If I hadn’t been an adult film actress, I would never have written a novel” Mana Sakura Long Interview

As a “sex that gives birth

She has written a book entitled “The Sex That Gives Birth,” which is her tenth novel and is now in press! Being able to convey reality through novels may be a ″life-extension measure″ for me to continue being an adult film actress.

She is an adult film actress and a novelist. The one and only concurrent writer, Mana Sakura (32), smiled bewitchingly.’ She started her gravure career in 2011 and made her AV debut the following year. She won six awards at the “SOD Awards 2012,” including the first ever Best Actress Award, and rose to the position of popular actress.

She calls herself a “ero-ya,” and has appeared in more than 200 films to date. In 2004, she released her first novel, “The Worst. was released in 2004, it was sold out at bookstores one after another. Her talent as a novelist has blossomed, as evidenced by her two nominations for the Noma Literary Newcomer Award, and on February 12, her 10th book, “Ano Ko no Kawari” (Kawade Shobo Shinsha), was published.

It depicts ″pregnancy and childbirth″. The main character Yura, a makeup artist, is swept up in a crazy feeling that she does not know what it is when her best friend Arina becomes pregnant.

Yura says, “When you work in porn, for better or worse, people ask you about marriage and children out of curiosity. ‘Isn’t it hard for an adult film star to have a baby?’ These are questions that I am not sure how to answer. These things combined to make me start to become more conscious of the fact that I was in my 20s, even if I didn’t want to be, and in my 30s, people around me started to rush to have babies, and my friends encouraged me to “have a baby as soon as possible if you want to,” making me even more aware of the “countdown to fertile age.

I also adopted a shelter dog four years ago, which made me think more realistically about the difficulties of raising a child through ″pseudo parenting″. Of course, I am aware that humans and animals are different.

However, the theme of pregnancy and childbirth has always been with me, even though in a different form, and it made me think again about how I want to live my life in the future. Therefore, the main character’s struggles reflect my own struggles as much as possible. Although I am not as insanely out of control as Yura (laughs).

She entered the industry as a teenager and will turn 33 next month. She is approaching the time when she is aware of her own pregnancy and childbirth. ……

I’m not sure if I’m going to be able to do it. I feel like I am free, but I also feel the pressure of the past. But I don’t think I would choose to give birth, regardless of this occupation.

In these days of 100-year life expectancy, I am put off by the scale of giving birth to one person who may live for the next 100 years. Like Yura, who has her hands full with just herself, I feel like I might be overcapacity.”

Of the characters in the story, Sakura was particularly particular about the “husband of the main character. He always pulls Yura, who tends to run wild, back to reality with his unique phrase, “Let’s go pop. In fact, behind the creation of “Pop Husband” was the desire to “have men take it as if it were their own.

When you read it, you may think, “What the hell is this guy? but this is my ideal of a husband-wife relationship. I am a bit like Yura in that I would be relieved to have such a partner next to someone like Yura, who tends to be obsessed with obsessions and run wild. In a sense, I depicted it as the kind of marital relationship I longed for.

It is true that women bear a greater burden in pregnancy and childbirth, but I didn’t want to push them to “respect our wishes,” and I didn’t want to shun them by saying, “Men wouldn’t understand anyway.

Women who have been close friends for a long time may suddenly drift apart after pregnancy or childbirth, and then return to being good friends once the kids are out of the way. That’s how volatile the feelings and relationship can be. Men may find this strange, but I want them to know that this is the nature of women, who are the “childbearing sex.

Reasons for remaining “active

This month marks the 15th year of her career as an adult film actress. She is also celebrating her 10th anniversary as a novelist, and is making her presence felt as a gifted two-faced writer. Despite her success as an adult film star, her motivation for writing novels was a trivial one.

I’ve always loved writing, and I used to write diaries and columns as a way to take a break. I got my start when an editor I met during an interview asked me, ‘Why don’t you write a novel? That was the start. Looking back on it now, the quality is so low that I am embarrassed (laughs), but I never dreamed that I would have a future writing as a career.

Although she is modest, her work has been nominated twice for literary awards in the field of pure literature. Her ability to express emotions and describe scenes is second to none.

In the early days of my writing, I felt that some of the words I used were chosen with a certain stature. However, as I continued to write more and more, I became more conscious of the fact that I did not need to worry about how people would perceive me, and my writing gradually became more unadorned.

On the other hand, she also says that the difficulty of writing a novel is extraordinary. Why does she, who is often called the most popular adult film star, continue to write novels despite such hardship?

She says, “When I started this job, I realized that being an adult film actress is a job that exposes you to the public eye. One after another, other people conveniently evaluate and label our value and ecology. As I continued to experience this, I had more and more opportunities to reflect on myself. Perhaps this is similar to the process of exploring and verbalizing the inner lives of characters when writing a novel.

In other words, being an adult film actress is the “front” and writing is the “back. The two professions are two sides of the same coin.

Personally, I think that my work includes not only the time I spend filming as an adult film actress, but also the time I spend processing the ill will and favoritism that is directed at me by the public. Even compliments can contain derogatory glances, so the process of sorting yourself out in your own words is essential.

So I am sure that if I were not an adult film actress, I would not have written a novel. Unlike an essay, in which the author writes her own thoughts, a novel allows me to project my thoughts onto another person without showing ″me″. In the world of porn, where images tend to be defined by others, novels allow me to express myself freely. I feel that I am saved.

Writing is an essential part of being an AV actress. For Sakura, it is one of her irreplaceable activities.

My main occupation is being an adult film star, but this year marks the 10th anniversary since I started writing novels. More and more people tell me, ‘Both are your day job. But I still like myself as an adult film actress, and I consider it my absolute main profession. That desire to continue for a long time has not changed since my debut.”

The straightforward look in her eyes was filled with a strong resolve.

While working in different genres at the same time, Sakura reveals that she draws a clear line in the sand when it comes to managing her schedule.

For the past 14 years, I have decided to release one adult film a month, so I only shoot one or two days a month. I also appear at events related to my work, appear on variety shows, and commentate, and recently I have been called upon in many other situations where I am a combined AV actress and writer, but I still try to write every day.

The amount I write changes daily because it is not a regular job, but when I had an interview with Akutagawa Prize-winning author Shinya Tanaka (53), I was deeply impressed when he said, “It is important to write a sentence or even a word every day. Since then, I have tried to write every day, even if it is on my phone, as much as possible.

I will continue to write in order to continue being an adult film actress,” she continued with a fresh expression on her face as she talked about her motivation for her 11th work.

She continued about her desire to write an 11th novel: “Every time I write a novel, I feel as if I’m draining myself, and then I think, ‘There’s nothing more I can write. I think, ‘There is nothing more I can write, and this will probably be my last novel. But as soon as I finish a novel, I find that I want to write another one, and since being a porn star is a job where you get beat up, the more you get beat up, the more interested you become in other people and in yourself.

Of course, I read abusive comments (bari zōgon) on the Internet with a bitter face, but I want to find out the psychology and reality of the person, saying, ‘It’s no longer so savory when it gets to this point. ‘ It’s not ironic or anything; people are letting me write novels.”

Without pandering to the times or common sense, she continues to follow her own beliefs.

From the March 6, 2026 issue of FRIDAY