Why Japan has mailboxes for erotic magazines (7 photos)

Yes, if you've seen a beautiful white mailbox on the street in Japan, then this is not such a nice postal service, I hasten to disappoint you. This is Shiroi Posto - a special place where a Japanese can throw away... his erotic magazines (and all the corresponding content, including postcards and all that stuff).





A small gap so that you can't pull the magazine back out. If you give it away, then give it away, nothing to do here!

I already showed one of these in the article about Japanese Khrushchev-era buildings, but the very fact that these bins exist is no less surprising than the Soviet Khrushchev-era buildings in the middle of Japan.

Where did the "white cleaning boxes" come from?

Because Japan used to be literally "flooded" with this content. If it was a multi-story bookstore, then 2-3 floors were allocated for "naughty" products. The peak was in the 90s, when everyone didn't have the Internet to download videos from. Back then, erotic magazines were sold on racks in 94% of neighborhood stores. You could pop out before dinner for mayonnaise and a fresh issue, so to speak.



Only in Japan can a large part of a sex shop be occupied by a book section...

Not like now, in 2004 the government began to fight this and konbini (convenience stores) stopped displaying magazines with enticing covers on the front row (because they were required to wrap each magazine with provocative pictures, the manufacturer itself did not do this), and even refused to sell such products. But not all refused, it's just that demand has fallen sharply due to the Internet.

An era has passed, to be honest. It's even sad somehow.

But in the 90s there were so many magazines that they were literally lying around everywhere. If most of the press that is bought is frivolous, guess why it is not stored for years? It is thrown away.





Anonymous characters are drawn so that no one will recognize you

And then children climb through trash bins to "find something interesting". And not only children, the temptation is too great. Plus, some bought such magazines to read in an Internet cafe or at work, and were embarrassed to bring them home to their families.

This is how "illegal erotic dumps" began to appear. That is, people were embarrassed to throw their belongings in the trash, because they would be found there, and they took them to the forest or dumped them in a ditch, thereby polluting nature out of shame for their passions.



And here I don’t even know, it seems like regular mail. But the allusions remained...

And it was decided to make a special type of trash cans to solve this suddenly acute social problem. Note that once you throw a magazine in there, it’s very difficult to get it back, and everyone will know what you’re digging there for – everyone knew the design of the trash cans.

They even wrote an appeal to teenagers to throw your dubious magazines here if you are embarrassed to bring them home. Mom and Dad will never know!



And this one is really cool, with a rising sun. One of the first, old man

So they stopped going into the trash for magazines, and piles of "dirt" in the forest also began to appear less often. But what was done with the erotic wealth collected daily from the population is unclear. Maybe they gave it to charity, to someone who needed it more! Or maybe they recycled it, since these magazines were not pretty enough and the owner did not want to hold on to them "for one more time".



A Japanese man accidentally encountered one in a small village

The fact is that now in Japan the interest in the manifestations of this entire industry has sharply decreased (outwardly, of course, everything has moved to the Internet). But there are fewer and fewer printed publications, in the 2010s, museums of erotic art and exhibits were closing en masse. People got fed up, or something hormonal happened to them, since there was incredible interest and suddenly - bam!

But the boxes are still traditionally standing here and there. It's even interesting to buy a magazine and give up, so to speak, an unforgettable tourist experience and knowledge of the culture.



And do you remember the story about the funny tilted boxes from Taipei? They love them there