains that an accomplished portrait can draw out the appeal of an individual while also revealing the emotions, aesthetic sensibilities, and ideals of the period and society behind that person. Portrait photography can also capture inner beauty and an inexpressible presence or atmosphere. ^[21]

This perspective can be applied to gravure. A memorable gravure work conveys more than the model’s appearance: it may bring together the atmosphere of the period in which the person was active, a stage in personal development, contemporary fashions, and the place or season of the photography within a single representation.

In gravure, the model or gravure idol is not merely a passive presence placed before the camera. Through the direction of the gaze, changes in expression, posture, pace of movement, and interaction with clothing and location, the model actively participates in creating the photograph’s meaning.

Photographers, stylists, hair and makeup artists, editors, and designers draw out a person’s individuality through their respective forms of expertise and shape a coherent visual world. The light and location prepared by a photographer can meet the model’s expressions and movements to create an instant that exceeds the original plan. Shinpachirō Kimura, editor-in-chief of the gravure magazine STRiKE!, has described gravure as a place in which the featured person can express individuality, emphasizing visual flow and narrative. ^[22]

“Naturalness” in gravure does not simply mean photographing without preparation. To discover moments in which individuality becomes visible—a casual movement, an averted glance, a moment in transit, or the instant before an expression becomes a smile—the photographer arranges the circumstances and waits attentively. Staging and naturalness are not necessarily opposites. Careful direction can sometimes allow a person’s natural qualities to become more clearly visible.

In magazine gravure, contrasts and visual movement are composed within a limited number of pages. A photobook allows a person’s image to unfold over a longer duration: through the cover and opening spread, close and distant views, pages devoted to streets or landscapes, quiet expressions, and scenes of movement. The reader’s pace in turning the pages, the resonance between adjacent photographs, empty space, the texture of the paper, and the tonal qualities of the printing all become part of the experience.

An accomplished gravure photobook can therefore be read not merely as a volume containing numerous photographs but as a visual narrative about a person. Some works suggest the passage of a single day or journey; others record several years of growth, changing seasons, or a turning point in a performer’s career. When the appeal of the individual is joined by the photographer’s perspective, the memory of a place, and the rhythm of the editing, a photobook creates a world that could only have existed at that particular time.

There are also examples of individual gravure photobooks being discussed critically from these perspectives. Writing about Airi Suzuki’s photobook Oyoganai Natsu, Yasuharu Sasaki identifies the nostalgia created by its Hakodate setting, the variations in Suzuki’s expression from scene to scene, the discoveries produced as each page is turned, and the particular intensity possessed by Suzuki and ℃-ute at that moment in their careers. What is evaluated here is not appearance alone, but the way place, time, expression, and a particular stage in a career are brought together within a book. ^[23]

The boundary between magazine work and the photography presented in art museums is not necessarily fixed. Photographer Kishin Shinoyama produced numerous magazine covers and gravure features while also publishing works concerned with people, society, cities, and historical periods. The Tokyo Photographic Art Museum retrospective A New Fine Day: Shinoyama Kishin treated magazine work, including the covers of Myojo that he began photographing in 1971, as an important part of his wider career. The museum has described Shinoyama’s photography as capturing the intensity of its period and functioning as a critique of the Shōwa era. ^[24]

To view gravure as art is not to add a value that was previously absent. It is to pay closer attention to the light, composition, expression, time, collaboration, and editorial intention already present within the photographs.

Gravure can express a broad range of feelings: familiarity, splendour, stillness, humour, vitality, or nostalgia. When the model’s presence and the sensibilities of the creators come together, gravure does more than record a person. It transforms the fact that this individual existed at this time and in this place into an image that can remain in the viewer’s memory.

In this sense, gravure may be appreciated both as a form of portrait photography cultivated within Japanese popular culture and as a photographic art concerned with human presence, time, and individuality.

