Japan removes porn magazines ahead of Rugby World Cup and Olympics

Two of Japan’s largest 24-hour convenience store chains are to ban sales of pornographic magazines ahead of the Rugby World Cup later this year and the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo due to concern that the ready availability of adult publications will give visitors a bad image of the nation.

Seven-Eleven Japan Co. and Lawson Inc. will stop stocking pornographic magazine by the end of August, officials told Kyodo News, to improve their brand image and to make it easier for women and children to visit their outlets. 

Seven-Eleven operates around 20,000 stores across Japan and Lawson has another 14,000 outlets, where pornography is separated from other magazines by a low panel indicating that the magazines can only be purchased by customers over the age of 20.

Typically, magazine covers do not include full nudity but otherwise leave little to the imagination and are displayed at about head height for the average 8-year-old child. 

The two companies are following in the footsteps of Ministop, which halted sales of adult magazines in 2017, and FamilyMart Co., which has stopped sales of pornography at 2,000 of its 16,000 stores. 

A survey conducted by the Tokyo Bureau of Citizens and Cultural Affairs in 1989 determined that more than 92 percent of convenience stores in the capital stocked pornographic magazines, including sexually explicit “manga” comic books. 

Shintaro Ishihara, the conservative mayor of Tokyo between 1999 and 2012, introduced a number of initiatives designed to curtail the city’s sex industry. That movement has grown with increasing numbers of overseas visitors to Japan and the recognition that foreign tourists are sometimes shocked at the ready availability of pornography in Japan, including child pornography. 

Another factor behind the companies’ decision to halt sales of adult magazines is assumed to be the accessibility of pornography on the Internet.