Japanese Porn Star Makes Cover of Math Textbooks in Thailand

BANKOK, Thailand—Muang Thai Book, publisher of math textbooks for Thai high school students, is scrambling to replace three thousand copies of the book after it was pointed out that the girl used as a model on the cover is in fact a Japanese porn star. Two thousand of the text books have already been delivered to ten vocational schools throughout the country, though they have not yet been passed along to students.  According to Khaosod English, "Chaipruek Serisak, [Secretary General of the Office of Vocational Education Commission (VEC)], said yesterday that the publishers of the 'Basic Mathematics' textbook apologized and explained that the cover artists took the image from the internet without proper inquiry." Oops. Guess that's what happens when you rip off images instead of acquiring them legally. The site adds, "The resemblance was spotted by a number of Thai internet users last week; Japanese AV industry is immensely popular among young Thai men." Procedures are reportedly being put in place to prevent a similar occurrence from happening in the future. "The cover and book design will only use drawings or photos taken by the compilers," said Chaipruek, adding, "There will be no more searching for images on the internet. We have instructed the publishers to be more careful and strict in their publishing procedure." As these things go, intrepid web denizens have already fully investigated the model whose image was pilfered by the publisher. According to Kotaku this morning, "On Japanese forum 2ch, commenters noticed that the image of the man drawing also appears to be grabbed off the internet. According to 2ch commenters, the actress, called Mana Aoki (among many other names), first appeared as a contestant on a Japanese plastic surgery show called Beauty Colosseum, got work done, and, it seems, moved on to adult films." Image: The text book cover and original still, courtesy of Kotaku.