7. Gravure and Idol Culture: Expressions of Familiarity, Discovery, and Growth#

Gravure and idol culture are closely related, but they are not identical. Not every idol participates in gravure, while many actors, models, and entertainers whose principal work lies outside idol performance also undertake it. Nevertheless, gravure has played an important role within Japanese idol culture as a setting in which the individuality and presence of a performer can be communicated through means different from singing, dancing, acting, stage performance, or television entertainment.

Onstage and in moving images, a performer’s appearance passes through time together with music, dialogue, movement, and narrative. Gravure, by contrast, allows a reader to contemplate an expression or gesture at a personal pace, return to an earlier page, and experience the relationships between photographs. A quiet expression, a gentle smile, a contemplative gaze, or a scene suggestive of everyday life can create an impression different from the splendour of a formal performance.

Gravure can communicate a new aspect of an already familiar idol, but it can also become the means through which a reader first discovers a performer. Karen Izumi has described people who saw her Miss Magazine gravure, followed her on social media, and subsequently attended performances by her idol group. A reader who initially purchases a magazine for its manga or articles may encounter a person through its cover or opening gravure pages and then extend that interest to the performer’s music, acting, stage work, or online activities. ^[25]

Performers may also choose gravure because of their own admiration or interest in the form. Izumi had long been attracted to gravure after seeing work by idols she personally supported, and she asked her manager to submit her application for Miss Magazine. She has identified not only the experience of being photographed but also the anticipation of seeing how the photographs will be completed, and the acquisition of new knowledge about expression and movement during each session, as sources of enjoyment in gravure. ^[25]

Runa Toyoda has described gravure as work in which, unlike modelling clothing or products or performing a fictional role, she expresses her own appeal through herself. Through repeated photography, she discovered expressions she had not previously known she could make and kinds of clothing that suited her. She also found that lessons about natural expression through the eyes could be applied to acting. She has described her experience of gravure as expanding the range of challenges she felt able to undertake both professionally and personally. ^[26]

Such testimony suggests that gravure need not merely present a finished image. It can also provide a setting in which a performer reconsiders individuality and learns new forms of expression. Experimenting with facial expression and posture before the camera, and viewing the completed photographs produced with photographers and staff, can become a process of discovering how one may appear through another person’s eyes.

Misato Tominaga, recipient of the Miss Magazine 2025 Readers’ Special Award, has similarly reflected on gravure as a challenge through which she hoped to discover a new version of herself. Having previously worked primarily in theatre, gravure was a new undertaking for her. She studied facial expression and posing in preparation for the photography. She has written that positive responses from those around her enabled her to reconsider characteristics in which she had initially lacked confidence and to perceive them instead as points of personal charm. ^[27]

Tominaga’s account also gives a central place to her relationship with supporters. Looking back on an assessment period during which she balanced school, theatrical rehearsals, academic work, and live streaming, she writes that supportive words and comments gave her the energy required to continue through a demanding period. She expresses gratitude for having become known to many people through gravure and states that she hopes to repay their support by continuing to show them new and changing aspects of herself. ^[27]

Expressions of gratitude of this kind do more than provide a conventional public acknowledgement. They also reveal that the activities of idols and gravure models are sustained through many relationships. Alongside the support of fans, performers may speak about photographers, editors, stylists, hair and makeup artists, agency staff and managers, and family members or friends who watch over their activities. Before applying, Toyoda consulted her mother and received encouragement to take on the challenge. Izumi has spoken about being congratulated by members of her agency and about travelling with her family to purchase the magazine when she first appeared on its cover. ^[25][26]

Naturally, attitudes toward gravure and the circumstances of participation differ from person to person. Not every performer has the same experience or finds the same meaning in the work. For this reason, discussions of gravure should avoid imposing a single interpretation from outside and should instead attend to how performers themselves describe choosing the work, what they wish to express through it, and what kind of experience it has become for them.

