On January 9th, it was announced that AKB48 member Kojima Haruna topped the weekly book ranking of Oricon with her first solo photobook titled "Kojiharu".

Her photobook sold 61,000 copies in its first week and therefore earned the first place in the weekly ranking for books in general, photobooks, and mooks. It also broke the record of fellow member Sashihara Rino's photobook "Sashiko" by 4,000 copies and became highest selling female solo photobook in history.



Moreover it's not very common for a photobook to top the general ranking for books. In fact, it's only the second time this was ever achieved in the history of Oricon. The first person who managed to top the book ranking with her photobook was former member Maeda Atsuko in 2012 (Oricon only began publishing the sales charts for books in 2008).

"Kojiharu" is comprised of many beautiful and daring pictures as well as a long interview. The publisher explained that one reason for the success of Kojima's photobook is the fact that she has so many fans among women. According to their data, more than half of the buyers of this photobook have been women so far. Kojima herself was very surprised and happy about topping the Oricon ranking.

If sales continue like this, "Kojiharu" might become a best-seller like the nude photobook of actress Miyazawa Rie that was released in 1991 and sold over 1,500,000 copies in total.

Source: Sponichi