Who is Miyabi?

Maria Ozawa was born in Hokkaido Japan in January 8th, 1986 and now 23 years old. Maria Ozawa is half from Japan and father from Canada.

Over the years various foreigners have been banned from entering Indonesia, but Maria Ozawa does not look like an obvious candidate for the blacklist.

A shapely 23-year old of mixed Japanese and Canadian parentage, she is not a terrorist, journalist, or a convicted criminal. But Ozawa has been forced to cancel her arrival in Jakarta today in a row that has drawn in Islamic fundamentalists, feminists and plenty of people in between.

Better known by her acting name Miyabi, Ozawa is one of Asia’s most successful AV film actresses. Although little known in the West, she has surpassed even acting legends such as Pamela Anderson as the most searched for celebrity on Indonesia’s internet version of Google. But news of her plans to work in Indonesia have stirred up angry protests from conservative Islamic organisations in the latest round in an ongoing debate about sexual morality.


Against Miyabi: Dozens of Islam Defender Front (FPI) members stage a protest in front of the Maxima office at Mangga Dua, North Jakarta, on Friday afternoon to protest the visit of Japanese AV star, Miyabi, to Indonesia. Maxima plans to produce Menculik Miyabi (Kidnapping Miyabi).

“We have announced that we will put her on a pure comedy teenage movie, without any sex scene at all,” Yoen K, an executive producer at Maxima Pictures, said. “We want to release the film on December 31 so it will be a Happy New Year movie.”



Assurances about the film’s wholesomeness have failed to placate many Muslims, including the Indonesian Ulemas Council (MUI), an organisation of clerics from across the country. “If someday we approve the film, many teenagers will see it, then after that they will idolise her and we are worried that they will eventually seek out her films,” said its spokesman, Amidhan.

There were demonstrations against Ozawa’s planned visit in several Indonesian cities. In the town of Kudus, students at an Islamic university carried a banner reading “Reject the arrival of Miyabi, the destroyer of our nation's morality”, and set fire to articles of women's underwear as a demonstration of their disgust.

“She must not be allowed into Indonesia,” said Umar Alatas of the Islam Defenders Front, an organisation with a track record of using force against “immoral” businesses such as massage parlours. “If she comes here, we are ready to die fighting to cancel her visit.”

Indonesian ministers began by giving the impression that it supported Ozawa’s right to visit its country on lawful business — a rainbow of celebrities and the National Commission on Violence against Women expressed their support for the adult star’s right to freedom of artistic expression. But in the past few days, the Indonesian Government appears to have succumbed to the pressure.



This week the acting Culture Minister, Mohammad Nuh, presented a “directive” to the producers of the proposed film encouraging them not to invite her; the project has now been “postponed”.

The resulting brouhaha may have the opposite effect to that intended, however. According to the Japanese Kyodo news agency, sales of pirated Miyabi DVDs have surged in Jakarta’s Glodok market .

Ironically the film project which was to have brought Ozawa to Indonesia was one that required her to keep on all her clothes. She had been invited by the producers of Kidnapping Miyabi, a comedy about a group of teenagers obsessed with Ozawa’s work who “accidentally kidnap” her as she is attempting to escape from a mob of fans. The screenplay ends happily with the adult star settling down in Jakarta, where she opens a lingerie shop.