The relationship between gravure and its audience also cannot be explained solely as the one-sided consumption of photographs. Purchasing magazines and photobooks, communicating responses, attending events or live performances, and following a performer over a long career can become ways of supporting that person’s development. Performers, in turn, may seek to answer that encouragement by presenting new work and visible growth.

Within idol culture, gravure is a medium that creates a form of familiarity different from stage performance, introduces audiences to new performers, and records the changes and growth of an individual over time. It brings together the model’s self-expression, the collaborative work of creators, and the encouragement of supporters, family members, and other people around the performer. Gravure allows viewers not only to feel closer to a performer, but also to accompany the process through which that person discovers new possibilities and takes steps toward new forms of activity.

8. Gravure in Motion: Image Videos, Digital Distribution, and GraKara#

An image video is a moving-image work that expresses the appearance and individuality of a gravure idol, model, actor, entertainer, or other featured person. Often abbreviated in Japanese as IV or imebi, such works are produced and circulated through DVD, Blu-ray Disc, and digital video distribution. ^[28]

Whereas a photobook or magazine gravure feature preserves an expression or composition as a still image, an image video portrays a person through movement, voice, passing time, surrounding sound, and atmosphere. It can therefore be understood as gravure in moving-image form. ^[28]

Some image videos incorporate a more clearly defined story resembling a film or television drama, but many make the featured person the primary subject. They may be organized through relatively loose settings—a journey, a season, a day off, a walk, sport, or time spent in a room. Scenes of the performer facing the camera, walking through a natural environment, speaking cheerfully, taking part in an interview, or appearing behind the scenes may be combined so that different expressions and atmospheres unfold over time.

In still gravure, light, gesture, gaze, and background are condensed within a single photograph. In moving images, these elements continually change. The brief interval before a smile appears, a moment when the performer looks away from the camera, the manner of walking, the pace of speech, the tone of the voice, and casual gestures can communicate individuality in ways unavailable to still photography. Image videos are therefore sometimes approached as a kind of “moving photobook,” but they do more than set still images in motion: they are a distinct form of portraiture that uses time and sound as creative materials.

Image videos encompass a broad range of direction and atmosphere. A work may be bright and energetic, structured like a travel diary, shaped around natural or urban landscapes, playful and humorous, quiet and introspective, strongly influenced by fashion, or expressive of mature composure and splendour. Even the same performer may be represented differently according to the work’s concept, stage of activity, location, and the perspective of its director or cinematographer.

Production involves not only the performer but also directors, camera operators, lighting staff, stylists, hair and makeup artists, production crews, editors, and musicians. Some scenes make use of the performer’s spontaneous movements and words, while others carefully design clothing, location, action, distance from the camera, visual pace, and music. The recorded material is selected through editing and shaped into a work through the ordering and duration of scenes, music, environmental sound, and the use of pauses.

In a photobook, the reader turns the pages at a personally chosen pace. In an image video, editing guides the passage of time. Nevertheless, the two forms share the practice of portraying one person through several settings and creating a small world around that individual through changes in expression, clothing, and location. Photobooks and image videos may be created during the same period, while footage from magazine gravure sessions may also be released as moving images. Still and moving gravure have therefore developed in ways that complement one another.

DVD, long a principal sales format for image videos, continues to be used for new releases, while some works are also issued on Blu-ray Disc. Physical discs offer the pleasure of preserving and collecting a work together with its jacket photography and packaging. Digital distribution has also become established, providing several forms of access, including streaming, downloads, and subscription viewing. ^[28]

Digital gravure services do not all follow the same model. Some provide subscription access to an eligible catalogue, while others allow users to select and download an individual digital photobook or moving-image work. Girlz High, for example, operates both a monthly unlimited-access catalogue containing images and videos and a separate individual-download section. Arrangements of this kind allow users to choose between continuously exploring a broader catalogue and purchasing particular performers or works for personal access. ^[29]

Physical discs and digital distribution do not necessarily exist in a relationship in which one completely replaces the other. Discs offer the appeal of possessing and preserving a work as a physical object. Subscription services make it convenient to discover a broad range of works over time, while individual downloads allow viewers to select particular works for repeated viewing. Differences in medium and sales model therefore influence how works are discovered, owned, preserved, and revisited.

