R.I.P. Ai Iijima, famed porn actress-turned-AIDS activist

I am shocked to hear about the sudden and mysterious death of 36-year old Ai Iijima, a former porn star-turned-activist celebrity who portrayed a type of resilience, boldness, and femininity that is rare among Japanese female celebrities.

Her cries of "Iku! Iku!" (I'm coming! I'm coming!) made her 80s porn videos famous, but it also let women know in a very public way that it was okay to feel good during sex. After leaving the adult video industry, she made it up the ranks of the Japanese celebrity scene and maintained a regal presence on many a variety show stage where she talked frankly and surely about issues like sex, AIDS, and women while other women celebrities just looked cute and giggled. She was an important icon for female empowerment in Japan, whether she meant to be or not.

Emily wrote this about the incident:

36-year-old retired talento Ai Iijima was found dead by a friend in her Shibuya condo yesterday. The cause of death is still unknown. She quit the entertainment industry two years ago because of health problems. The press loved to speculate about her health (was it AIDS-related? Liver problems?) and personal life. One of the the more interesting rumors was her affair with 2-Channel's Hiroyuki Nishimura.

Her sudden death is quite baffling, for she seemed to have bright hopes for the future, and was even planning on starting a web site selling cosmetics. Her life was tragic from the beginning—suffering a rape, enduring homelessness when she was in her teens, then transitioning from enjo kosai (dating old men for money) and hostessing over to a career in porn. Through strong determination and hard work, she managed to become quite respectable; a formidable feat for an AV actress.

I think it's screwed up that people are speculating that she died of AIDS just because she was an AIDS activist who openly told the media that she got tested for HIV. I think it was extremely brave of her to write about rape, drugs, homelessness, enjo kosai, and porn in her bestselling autobiography, titled Platonic Sex. She is—was—probably the only woman in the Japanese celebrity scene who can be described as sexy, sexual, strong, and smart. Too often we're taught that these things can't all go together. But Ai Iijima was all of those things, I think, and for that I give her tons of respect. The 20,000+ comments on her final blog post offer similar sentiments from fans all over Japan. She will be missed.

Comments

[vagrant]

This made the TV news as well. I couldn't fully understand everything and asked the koibito, but she said I wouldn't know who it was.

Hopefully, it wasn't homicide.

[Jeff]

There's also a rumor going around that she was involved in conspiracy to rape and murder another woman 20 years ago, and the guy who actually did it (her boyfriend at the time) either just got out of prison or was about to. I find that a little hard to believe but apparently one of the sources people are citing for this is the wife of the former Indonesian president, who wrote on her blog before her death that Iijima had a big, bad secret from her past that was putting her in a lot of trouble right now. There was also apparently a book written by one of her friends before her death (but not yet published) saying something similar.

I really don't know anything about this woman, but my wife has been pretty shocked by this whole thing and is getting even more shocked the more she reads. She's convinced that a) Iijima was a murderer, and b) she was murdered herself.

[Kuriharu]

I'm not really sure I'd call her a figure of empowerment. Rising through the porn ranks wouldn't qualify her as a figure to look up to in my book. It's also kind of ironic that she became an AIDS activist after working in porn for so long, if not, hyprocritical.

I'm sorry she's dead, of course. I'm surprised to see that she was so young -- I thought she was years older than she actually was. It sounds to me like this is another Heath Ledger case; she may have OD'd on prescription drugs.

RIP