Yuri Komuro

(born July 28, 1976 in Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan) is a Japanese actress, author and former AV idol. She was one of the top actresses in the AV field during the late 1990s and in her dominant period from 1996 to 1999 was called "The AV Queen".

Life and career

Early life and AV career Yuri Komuro, who was born in Japan's Kanagawa Prefecture on July 28, 1976, commented in a news article, "I've always had a strong sexual awareness, even as a kid." Her decision to work in the AV industry was based on a desire to do something more unusual. "I thought if I did this," she comments, "I could change my life, Otherwise, I figured my future would be pretty predictable."

In January 1998 Komuro appeared in the Alice Japan video Sexy Butt directed by Tohjiro and starred in a number of other Alice Japan series over the next two years. In May 1998, Komuro was featured in the pseudo-documentary style adult video Legend Of An AV Idol directed by Kei Morikawa for Atlas21.

Komuro took advantage of her popularity as an AV idol to engage in a business venture, endorsing a perfume which, it was claimed, was based on the smell of a pair of panties she had worn for several days without changing. The perfume was called "Asoko," literally meaning, "That place," a Japanese euphemism for the genitals.

As a reigning AV star in the 1990s, Komuro could depend on a guarantee of one million yen (about US$10,000) or more per video. Kei Morikawa, Komuro's AV director from her Atlas21 days, has a role as an AV director. The film was presented at several international film festivals, including the Venice Film Festival and the Toronto International Film Festival. It was nominated for Best Asian Feature Film at the Singapore International Film Festival, and won Ishioka the Directors' Week Special Jury Award at the Fantasporto competition. It was released theatrically in Japan on October 27, 2001.

In April 2002, Komuro co-starred with Kyoko Aizome in the Shintōhō Eiga pink film Molester In a Hospital which was also directed by Aizome. The film, mixing mystery and eroticism, involves a hospital where several patients and staff have been raped on the night shift. The hospital's head (Kyoko Aizome) wants to avoid damaging the hospital's reputation and brings in an undercover investigator (Yuri Komuro) under the guise of a patient counselor. The movie was also released as a video on the Alice Japan Babylon label (KR-9172) in October 2002.

Though she concedes, "Most of what I do has some sort of connection with eroticism," When fellow AV idol Runa Hoshizaki gave Komuro an introduction, she began pursuing writing as a career. In spite of her lifelong involvement with erotic entertainment, looking back on her AV career, Komuro says, "I never had an orgasm during a film shooting. Except when somebody worked on me with a vibrator." In 2006, seven years after retirement from the AV industry, Komuro stated, "I'm finally at the stage where I can really enjoy sex."