Gravure in moving-image form has also expanded beyond DVDs and dedicated streaming services. One example is GraKara DX, provided through Daiichikosho’s DAM karaoke system. The service distributes original footage of gravure idols as background video for karaoke songs. ^[30]

GraKara DX is not itself a conventional feature-length image video. It is gravure footage created for a different medium and viewing situation: karaoke. Magazine gravure and photobooks offer an experience of turning pages in one’s hands, while image videos extend gravure into a sustained audiovisual experience. GraKara, by contrast, introduces it into a space in which people sing, converse, and enjoy time together. Gravure footage functions there both as imagery to be appreciated and as a visual element shaping the musical and social atmosphere.

These developments demonstrate that gravure no longer belongs solely to a particular printing process or to paper media. Its media may change—from magazine pages and photobooks to DVD, Blu-ray Disc, digital distribution, short-form video, and karaoke backgrounds—but its central practice remains the same: communicating a person’s appearance, movement, expressions, and individuality through a composed work.

Image videos add time, movement, and voice to still gravure. A presence preserved as a single instant in a photograph unfolds instead as a person breathing, walking, speaking, and smiling. Gravure in moving-image form allows viewers to feel closer to a person while also offering a distinctive visual culture through which forms of beauty and expression unavailable to still photography can be discovered.

9. Generations and Careers: The Breadth of Gravure Expression#

The performers who participate in gravure encompass a broad range of ages and professional histories. They include newcomers at the beginning of an entertainment career, members of idol groups, experienced actors and models, people who have long made gravure a principal activity, and performers who return to photography after spending time away from it. Gravure does not belong to one particular age group. It is a medium capable of portraying many different periods in a person’s career.

Gravure created during a performer’s younger years may centre on freshness, brightness, approachability, playfulness, and expressions close to everyday life. A more experienced performer may explore composure, confidence, refinement, splendour, humour, or mature forms of expression chosen by the performer.

These qualities are not determined conclusively by age. An adult performer may communicate charm and innocence, while a younger performer may possess stillness and a dignified presence. Energy, composure, warmth, strength, and sensitivity can coexist within a single person. Different aspects may emerge according to the concept, location, clothing, light, and relationship with the photographer. This ability to reveal several qualities within one person is part of gravure’s richness as portraiture.

When younger participants are involved, their work should be understood through age-appropriate portraiture, fashion, performance, and the documentation of artistic and personal development. The mature forms of expression freely chosen by adult performers should not be discussed through the same vocabulary or viewing framework as the activities of minors. Attention should instead be directed toward the young performer’s wishes and dignity, education, daily life, welfare, and the process through which experience and new expressive possibilities are acquired.

The presence of people who continue gravure into adulthood, or return to photography after a period away, demonstrates that gravure is not solely a culture for recording youth. In 2025, Sayaka Isoyama published Yoin, a photobook commemorating the twenty-fifth anniversary of her debut. Kodansha introduced the book as capturing both the enduring appeal for which she had long been known and her beauty “at the present moment.” Age is treated here not as a movement away from an earlier public image, but as the time through which the memory of a long career and the person’s current presence can be brought together within one book. ^[31]

In the gravure of a performer with a long career, comparison with earlier work may itself become part of the viewing experience. Expression, bearing, distance from the camera, and involvement in production can change over the years, while qualities familiar from earlier work may reappear in a new form. Anniversary photobooks, comeback works, and image videos marking a career milestone can present the performer’s current self while also inviting reflection on the time through which that person has travelled.

