Rumiko Matsubara won a beauty contest for businesses in the Roppongi night-club area in Tokyo in 1981 as a woman, and was used as a model: the ‘Roppongi Beauty’.

Once her transgender status was revealed, she posed semi-nude for a men's magazine, released an album of songs, and acted in the film Kura no naka (1981). She was promoted using the newly coined term nyūhā fu ("new half"), which was coming to be used for mixed-gender persons.

She described herself:

"I have been a woman since the day I was born. Only my body was mistakenly born as male."