Asa Akira

Asa Akira's birth name was Asa Takigami.  Asa was born on January 3, 1986 in New York to Japanese immigrant parents.  Her father is a photographer and her mother runs a non-profit organization.  Asa was an only child.  Her family moved to Japan when she was 6, and she attended international schools.  As a child, she dreamed of becoming a writer, a teacher, or a food critic.  Her family moved back to New York when she was 13.  She was awarded a scholarship to a prestigious private school and was a poor kid among rich kids.  While in high school, she sometimes ran away from home, did drugs, and went to raves.  Although she has been masturbating for as long as she can remember, it was in high school when she started becoming fascinated with porn.  She graduated from Washington Irving High School in Manhattan in 2004.

By 2005, Akira was 19 and was married.  As she was deciding whether to attend college, she was approached on the street in New York and asked whether she wanted to be a dominatrix at a BDSM club called the Nutcracker Suite. "We went up to see his dungeon, and we started training the next day," she says.  Asa performed under the name Mistress Suki.  Although she's passive in real life, she said being a dominatrix was a power trip.  However, she worked there for less than a month and began stripping at Manhattan's Hustler Club.  While working as a stripper, Sirius XM's Bubba the Love Sponge Show visited the Hustler Club looking for girls to do promotions.  She was hired on and moved to Tampa to be a regular guest on the show for a year.  The radio show had a website where Asa would masturbate on camera.  While she was there, Akira met porn star Gina Lynn and began having sex with her.

When the radio job ended in 2007, Akira moved back to New York.  She was having a hard time deciding whether or not to work in porn.  "Once you do it, your life is never going to be the same," she said.  Ultimately, she decided to move to Los Angeles and become a porn star, initially working for Gina Lynn and doing her first boy/girl scene with Gina's husband, Travis Knight.  Asa didn't tell her parents, but now they're aware of her career.  Although they wish she would have chosen a different career path, they haven't disowned her.  They're happy if Asa is happy.