Tomoe Yamanaka offers a notable example. Yamanaka began working in entertainment at the age of ten in 2005 and subsequently appeared in magazine gravure and a large number of image works. With periods of inactivity, she released one hundred image works, established Fantasy LLC in 2022, and resumed gravure activity in 2023. Including its intervals, her career now extends across more than twenty years. ^[32][33]

In an interview, Yamanaka identified the opportunity to interact directly with supporters at release events as a major reason she was able to continue through a long career. During a period away from entertainment, she read affectionate fan writing about particular parts of her earlier works, strengthening her desire to return. At the same time, she has asked audiences to consider appropriate distance and how their words may be received by the person concerned. Her long experience therefore emphasizes both support and respect. ^[33]

Yamanaka has also written that her encounters with fans, staff, and others involved in production led her to recognize gravure as a central activity in her life. The company she founded identifies the production and distribution of gravure DVDs, Blu-ray Discs, and streamed video as its business. She has thus expanded her career from appearing in works to participating in the process through which they are planned and delivered. ^[32]

According to Yamanaka, the company name expresses her wish to carry forward the feelings of her mother, who closed a business she had operated in order to support Yamanaka’s entertainment career. The story is one example of how a performer’s career may be built not through personal effort alone, but with the understanding of family members and the contributions of production staff, managers, and supporters. ^[32]

Longevity alone does not determine the value of a career. A single book produced during a brief period may leave a powerful impression, while earlier gravure may later be reconsidered as a record of one stage in the life of a person who moved into another field. Leaving, returning, or changing the method of one’s activity can all form part of a career chosen by the performer.

Growing older does not necessarily narrow the expressive possibilities of gravure. Distance from one’s earlier self, newly acquired confidence, professional and personal experience, and memories shared with supporters can all become creative materials that did not exist at a younger age. When a person is photographed not as someone remaining unchanged but as someone continuing to develop, gravure records more than appearance: it records time itself.

The breadth of generations represented in gravure is therefore more than an expansion of its age range. It demonstrates that a person’s appeal possesses a depth that cannot be expressed through a single period or style. The freshness of appearing before the camera for the first time and the composure produced through long experience each possess a different value. While photographing a performer’s present, gravure can also allow viewers to sense the past behind that person and the future into which change may continue.

10. Production, Care, and Collaboration: Models, Agencies, and Staff#

Gravure is shaped not only by its completed photographs and moving images, but also by the relationships within the environment that produces them. A setting in which a model can safely experiment with expressions and movement and communicate personal views is not merely an external condition surrounding the work. Trust, communication, rest, and respect for privacy form part of the production itself, helping bring out both a person’s natural appeal and new forms of expression.

A gravure project may involve the model, an agency or manager, an editor, photographer, stylist, hair and makeup artists, and other production staff. Methods differ according to the scale and medium of the work, but discussions before photography may address its concept, intended forms of publication and distribution, location, clothing, hair and makeup, schedule, and desired atmosphere. Sharing the model’s preferences, uncertainties, and expressive strengths can help give the project a more concrete direction.

When producing her first photobook, Miharu Mori was asked in advance about her preferences concerning makeup, clothing, and photographers. Mori also studied other photobooks and suggested settings and ideas that she wanted to incorporate, including a carousel in Hokkaido. The resulting photobook was not simply an image devised for her by editors; it emerged through the interaction between her interests and the production team’s proposals. ^[36]

A photographic set includes much more than the moments during which the shutter is released. Travel, preparation, changing clothes, hair and makeup, adjustment of lighting, waiting, and rest all occupy shared time. Checking the model’s physical condition, fatigue, response to temperature and weather, comfort in clothing, and feelings about the intended photography—and adjusting the plan when necessary—provides a foundation for continuing the production safely.

It is also important that the model can communicate discomfort or preferences and that staff are able to receive them. Direction from a photographer should function as a proposal through which expression and posture are explored together, rather than as a means of imposing an unwanted image. By adjusting light, clothing, location, and movement in response to the model’s views, the participants may discover an appealing moment that was not present in the original plan.

