1. Simulated, or i'd say 借位 (this is not a Japanese word), or not doesn't seem to be very important in censored porn. Until this sentence, i don't recall having said it before, bbut anyway, it's quite obvious from the written law and my brief trips to Japan (to porn shops specifically) that censored porn is openly tolerated even though it's "obscene" in the general sense.
We don't really need to get into how weird Article 175 is: it says obscene stuff is prohibited, yet censored porn is openly sold in Japan and online, and nobody bats an eye.
2. That was the tangent. After brushing up my memory with what Taiwanese cyberspace has said about JAV, my original point can still stand, although obviously no Japanese porn actress is likely to just say that publicly, so it's difficult to verify. Tokyo Hot has famously operated as a US-registered company offering uncensored material. Maybe Hitomi said or hinted at something along those lines, but I don't think that's essential to my point.
The Taiwanese guys did remind me of something, though: if someone started out doing censored porn and later moved to "normal," uncensored porn outside Japan, that could simply be because she was older and no longer had work with the major Japanese companies.
It may sound like a tangent to bring up Taiwanese sources, but they've been my main reference point for this stuff, and I'm not sure how much of that discussion is accessible here.
As to legality, i don't mean to verify this, either, but I'd assume most Asian jurisdictions don't simply allow porn at face value, even though JAV is obviously sold publicly in Japan. US-European porn just shows everything. The above may help explain why Koreans do porn but often don't show their faces, why Taiwanese porn is relatively rare, and why Chinese porn is mostly underground, at least from what I remember.