Akira the Hustler

In 2003, he helped found the Akta Community Centre, a sexual health clinic and counseling center in Shinjuku Ni-chōme. He served as its director until 2011.

He took the pseudonym “Akira” while working as a call boy for an escort agency while living in Kyoto. Hustler would later return to Tokyo to work as an escort independently, advertising his services through gay men’s magazines; he would later write a column for G-men, one of the most notable gay magazines in Japan in the late 1990s. Along with BuBu de la Madeleine (formerly BuBu the Whore) and Mikado the Dominatrix, Akira the Hustler was a founding member of the Biters, a performance art group whose members were both artists and sex workers. The group’s exhibition Donai yanen (lit. “So What”), which was inspired by their experiences in the sex industry, was shown at the École des Beaux-Arts in 1998, Ota Fine Arts in 1999, and the Watari Museum of Contemporary Art in 2000. His autobiography A Whore Diary, which chronicles several of his encounters with his clients, was published by Isshi Press in 2000.

Yukio Cho was born in 1969 in Tokyo, Japan. He grew up in Germany, living there from age two until age eight after his father moved to the country for work, before his family resettled in Kobe. He studied oil painting at the Kyoto City University of Arts, earning a bachelor’s degree in 1992 and a master’s degree in 1995. As a university student, Cho became involved with campaigns to raise awareness of HIV/AIDS in Japan, and to reduce stigma against those with the disease.

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