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.

This take was written by generative AI, one per person, from publicly reported facts (editorial policy). It is a reading of the record, not reporting.

Name (English)

Maki Nishiyama

Name (Japanese)

西山茉希

Reading

にしやま まき

Born

November 16, 1985 (age 40)

Origin

Nagaoka, Niigata Prefecture, Japan

Height

168 cm

Occupation

fashion model / tarento

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Scorpio / Ox

Works summary

Appearances

49 (2006–2026)

By year (titles with a known year)

2006: 7, 2007: 9, 2008: 2, 2009: 5, 2010: 6, 2011: 4, 2012: 6, 2013: 1, 2023: 1, 2026: 1, year unknown: 7

Debut work

SRS

Filmography / notable works

• 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

September 29, 2026

Facts are limited to publicly available information up to 2024; non-public or unconfirmed items are omitted. Works and profile fields sourced from Wikipedia reflect content as of 2026-08-26. English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.