Magazines photographed on the shelves of a supermarket in Tokyo, on January 22, 2019
The large multi-market supermarket chains in Japan will stop selling pornographic magazines with the aim of not scandalizing foreign tourists who will come to the country for the Rugby World Cup in September and the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games.
Seven Eleven, which has more than 20,700 points of sale of this type in the country, indicated on Tuesday that these publications will disappear from its stores in the coming months. His rival Lawson made a similar announcement on Monday.
The presence of these magazines on the shelves, within the reach of children, usually surprises tourists, especially Westerners, who increasingly come to Japan.
“It is one of the criteria taken into account,” a spokesperson for Seven Eleven confirmed on the withdrawal, stores in which magazines represent less than 1% of total sales.
“We can sell other products in the liberated space,” he added.
The decision to delete the magazines also responds to a structural change in the clientele of these small supermarkets known as ‘konbinis’, which offer all kinds of products and services; 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, throughout the year.
Initially they were frequented by men but in recent years the proportion of women and elderly has increased, which has led to a renewal of the offer to adapt to working mothers and the elderly who have difficulty moving to large areas.
Created more than half a century ago, there are about 55,750 ‘konbinis’ in Japan and they receive tens of millions of customers per day.
