Hitomi Kobayashi
is an important early Japanese AV idol. One of the founding figures of the Japanese adult video, she has been called indispensable to any discussion of the AV. Mainichi Shimbun calls her "one of the icons of Japanese adult cinema history." Her unprecedented popularity in the mid-1980s, the early days of the Japanese AV, earned her the title "Queen of AV." According to an adult entertainment reporter for Shukan Shincho, "She laid the foundations for the golden age of adult video." After making her debut as a non-pornographic photobook and "image video" model, Kobayashi entered the AV field in 1986. Because of her rapid popularity, Nikkatsu, Japan's leading producer of softcore pornography at the time, hired her to appear in theatrical films in 1987. After marriage and a semi-retirement beginning in 1989, Kobayashi fully returned to the AV industry in 1998. She announced her retirement in 2003 with a big-budget, though controversial, two-volume farewell adult video. Life and career Early life According to her official profile, Hitomi Kobayashi was born in Tokyo on September 2, 1965. However, in an interview in the just before her retirement in 2003, she confessed to have actually been born in 1963. Her ambition since