Convenience stores to stop selling adult magazines by end of August

I'll believe when I see it. They'll take them off the shelves while the Olympics are and they'll be back within of the games finishing.

Another step backward for Japan, pressured into it by the easily offended

to improve their image

This is Japan in a nutshell, everything about facade. Look at us, we are as clean as an angel's bum. Either way, good development just the reason behind it makes me ugh.

I"ve been here for quite a while and I can't recall any time that women or children seemed reluctant to enter convenience stores.

This is not dissimilar to the abolition of the numerous fertility festivals when the prudish wowser foreigners from Britain and USA arrived inthe early Meiji Period.

Another step backward for Japan, pressured into it by the easily offended

Why would anyone even bother with the magazines, can’t open them, better to get on the internet, way better and you can specify and download what you like. I have never paid attention to the adult section at the local combini, just a waste of time.

isn’t that why some prople will be coming to Japan - to see some of the more unique sides of everday Japanese life?

Leave them there.

10 upvotes in 10 minutes?

If youre offended by them don't look! Personally I always walk past that section slowly...

This is killing the livelihood of some very talented models, actors, actresses, cameramen, make-up artists, editors, directors, etc...！This is unacceptable.

Ministop, which runs some 2,000 stores in Japan, has already shut out adult magazines, introducing the ban in late 2017.

Man, I was just at Ministop last week making copies next to the magazine rack and there were quite a few of these magazines still selling there. It was hard not to notice with half of the cover showing 2 large.....eyes.

If they are an embarrassment, why wait for the 2020 Olympics? Are they going to put them back on the shelves after the closing ceremony?

Who buys paper anymore anyway? Save the trees! Use your smart-phone!

Japan's got a baaad case of 'getting out the best china for the visitors' syndrome, prior to the Olympics.... sad.

I think they will probably lose out on sales by removing them.

It'll be interesting to see if they put them back after the Olympics finish, or whether they are actually using this and the RWC as an excuse to stop stocking / change the way they sell them (but haven't been able to find the way to tell the publishers + suppliers - who may or may not be difficult people to negotiate with).

You see nothing in those mags....

Boooooooo. This is one of the the things that makes Japan, Japan. Bring back my "old Japan"!

What about sales at the kiosks at train stations? Without those mags, what will men have to sustain their two-hour morning commutes?

What other forms of prudishness await Japan's hoi polloi, as punishment for hosting the games?

Won't this lead to a black market or something?

more sweeping changes for a two week event that will be forgotten the next day

The delivery health directories are pretty good, everything else is kinda pointless.

An abundance of sex-themed magazines at Japan's ubiquitous convenience stores 

The average shop does indeed have an abundance, so a lot of folk must buy them. It might be the only "stimulation" some people get.

There are many arguments you can make against porn, but "foreigners might get upset" is not a very good one. The idea that rugby fans would be offended is also frankly laughable.

Thank God. Those comic porn mags are an affront. Women held in bondage and with idiotic eyes and magic boobage. Completely insulting to real men and women here. Get rid of them, please.

Too bad that Japan isn’t even Japan anymore. Everything is being changed for “foreigjn visitors”.

For those mocking people who might be offended, I rue the day when we completely loose all sense of dignity for women and children. We've come pretty close...

I guess Japan has to put on a 'pretty calm' face for the gaijin coming in for the Olympics and whatever.

Still, you can't hide all the imperfections. What about all those little girlie singing groups for the perverts for instance? 

During the 1996 Summer Olympics American TV coverage couldn't hide the jingoistic pride (it was an election year) and seething corruption deep inside Atlanta itself. During the Olympics in Rio a few years ago the city officials couldn't hide all the crime and graft in parts of that city either. In fact, there were warnings of violence and one US Olympian got in trouble with the law.

Wherever you hold international athletic competitions you can try to keep it all out of sight but the rottenness in your society will still be visible. Observant people, even foreigners will still see that they are not in a Shangri-La.

