JAV Social Media Recap: Rumor mill account spouts dubious claims about JAV actresses

Japanese internet drama usually unfolds in an interesting way. The inciting incident usually comes from tips and rumors told by anonymous sources to well known personalities. In turn these personalities would create content around these dramas through actual exposes or blind items, like how TMZ or Keemstar would operate. Even the recent disagreement between Saki Sasaki and Niko Kawagoe about medical donations all started when Saki told Korekore, a prominent drama YouTuber, about Niko’s actions on a livestream. And these past few weeks one of these exposé accounts on twitter caused quite a stir when they started spouting dubious and harmful claims about several JAV actresses.

Example of how the account operates, anonymous user is asking if JAV actresses are DJing for income. Minatokukyoudai replies that there is demand for DJs overseas.

Minatokukyoudai or “Minato ward siblings” is a X account that started just this December 2024 up and has recently gained traction for having supposed insider information around the Japanese entertainment and nightlife industries. The account claims it is run by a hostess in Ginza that charges 10,000 yen an hour and a talent scout for an entertainment agency. They operate by publicly reacting to rumor posts and to anonymous tips that they receive. These siblings were signal boosting harmful gossip about AV actresses having relationships with their agency president, having secret marriages, living together with hosts, wasting their savings on partying, dating actors and singers and doing illegal activities.

I purposefully didn’t write which actresses these rumors pertain to as there are a lot of red flags with how these “Minato ward siblings” get their information. Unverified anonymous tips don't really scream reliable to me and they are conducting themselves in a way that makes them hard to be accountable. While the account publicly recognizes the gossip they receive, they mostly don’t really give out any confirmation on them. The siblings would often react to rumors and tips with aloof responses like “I also heard similar things from other people” or even just a plain “Is that so?”.



Mio Ishikawa calls out the siblings due to false rumors about her host addiction

The account’s credibility got tested with just a single post from one of the targets of these rumors, Mio Ishikawa. One of the tips they publicly reposted claims that Mio was addicted to hosts and was wasting all her income. The account reacted to the tip along the lines of pitying the fans of these actresses if ever that was true. Mio Ishikawa from her personal account replied to the post saying that with her work commitments, shooting for her YouTube channel and streaming almost every night on Twitch, how would she have the time to meet with hosts. She then made a remark that maybe she should bring this up with her agency and which implies exploring legal action. In response the Minato siblings quickly deleted the post and apologized to Mio Ishikawa. This was quite telling on how quickly these drama hounds get scared and fold when their subject refutes their claims.

The account's claim to fame was exposing influencer Taiyona's Dubai activities which led to her deleting her social media accounts

How did this account even gain traction in the first place? Well they got one big scoop which gave them all the credibility they needed to operate as an exposé content creator. The account revealed that Japanese influencer Taiyona was able to afford her affluent lifestyle due to “working” in Dubai. The siblings also exposed how people “working” in Dubai were able to transfer wealth out of the country, by buying property in the country, setting themselves up as real estate agents and selling these properties back to Japan through an intermediary. Taiyona deleted all of her social media posts and privated her accounts as a response to this, and netizens took this as an admission of guilt and shame. This gave the Minato ward siblings some sort of credibility and got increasingly more reach and engagement online. The problem for me is that the account really doesn’t do much due diligence with information they gather. You might recall that Yu Shinoda abruptly disappeared from the public when there were similar rumors around her working in Dubai. This just goes to show how harmful and damaging to people’s lives and careers these rumors are and taking content centered around drama with a grain of salt.