Ai Iijima
Career
Iijima debuted in April 1992 and appeared in over 100 titles before leaving the genre within roughly a year — then became the first AV performer to cross fully into mainstream Japanese entertainment as a talk-show host and tarento. Her 2000 semi-autobiographical novel Platonic Sex sold over 1.7 million copies, and she became a prominent HIV/AIDS awareness advocate. She died of pneumonia in 2008, aged 36.
Signature: She created the AV-to-tarento career path that almost every performer on this list has since followed. Her influence is structural rather than statistical.
Index score — The Pornstar Ranked Performer Index v3.0
Scores are normalised within a single ranking's field, so this breakdown is Ai Iijima's placement inside The 20 Best Japanese Pornstars of 2026 — the largest field she appears in. Her rank on each of the other 1 ranking below was computed against that ranking's own field and is not the same measurement.
Best known for
Studios
Beyond performing
- Novelist — Platonic Sex (2000), 1.7m copies
Mainstream credits
- TV host, Gilgamesh Night
- Film The Curse (Noroi) (2005)
- Film The Rug Cop (2006)
- Single “Naisho DE Ai! Ai!” (1993)
Official links
No official accounts confirmed. We only list handles we have verified on an authoritative page — a guessed handle in this industry usually belongs to an impersonator.
Appears in
Also ranked on
Ranked alongside
Sources and verification2 sources
- Exact title count — “over 100” is approximate
- Debut title given here as “All That Sexy Venus” (1992); Japanese Wikipedia gives a differently-titled 1992 FOXY release as her literal debut and this English title could not be independently confirmed as an accurate rendering of it