What a shame.

I remember back in the early 80's when I walked into a Family Mart and was just browsing and picked up a little magazine and opened it up to see naked little girls, I asked my wife " Why are they allowed to sell this". She explained to me that since there is no pubic hair it is OK to be sold as art, talk about a loop hold. Glad they made that illegal!

I suspect Convenience stores will soon become lonely places late at night as a result, and may find themselves no longer being 24 hrs. Perhaps after the Olympics everything will revert back to the way it was in order to retain this bastion of life here in Japan.

adult magazines account for less than 1 percent of total sales,

They already don't have much to lose

I can see it now... A "SouthPark" parody would have Tumble-weed rolling around the outsides of the Convenience Stores during the Olympics, and in the Tourist areas bars shut down after midnight ( as you'd need to be up early the next day anyway )... the only Night life, would be going on within the Olympic Residences... given all that Testosterone, but the residences would be left in ruin afterwards making them.. unfit for future inhabitants. So those Tokyo Residences who purchased places in advance will be left downhearted and broke wondering why'd they'd wanted the Olympics to be hosted again in Tokyo.

Hopefully it'll be just a bad dream... and we'll all wake up to something more pleasant.... such as an open Convenience store on our way to work early in the morning, and being able to get to work on time, without having to be even more squeezed into the sardine can train carriages that exist at present with non-existent air-conditioning...

This can only mean one thing.... they've become less profitable and can now make more money with something else.

With the availability of porn on the internet, there's not much profit in magazines now anyways. This is just a business decision masquerading as a PR move.

While some may object based on morals, one should not impose their view of morality on someone else. To each their own as long as no ones hurting each other. I don't care what's on the shelf except what I'm buying.

Another step in the Puritanism trend that's sweeping the developed world. Next, they'll be banning mini-skirts and ordering young women to cover up.

I'll miss my regular perusals, that's for sure.

Even excluding manga magazines, Japan actually still has a pretty big print industry in general. You can still find a lot of adult magazines littering a section of many bookstores, both big and small, which advertise adult products, adult videos, adult actresses, and some meant for otaku to advertise adult games and such. I even saw an exclusive erotic "tech" magazine in 7-eleven that went into the specifics of producing erotic game and video content (censoring rules, CG development, studying how sex works to get it to look realistic and/or alluring in a game, artist interviews, etc.). I bought that one.

Here's a crazy idea.

Why don't we shelve them behind the counter and behind black shelving covers to prevent young / sensitive individuals from seeing unwanted sexual content just like they do Stateside?

They are worried the sale of grot mags will damage the image of Japan, whilst at the same time the government is restarting commercial whaling. That's Japanese "logic" for you.

Who reads adult magazines any more with virtually everyone sporting smafones?

noting that they also hope it will make it more comfortable for women ……... to visit the outlets.

This is amusing there's more women that go into the porn industry every year in Japan then men, secondly who buys porn magazines when there is so much free stuff on the internet.

The pervert cry lol

Seems like an economic decision - the amount of money they'd lose by getting rid of pr0n likely to be exceeded by the amount of money they'd gain by gaining more foreign families

MiddleoftheroadJan. 22 11:40 pm JSTI remember back in the early 80's when I walked into a Family Mart and was just browsing and picked up a little magazine and opened it up to see naked little girls, I asked my wife " Why are they allowed to sell this". She explained to me that since there is no pubic hair it is OK to be sold as art, talk about a loop hold. Glad they made that illegal!

Art is art but these mags still look like porn to me. What is the overall purpose? That's the question. Selling mags of naked little girls looks like a pervert's paradise city to me. Then again, here in America we have a sickening perversion too but it's less 'out in the open' but it's ingrained. It's disgusting.

@starpunk

I agree that it is just porn. I don't know what was going through the minds of the people who made, sold and purchased those magazines. It is good to know that someone finally got around to closing that loophole though!