Top of Kaoru Hirata

is one of Japan's best-known AV, or adult videoperformers, and a multi-media personality whose role as a media counselor expressing outspoken views on sex and society have drawn comparisons to La Cicciolina and Dr. Ruth.

Top of Kaoru Hirata

She was engaged in video and magazine appearances typical to being an AV model when she caught the attention of the mainstream media in 1988. Her decision to stop shaving her under-arm hair, as a symbolic protest against Japan's long-standing censorship of the depiction of pubic hair in print or film, gained Kuroki interviews with the mainstream media. Kuroki concedes that her decision to stop shaving her under-arms worked as a gimmick to help set her apart from the mass of AV girls, but considers it also an expression of femininity and identity.

Top of Kaoru Hirata

While still attending Yokohama National University, Kuroki began appearing in AVs, at first considering this to be another form of art. "I wanted to approach it purely as a performance art form, but it turned out to be a lot crazier than that. In fact, if I'd continued to see porno video as art without also acknowledging it as just a fuck film, I wouldn't have gone this far."