The decline of the porn disposal box in Japan

The internet has had an immeasurable impact on sex, from providing access to invaluable advice and information, to enabling people to watch hardcore porn at just the click of a button or swipe and tape of a phone screen.

Some argue that having such easy access to porn all the time is unhealthy, especially at a very young and impressionable age. Some blame the ubiquity of porn for the rise of certain violent sexual preferences, like choking.

In Japan, porn has long been ubiquitous since the emergence of the adult video industry in the 1980s, though porn magazines and books were already big markets before that, and softcore “pink” films also popular.

The rise of online porn has meant the decline of those little “booth” establishments where you could go and watch AV by yourself (serving the needs of guys who lived with family in small Japanese homes with thin walls).

But in other ways, the internet has happily coexisted with porn. We remember our first visits to internet cafes in Japan, which had private booths to watch porn DVDs. The cafe was filled with the sounds of porn and of guys whacking off, and with the smell of semen.

It hasn’t totally killed the market for porn on physical formats quite yet, with releases from the major production companies coming out generally in both streaming and physical formats.

Likewise, gravure magazines still continue to publish print editions alongside the paid digital content they offer, though online media has made it easier to produce and release digital photo books for idols (at the same, cementing the status and prestige of a print photo book — if you get to release one of those, you know you’ve really made it).

But one consequence of online porn has been the phasing out of white disposal boxes.

As reports the Guardian, these boxes are meant to allow people to dispose of books and DVDs in a discreet way. Putting them out with the regular garbage means potentially exposing underage adolescents to the content — not to mention, potentially embarrassing you to your neighbors.

These tactful drop-off boxes — know for being white and covered in messages about protecting children’s wellbeing — are on the decline because, local governments have found, there is less need for them due to the rise of online porn content.

They are often located near train stations and first appeared in the 1960s. “The campaign to install them was led by mothers who didn’t want their children exposed to anything harmful, including pornographic books and magazines,” explains a sociologist who is an expert on shiruposuto, as they are called in Japanese.

The boxes are emptied every few months, though some municipalities do not bother for years, because they rarely get full these days.

“At night, when the streets are less crowded, men of all ages come to get rid of their stuff,” a tax driver says.

Last year, the Guardian notes, Nagasaki closed several of its white boxes after the number of collected items per year dropped from up to 6,000 to 2,000.

But with the baby boomers starting to die off, there could still be a need for places to dispose of old piles of magazines, books, and videos that you would rather others don’t see. Don’t forget about that stash of porn at the back of your wardrobe!

Porn vending machines have also mostly died off, though this could be a consequence of both changing consumption habits (buying fewer magazines, porn or otherwise, or preferring to order such content online) as well as social mores regarding what is acceptable to have out in the open. If you spot one in a more rural part of Japan, it feels like you’ve found the holy grail.