Some performers have spoken directly about relationships of trust on gravure sets. Coco, the 2022 Miss Magazine Grand Prix winner, initially felt anxious about her first magazine gravure work, but has said that the warmth of the people on set enabled her to relax. As the photography continued, growing trust with staff contributed to her confidence. Aika Sawaguchi has likewise credited the support of those around her for her ability to approach gravure in a secure and positive way. ^[34][35]

These are accounts of particular performers and projects and should not be taken as descriptions of every production environment. Nevertheless, the fact that performers themselves identify security, trust, and enjoyment as important parts of their experience demonstrates that the production environment cannot be separated from expressive quality. When a model trusts the people around her, a conversation may produce an unplanned smile, concentration may briefly soften, and unexpected gestures can enter the work.

Agencies and managers may help evaluate whether to accept a proposal, clarify its content and schedule, communicate between the model and producers, and provide support during travel and production. For less experienced performers in particular, they may also serve as intermediaries through whom preferences and questions can be communicated.

When a project involves a minor, it is important to establish the consent of a parent or guardian and, where applicable, the performer’s agency in addition to the wishes of the participant. For example, Miss Magazine’s application requirements demand parental consent from minors and the agreement of an existing agency or group where an applicant is already affiliated. The requirements also state at the application stage that photographs and moving images may appear in magazines, online, and through apps, and describe activities planned following selection. ^[37]

Explaining what will be photographed, where it may be published, and what subsequent activities may follow provides a basis on which a prospective participant can consider the work. This is particularly significant now that gravure may extend beyond printed magazines into websites, apps, digital photobooks, streaming video, and social media.

Organized photography sessions provide a different setting in which models meet members of the public. They allow people who are neither professional photographers nor magazine editors to make portraits within an established time and place. Such sessions can provide an opportunity to support a favourite model while also practising light, composition, and communication with a subject and developing skills in portrait photography.

The photography-session company Fresh operates group sessions featuring several models, outdoor sessions, one-to-one photography, and collaborative media events, and provides introductory guidance for beginners. It also publishes rules intended to allow photographers and models to share the same space safely. ^[38]

Fresh prohibits touching or approaching models excessively, forcing unwanted poses or clothing, extreme close-ups or low-angle photography, seeking private contact details, waiting for performers outside the venue, and following or harassing them. It requires photographers to consult the model’s agency or the organizer before publishing images online or through other media. Its rules for individual sessions also establish rest periods and prohibit photography that the model does not wish to undertake. ^[38]

Such rules are not intended solely to restrict the participant’s creativity. By establishing in advance what is and is not permitted, they allow photographers to concentrate on making images while models maintain their agency and privacy. The presence of staff also creates a means of consultation and intervention if a problem arises between a model and participant.

Familiarity within a photography session is also distinct from seeking a private relationship. Participants may exchange greetings and conversation during the agreed period, discuss poses and gaze within limits acceptable to the model, and communicate appreciation for the resulting photographs. Through this measured interaction, members of the public can learn portrait photography while directly supporting a model’s activities.

Care does not end when photography is completed. The subsequent stages include selection, adjustment, editing, design, publication, promotion, preservation, and distribution. Managing where, for how long, and in what form the work will be used, while handling unpublished material and personal information with care, is also part of the responsibility of those involved in production.

For photographs taken by members of the public in particular, permission to take an image is not necessarily permission to publish it. By checking the conditions established by the model, agency, and organizer and publishing only within the authorized scope, the photographer’s creative activity can coexist with the model’s professional plans. ^[38]

No single rule or format can guarantee a good production environment, and magazines, photobooks, image works, and public photography sessions require different structures. Nevertheless, advance explanation, the participant’s wishes, continuing dialogue, staff support, appropriate rest, clear boundaries, and management of the work’s publication range are important elements shared by responsible portrait production.

