Feb 17 (Japan Times) - Don't go looking for titillation at your local convenience store.　As reported last month, Japan's three largest convenience chain operators - 7-Eleven, Family Mart and Lawson - are planning to halt sales of pornographic magazines nationwide by the end of August.
While the operators pointed to their increasingly diversified customer base as a reason for ending sales, the large number of foreign visitors expected next year for the Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics is also said to have contributed to the move.
Pornographic material has typically been displayed in convenience stores in a separate section, with outlets in some areas using plastic string or gummed tape to prevent browsers from flipping through the contents and possibly annoying other patrons, especially minors.
Internet users were of differing opinions on the new policy, with one Livedoor commentator opining that the mere sight of such publications was "unpleasant for women and children."
"I'll be happy when they're gone," he wrote. "It's a sight never encountered in convenience stores overseas and, if we take this logic to an extreme, might not the sales of adult magazines in convenience stores be part of the underlying logic that explains why sexual matters in Japan tend to be treated in such a flippant manner?"
Still, the pornographic publications also had their defenders, with one poster commenting, "To halt sales of these magazines will put greater pressure on the publishing industry to impose voluntary restraints, and I think freedom of expression may suffer."
The move by the convenience stores is also significant because they have become dominant in retailing of print media. The Mainichi Shimbun last June reported that bookstores, some of which also dispense pornographic publications, have been going out of business at the average rate of 514 a year, with 9,770 shops having closed between 1999 and 2017. The number of stores nationwide is expected to drop below 10,000 by sometime next year.
