Gravure Index
HomeAwards
Awards & contests

Gravure awards and contests

Publishers run contests to discover new gravure talent, and a few awards have marked the genre's history. This page lists the main ones, with the profiles on Gravure Index whose own biography mentions them.

Golden Arrow Awards — Graph Prize (1998–2007)

The Golden Arrow Awards were organised by the entertainment press club of the Japan Magazine Publishers Association. Their Graph Prize, chosen by magazine photo journalists, originally went to the person who had most animated magazine photo pages that year; from Yuka's win for 1998 it became the gateway award for gravure idols. Winners automatically became the image character of the following year's Magazine Reading Month. The awards ended with their 45th edition, and a magazine-cover award revived the idea in the mid-2010s.

YearWinner
1998Yuka 優香
1999Manami Honjō 本上まなみ
2000Yumiko Shaku 釈由美子
2001Haruka Igawa 井川遥
2002Miho Yoshioka 吉岡美穂
2003Waka Inoue 井上和香
2005Misako Yasuda 安田美沙子
2006Aki Hoshino ほしのあき
2007Akina Minami 南明奈

Winners who were under 18 in the year of the award are not listed on this site.

Gravure of the Year (since 2018)

An annual award run by Kinema Junposha and chosen jointly by four image-video producers. Sales count, but so do media attention and engagement with fans. Tomomi Morisaki won the grand prize three years running up to 2020 and was inducted into its hall of fame.

Publisher contests

Magazines run their own contests to find new faces. The main ones, with the profiles on this index that took part as adults:

Miss Magazine

Kodansha, run by Weekly Shōnen Magazine and Weekly Young Magazine (2001–2011, and again since 2018); an earlier edition ran from 1982 to 1990.

On this index:

Miss FLASH

Kobunsha's FLASH, since 2006 (no edition in 2010).

On this index:

Miss Young Champion

Akita Shoten's Young Champion, since 2010.

On this index:

Sakidol Ace Survival

Shueisha's Weekly Young Jump, since 2012: a contest for idol-group members who lead their group's gravure work.

Nittele Genic

Nippon Television's project to discover new gravure talent.

On this index:

Miss iD

Kodansha, 2013–2022.

On this index:

Miss Action

Futabasha's Manga Action, since 1987 with interruptions.

On this index:

Miss Young Magazine

Kodansha's Weekly Young Magazine, 1996–2000.

On this index:

Miss Shūpure

Shueisha's Weekly Playboy, 2005 and 2006.

Miss Up

Wani Books' Up to Boy, 1986–1999.

Cover Girl Award

Magazine-cover award that effectively revived the Graph Prize idea in the mid-2010s.

On this index:

Award mentions in profiled biographies

Adapted and translated from the Japanese Wikipedia article グラビアアイドル (revision of 17 August 2026), text licence CC BY-SA 4.0. Profile lists are computed from each person's own Wikipedia article: only dated mentions from after she turned 18 count, and anyone whose article links the title to an earlier year is left out.