Care in gravure does not require expression to become timid or reduce the possibilities of the work. On the contrary, an environment in which the model feels secure can enable the exploration of bolder ideas and unfamiliar expressions, supporting both the freedom and depth of the resulting work.

When the model, agency, photographer, editor, and staff respect one another’s roles and intentions and create a work together, gravure becomes a richer form of portraiture. The care and trust present on the set may not themselves appear directly in the completed photograph. Yet they can become visible through the softness of an expression, the natural quality of movement, and the warmth of the work as a whole.

11. Fan Culture and the Ethics of Appreciation: Support, Boundaries, and Respect#

Within Japanese gravure culture, fans do more than passively receive works. They purchase magazines, photobooks, DVDs, Blu-ray Discs, and digital releases; communicate their responses; attend release events, photography sessions, exhibitions, stage productions, and concerts; and follow performers over long periods. Such support helps sustain the production and circulation of works and can encourage performers as they move toward their next activities.

The words of gravure idols and models frequently reveal that encouragement from fans can become a source of energy that helps them continue. Misato Tominaga has written that supportive words gave her strength during a demanding assessment period in which she balanced school, theatrical rehearsals, academic work, and live streaming. She expresses gratitude for becoming known through gravure and a desire to repay that support through her future activities. ^[27]

Tomoe Yamanaka has likewise identified direct interaction with fans at release events as one reason she was able to continue through a long career. During a period away from gravure, writing by fans who had watched her earlier works attentively became one factor encouraging her to return. Such testimony suggests that carefully receiving a work and responding to it through words can possess genuine meaning for the performer. ^[33]

Supporting gravure can join an interest in the person with an appreciation of the work. Communicating specific impressions of expression, clothing, light, composition, location, photographic sequencing, or changes since an earlier work allows the viewer to respond to the complete creation produced by the model and production team, rather than reducing the person to appearance alone.

Short messages exchanged online can also become a form of support. Performers often use official social media not only to announce work, but also to share everyday events, interests, stories about family or pets, and casual greetings. A kind reply or a specific response to a work, even when brief, communicates that the post has been received.

Performers cannot necessarily respond to every message, but some speak about reading comments and drawing encouragement from them. Agencies and official fan clubs may also identify comments on official social media and fan letters as recognized ways of communicating support. Hello! Project, for example, has thanked fans for letters and gifts, stated that such support encourages its members, and, during a period when physical letters could not be accepted, invited messages through official social-media accounts. ^[41]

A fan letter offers a more personal yet measured way to take time over expressing appreciation for a work. Addresses, accepted contents, and rules concerning gifts vary between agencies, so official channels and instructions should be followed. Systems in which letters are delivered through an agency or fan club, rather than handed directly to the performer, also help warm messages reach their recipient safely and reliably.

Sincere compliments, whether online or in person, can encourage both a performer and the work. Choosing language that the person can comfortably receive in a public setting—and avoiding intrusive personal questions or unduly explicit and one-sided expressions—allows familiarity to be communicated as respect. Specific responses to facial expression, clothing, light, location, or the atmosphere of the work as a whole are one way of thoughtfully receiving the expression created by the model and production team.

Warm support and appropriate distance are not opposites. On the contrary, clear respect for another person’s wishes and private life makes continuing interaction safer for both performer and fan. Although Yamanaka actively searches for responses to her work, she has asked those writing about performers to consider their distance from the person concerned and how their words may feel when received. ^[33]

At release events and photography sessions, this principle is expressed through concrete rules. Sofmap prohibits behaviour that a featured performer cannot accept and requires participants to follow instructions from organizers, agencies, and event staff. Photography-session regulations commonly prohibit physical contact, forcing unwanted poses, seeking private information, waiting outside for models, abusive language, and publishing or reusing photographs without permission. ^[39][40]

Such rules do not exist only because fans are viewed with suspicion. They establish clear roles and boundaries so that models, supporters, and staff can safely enjoy the same space. Within agreed times and procedures, conversation, photography, and the communication of appreciation can allow warmth and respect to coexist.

