Minamo is wrapping up her adult video career in December, but she’s not exactly slowing down. Her first novel, Mother’s Boat of Mud, hit shelves on September 14 from Kadokawa. It’s 192 pages, and it’s already getting a lot of attention.
She’s not the first JAV performer to try fiction. Mana Sakura has been publishing books for years. Still, a big-name actress putting out a family story with a major publisher is a pretty clear sign of how far some of these careers can stretch now.
In a recent interview she was asked the obvious question: why family for a debut?
She said it felt like the natural place to start. When she looked back at the parts of her life that actually moved her, family issues kept coming up. A lot of people deal with that stuff, so she figured readers might recognize pieces of it.
How much is real? Quite a bit. The parts about her grandmother are almost exactly what happened. The mother character is based on her own mom too, though that got rewritten. In the first draft she made her mother a calm family mediator. Her actual mother read it and basically said, “There’s no such thing as a mother who’s that understanding.” Mothers mess up, have expectations, and need to lean on people sometimes. So Minamo changed those sections.
The writing itself wasn’t easy. Family was something she hadn’t really put into words before, and she wasn’t sure how much to reveal. She also doesn’t think she’ll ever be the cheerful-story type. Messy, a little damp, a little somber — that’s more her lane. She even called herself naturally a bit gloomy.
She’s already thinking about a second book, this time about men and women. She said she feels more at ease around men than she did before entering the industry. Before AV, she was hurt more deeply at times and even wished she hadn’t been born a woman. That feeling faded after she started working. She’d like to turn those questions into fiction.
Minamo debuted in 2021 and has been doing a lot more than porn lately. She’s fronting campaigns for lingerie brand Ravijour, showing up on TV, and taking non-adult film roles. At her events, she says half the crowd is often women — sometimes up to 70% at anniversary events. Essays, YouTube, and the modeling work helped grow that side of her fanbase.
She’s aware the mainstream acceptance of AV actresses comes with a louder backlash too. Social media is full of both.
As for why she’s retiring now: she feels she’s done what she set out to do. She likes her agency and the companies she works with. It’s not a bitter exit. The industry has this idea of three-year, five-year, and ten-year walls. If you clear five years, people assume you’ll stay for ten. She asked herself if she could keep doing monthly shoots — which take a lot of mental focus — for another five years while juggling everything else. She wanted a clean stopping point instead of drifting.
What’s next? Radio, another novel, columns looking at the adult industry, beauty products, colored contacts, and — this one’s specific — stylish, less painful condoms designed from a woman’s point of view.
Novelist, lingerie model, possible condom designer. Minamo’s post-AV chapter is already looking busy.