Kaoru Oshima made a lot of noise in 2014 when he debuted as the first big otokonoko star in mainstream Japanese adult video. Biological male, no surgery, no hormones, no desire to change his legal gender. He says he’s definitely a man. He’s also attracted to women. Having sex with men was just work.
He retired at 25 the following year and has spent the time since becoming a TV personality and writer.
He first figured himself out at 15. Short, chubby, curly hair, convinced he’d never get a girlfriend. He found a crossdressing message board and saw middle-aged guys getting treated like cute girls. That felt like an option. Same year he had his first sexual experience with an older man he met on an anonymous board. In high school he also dated women. He didn’t mind sex with men, but romance and actual attraction stayed pointed at women.
At 18 he needed money and applied for gay adult videos. Overnight bus from Osaka to Tokyo, three videos in three days, about 200,000 yen — a month’s pay for a young guy. He expected it to be a one-off. Instead the other performers were so bad they all had to hold in laughter. Felt like a school festival. He didn’t feel shame about it, so he kept doing shoots on the side.
The real shift came at 23. A joint production between a mainstream AV company and a gay studio — full femboy video — became a massive hit. Offers poured in. Being fully made up and dressed as a woman, getting complimented on his looks, flipped a switch. He started cross-dressing in daily life, posted shirtless photos, signed an exclusive contract with a major agency in 2014, and shot more than 30 titles in two years.
He knew the clock was always ticking. When the exclusive deal ended he had a choice: freelance the harder stuff or cash in the name and leave. He left. Released a photo book with no genitals and no 18+ rating. Bookstores still wouldn’t stock it. Online shops flagged it as adult. TV appearances got cancelled last minute. That was the moment he understood that once you’ve done AV, a lot of people stop treating you like a regular person.
In 2023 he sued the production company to stop selling his old work. Settlement came this past February.
These days he writes columns for adult magazines and interviews current AV actresses. He’s pretty blunt about the industry. He doesn’t fully regret it, but he was naive. Porn is more organized than outsiders think, but it still operates outside normal rules. He doesn’t think people should wander in out of curiosity. He’s seen agencies pay for plastic surgery to launch a girl, only for her to get hooked on host clubs afterward.
Sharing the ugly parts he saw — and the ugly parts other people went through — is one of the things he can actually do now.
From first big femboy AV star to guy warning people not to do what he did. That’s a pretty specific career path.