Maki Nishiyama

Maki Nishiyama, born in Nagaoka, Niigata in 1985, first became known as a model for CanCam, one of the magazines that essentially defined mainstream women's fashion in Japan. That alone would have given her a few good years. Magazine modeling in Japan runs on a fast rotation, and most cover faces vanish within a cycle or two. What interests me is that she did not vanish. She moved into television work as a tarento, the peculiarly Japanese role of the all-purpose personality, and by most measures that is where a lot of viewers know her best. The transition is not automatic. Plenty of models try it and never register on camera, because the polished stillness that works on a page reads as blankness on a talk show. Her appeal seems to be the opposite of polish, an unguarded directness that sits interestingly against the glossy image she came from. Building a second career out of the first one is rarer than it looks.

Name (English)

Maki Nishiyama

Name (Japanese)

西山茉希

Reading

にしやま まき

Born

November 16, 1985 (age 40)

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Scorpio / Ox

Origin

Nagaoka, Niigata Prefecture, Japan

Height

168 cm

Occupation

fashion model / tarento

• Instagramhttps://www.instagram.com/maki.nshiyama50/
• Xhttps://x.com/MakiLiFe
• Wikipedia (English)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maki%20Nishiyama
• Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E8%A5%BF%E5%B1%B1%E8%8C%89%E5%B8%8C
• Wikidatahttps://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1092015

Tags

• Niigata Prefecture
• fashion model
• tarento

Last updated

2026-08-07

Facts are limited to publicly available information up to 2024; non-public or unconfirmed items are omitted. English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.