Asian Beauty Appreciation

So, Who is Agnes Lum Anyway?

The package had arrived slightly more than a week ago. This was my   latest shipment of those superb Japanese television drama series that are responsible for the empty streets in the evenings in Japan. In the USA, movies might rule the roost, but in any Japanese household from Sapporo to Saitama, on any day of the week, more than likely, the residents would be watching a tv drama series.

This DVD was the latest TV series from Kimura Takuya better known as Kimitak. Originally his fame stemmed from being a member of the music group called SMAP, But now, Kimura is known as Japan’s biggest and best TV drama series actor and star. The title of this series is Mr. Brain. The show was broadcast this year only a short time ago, from May 23rd to July 11th, 2009. Kimura plays a neuro-scientist working at The Institute of Police Science. His field is the human brain. His assistant is the wonderful and beautiful Haruka Ayase.

But I digress. Kimura’s character, the title character of Mr. Brain, is called Tsukumo Ryusuke. And trust me he is something of a character. Besides being a brilliant neuroscientist, he solves crimes. He’s sort of a modern day version of the eccentric TV detective called Robert Goren from Law & Order: Criminal Intent,  crossed with Gil Grissom of CSI and with a touch of the nerdy mathematician Charley Eppes from the series Numb3rs.

So right smack in the Opening Episode of the series, we find Tsukumo (Kimura) at his desk and he’s reading something. We can’t quite see what it is, but when his assistant comes in and asks what are you reading, then we get to see what it is.

It is a photo-book of a bikini idol. In English lettering on the book jacket is AGNES LUM. And she’s spectacular.  Wow! Even Haruka Ayase is impressed. Me? I’m impressed too. The book jacket’s cover image is showing off a very, very healthy amount of cleavage.

I said to myself since I’ve spent a lot of time looking at bikini idols myself – wow…but I never heard of her. That’s pretty neat, they went to the trouble of making up a photo-book jacket, with an impressive model…but they named her – Agnes Lum, which isn’t even a Japanese name. Why would they do that?

So a question kept percolating in my mind. So, who is Agnes Lum, anyway?

I almost fell off my chair, when I found out that Agnes Lum is indeed real. In fact, she has been called, the mother of all bikini idols in Japan. She is of Chinese and Hawaiian descent and her popularity in Japan ran from the late seventies to the mid -eighties.

She was born in 1956 and first landed in Tokyo in 1976. It has been said that she is by far the most popular foreign-bred idol to ever work in Japan. No other bikini idol has surpassed her in popularity before or since.

So thirty years ago, Agnes Lum was the rage in Japan. She appeared with regularity on billboards, in magazines, as a calendar model, on posters, and even television commercials.

She left Japan in 1984, but her impact was impressive and her imprint was indelible. Today, she is likely a grandmother in Maui doting on her grandchildren.

But the fact remains. One of the leading television actors in all of Japan was seen ogling a busty beauty on national TV. And not even just once. That photo-book got plenty of onscreen air-time ! This is good news for the gravure industry, wouldn’t you agree?

I’ve only finished the opening Episode of Mr. Brain and I still have seven more episodes to watch. As you can see from these few images, looking at Agnes Lum is a very good thing, so I’m hoping that she’ll have even  more of these  ‘cameo’  appearances.