Similar consideration applies online. Officially published photographs should be distinguished from private life. Seeking personal information or reproducing, altering, or selling images without authorization is different from supporting a work. Even photographs taken personally at an organized session remain subject to the publication rules and permissions established by the organizer or agency. ^[38][40]

Long-term support also means accompanying, and finding happiness in, changes and new challenges that the performer chooses. Entering a new field, changing the direction of expression, taking time to rest, or returning to activity are all parts of an individual path. By valuing the appeal of earlier work while also respecting the performer’s present self and future choices, a fan’s support can accompany a person across a long career.

A courteous fan culture does not mean remaining cold or remote. Replying to a morning greeting, celebrating a new release, sharing happiness at an achieved goal, expressing thanks at an event, or writing a letter at an important milestone can all form part of its warmth. Combining familiarity with respect, and valuing the performer beyond the work as a person with an independent life and will, provides the foundation for interaction that can continue safely over time.

An ethical appreciation of gravure therefore means fully receiving the beauty and enjoyment of a work while remaining attentive to the dignity and agency of the person depicted. Viewers can look carefully, communicate their appreciation through appropriate channels, and respect the future that the performer chooses. The accumulation of such relationships gives gravure culture much of its warmth and continuity.

12. Conclusion: A Culture That Photographs a Person in Time#

Japanese gravure began as the name of a printing technique and expanded into magazine photography, photobooks, digital images, image videos, and even karaoke footage. Its history encompasses not only the development of printing technology, but also the evolution of Japanese publishing, entertainment, and photographic cultures through which images of contemporary people have been communicated to broad audiences.

The media and social environments have changed greatly—from ukiyo-e actor prints and bijin-ga, Meiji-period portrait exhibitions, postcards and bromides, prewar film and girls’ revue magazines, to postwar star magazines, idol magazines, manga magazines, and photobooks. A simple and direct lineage cannot be imposed upon these different forms. Nevertheless, the cultural desire to preserve a reproducible image of an admired person and to encounter that individual’s clothing, expressions, development, and seemingly everyday qualities has repeatedly appeared through different technologies and historical periods.

Gravure cannot be defined solely by a particular form of clothing, age group, gender, or occupation. It can portray the freshness of a newcomer or the confidence and experience of a performer with a long career. Male actors and musicians, as well as women, can communicate fashion, personality, physical presence, and stillness through gravure. Moving images with voice and gesture provide another means through which human presence can be expressed.

At the centre is always an individual person. A model is not merely someone upon whom meaning is imposed from outside, but a performer who participates in the work through gaze, expression, posture, movement, and opinion. Photographers, editors, stylists, hair and makeup artists, designers, agencies, and production staff help shape that person’s qualities into a work. Security, trust, dialogue, appropriate rest, and clear boundaries do not restrict creative freedom; they provide the conditions under which more natural and substantial expression can become possible.

Once a work is published, a relationship with viewers and supporters begins. Purchasing a magazine or photobook, viewing a moving-image work, communicating a specific response, attending an event or performance, and following a career over time can support both the individual performer and the culture of production around that person. A fan culture combining warmth with respect recognizes the life, will, and changing choices of the person beyond the images, while creating opportunities to share happiness and gratitude.

An accomplished gravure work does more than temporarily record appearance. It may preserve the air of a location, seasonal light, voice and movement, a turning point in a career, the confidence or uncertainty felt at that moment, trust among creators, and memories shared with supporters within a single representation of a person.

Although an instant within a photograph remains still, the person depicted continues to change. An earlier work shows not only how someone once appeared, but may also suggest what that person was seeking, who accompanied the journey, and the future toward which the person was moving.

Gravure is a culture that carefully observes a person in the present while photographing the time behind that person and the possibilities extending ahead. Cultivated within Japanese magazine and photographic culture, it will continue to preserve human individuality, presence, and growth even as its media change.