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Sakai city in Osaka Prefecture is planning to introduce a new initiative to cover up pornographic magazines at convenience stores in a bid to keep them out of children sight, city officials announced Wednesday.
The initiative is expected to launch in the beginning of the new fiscal year in April. It will have the city cooperate with convenience stores located in Sakai that sell magazines designated by the prefecture as harmful to children under 18, Sankei Shimbun reported.
The city’s idea is to place semi-transparent plastic veils on the magazines, while leaving the title visible, as well as install plastic shields on the shelves, limiting overexposure and access to children.
Most convenience stores in Japan place pornographic magazines on the same racks as regular weeklies and other magazines, simply separating them with a sign marked “for adults.”
The magazines, despite being R-rated, are easily visible to anyone visiting the convenience stores, city officials explained at a news conference, adding that the initiative was inspired for educational purposes, as well as in consideration of the increase of foreign tourists.
So far, the city has advanced talks with one convenience store chain, which they did not identify, but it hopes to widen the campaign citywide, Sankei quoted officials as saying.
The project is part of the city’s Sakai Safety Program, aimed at building a safer living environment for women and children. The city has requested 950,000 yen in the budget for fiscal 2016 for the magazine cover-up initiative, officials said.
© Japan Today
32 Comments
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clueless
Japanese porn = taking a shower wearing a wetsuit.
commanteer
People who wonder that are revealing more about themselves than they are about Japan.
It may seem counter-intuitive, but single teen mothers are very rare in Japan, as is teen pregnancy. I see more threats to my daughters in America than I do in Japan, kombini skin mags notwithstanding.
SenseNotSoCommon
An embarrassing moment while browsing books with my 6 year-old in BookOff the other day, our backs to the Adult DVD section.
Sense Junior was shocked to see his first ever porno vid cover (luckily just a healthy young woman who seemed to have lost her top), but just 40cm above floor level.
Despite myriad "etiquettes" and unwritten rules, commercial expedience too often trumps decorum.
Amphibrach Perekosobochilo
When society becomes obsessive with morals and such it's dangerous sign of strong right turn. Just say no. Adult magazines are not that dangerous. Autoritarism is way more dangerous.
Speed
That's too bad. I like seeing sexy women when I'm shopping. Bring back the old Japan.
Oh, Pie!
There are people who still don't use the internet for porn. C'mon now, it's 2016.
freeWill
Prudes are trying to get the upper-hand, what this initiative exactly wants to achieve is based on dubious assumptions.
Aly Rustom
Thank god! Good on Sakai machi!
smithinjapan
Wow... about time. You'd think when they started putting the porn at eye-level for kids, with surplus on the shelves below down to foot level, beside the ice cream twenty years ago they'd have thought of something like this.
Whatsnext
Good. I hope other towns follow suit.
bjohnson23
first the books, then more and more and more, too much. Leave things as they are and our government needs to stop listening to the complaining foreigners who whine whine whine.
A.N. Other
It costs that much to put adult magazines in an opaque bag?
Thunderbird2
Why not just put them on high shelves out of the reach of kids like they do in other places?
Jonathan Prin
You see nothing on cover porn magazines ! Only kawai girls in bikini. How harmful can it be? Kids anyway Re psychologically not wired to sex. They pay no attention until they get teenagers. Then you know that with internet, they would have by then see something way nastier. Again, an idea coming with absence of any reflexion.
Akula
A good move. Regardless of what your view of porn may be, those that don't wish to view it should not be inadvertently exposed to it.
katsu78
You do realize this is an initiative raised by Sakai City, which is a city in Japan? Howsabout we let Japanese people make decisions for themselves for what kind of city they want to live in?
BertieWooster
How about just not selling them?
masri
only now?for God sake!
Bernd Laurent
Will they cover up news magazines and violent manga too?
kurisupisu
Why is looking at anyone having normal sex a bad thing?
No wonder the Japanese population is on decline!
Kira Minaki
Good start Osaka!
Patrick Kimura-Macke
Good move. The rear of these publications are often visible from outside the convenience store too. I'm sure that this is not by accident.
sado001
A good move by Sakai city, but to be honest not selling them in places where kids can go freely is a good step.
You could see porn manga/magazines almost everywhere.. Not only in the convenient stores, but in book stores and some department stores as well. Just putting a sign saying "No Minors Allowed" doesn't help at all. Just go to Akihabara, there are a lot of stores there who sell porn where kids can enter freely.. The AV business is one of the largest industry in Japan but letting children see it casually is not good..
Goodlucktoyou
Should be a nationwide law. Maybe the birth rate would rise? On a serious note, having to see old men looking at 15 year old "models" in bikinis or underwear should be seen in society as disgusting.
noirgaijin
Speed, I think you miss the point. I like looking at them too, but out of sight of children.
Robert Chase
idont like the free malware toting ad crazy low quality short badly edited make some dude in Canada rich porn.. Support your local economy baby! ;-)
lationz
It's 2016, only a few decades too late (and even then, only a tentative plan, and only in one city!). And people around the world wonder Japan is so deviously sexually perverted...
goldorak
Let Japan be Japan.
A naked woman on a cover of a mag is imo fairly harmless in a world where hardcore porn is available on every phone, tablet etc.
nath
If they really want to stop objectifying women (they don't...) then they should ban sales of stroke mags from neighbourhood shops kids can freely enter, and sell them in adult video/book stores.
shonanbb
I never noticed any porn in my area. Maybe they are all sold out quickly.
TheGodfather
Japan is the World's Pervy Uncle!!
TheGodfather
It's too late. We all know that Japan is the World's Pervy Uncle.
When you go to his house he has child-porn just lying around where everyone can see. Then he says, "I'm having a big party in 2020. Would you like to come? You can even bring the kids"
Gomen...