Hitomi Kobayashi

Life and career Early life According to her official profile, Hitomi Kobayashi was born in Tokyo on September 2, 1965. Even at the end of her AV career, Kobayashi's attitude towards sex remained modest. Interviewed at the time of her retirement, Kobayashi said, "I love sex. But, just because I'm an AV actress, it doesn't mean I'm brim-filled with experience. I've done orgy movies, and lesbian scenes and loads of abnormal stuff, but the world of videos isn't a real world. My normal life is really plain. I couldn't imagine having sex anywhere other than in bed and taking part in an orgy would be unthinkable. I'm happy enough with just the missionary position." allowing Kobayashi to maintain her insistence on performing only simulated sex on camera throughout her AV career. Kobayashi considered her AV performances to be another form of acting and came up with various techniques for appearing to have actual sex. For example, she says, "I used to get the directors to tickle my feet and then tried not to laugh so it looked as though I was climaxing." Both of these first two films were judged little more than AVs on film, and were not popular with either AV fans or the critics, who preferred Nikkatsu's older Roman Porno style.

The third in this series, (released December 19, 1987), came closest to the old Nikkatsu style, in that it had some semblance of a plot, At the height of her popularity, in 1987, Kobayashi married Toshifumi Yuzawa, who would later become the president of Kobayashi's talent agency. and author and film critic Patrick Galloway calls the film, "…nothing short of a multicultural terror tour de force, featuring gruesome, brilliantly rendered sound and imagery that will stay with you to your last dying gasp." Written by Takashi Ishii and directed by Toshiharu Ikeda, the film inspired two sequels. In 1996 and 1997, Hitomi Kobayashi starred in two films for pioneering pink film director Satoru Kobayashi, who was the director of Flesh Market (1962) – the first pink film. In 1997, she played the somewhat autobiographical role of fictional AV actress Mizuki Mahoro in the 1997 V-cinema film . Kobayashi's official return to the AV industry was in the November 1998 video Love Bond or Immoral Bonds.

Later career Over ten years after her debut, Kobayashi was by now a "mature woman" model, and her videos began to reflect the new niche for mature models in AVs which began to appear in the mid-1990s.

Kobayashi teamed up with Japan's first hardcore pornographic actress, Kyoko Aizome, in the February 2001 theatrical release. The same year, Kobayashi and her husband opened a nightclub in Roppongi. by 2003, Kobayashi had worked in the AV field for over a decade and a half and appeared in about 70 films. The 39 AVs in which she had starred had sold over 600,000 copies, earning about 6 billion yen ($60 million). Reflecting on her Adult Video career at this time, Kobayashi commented, "I'm delighted to have led a career where I would be elevated to being called 'AV Queen,' as well as to have lasted in the business until I turned 40."

Wishing to retire on a high-note, Kobayashi and her manager/husband advertised for investors in one last, 2-volume, two-and-a-half-hour AV opus. Kobayashi sought 35 investors who would contribute 500,000 yen ($5,000) each, for the privilege of a dinner with Kobayashi, having their names listed in the video's credits, and an exclusive viewing of the video. The video was released in two volumes as Hitomi Kobayashi FINAL – Disc1 (December 19, 2003) and Disc2 (December 31, 2003).

Controversy followed in the wake of the release when some of the investors in the video reported they were promised dividends from their investment, but had received none. It was claimed that Kobayashi had got over 50 investors for the project, but that her husband had used the money to pay personal debt and for recreational activities unrelated to the film. Insufficient communication with the investors, the shutting down of the film's website, the company repeatedly changing its name, and changing reports on whether or not the film made a profit added to investor complaints. In 2004, Kobayashi was reported working as a hostess at her nightclub in Roppongi.

Selected theatrical releases (May 14, 1988)