Vending Machines and the Culture of Convenience in Japan

Recently, in my classes, the topic of vending machines (in Japanese, "Jidohanbaiki") has come up on more than one occasion, and this has led to many interesting discussions of what we might term the "culture of convenience" in Japan. Though by no means exclusively "Japanese" - after all, witness the proliferation of dishwashers, clothes dryers and other appliances in the US, to take one example, or the ubiquity of "TV dinners" and other pre-packaged or frozen foods, to take another, all of which are seldom seen here - it does in many ways seem to be more pronounced in this country than in others, and I take the sheer profusion of vending machines to be a sign of this.

In the 1992 film, "Mr. Baseball," which I must confess is a personal favorite of mine and a guilty pleasure (given its cultural essentialism and formulaic "Gaijin in Japan" narrative), the main character - a major league player from the US who finds himself traded to the Chunichi Dragons - steps off the plane and is immediately bombarded by questions at a press conference, which in a way sets the tone for the entire film. When asked what he thinks of Japan, after being here less than an hour, he gruffly replies, "Well, the airport's nice, I guess. And there's lots of little people walking and talking very fast" (which his interpreter translates as "Architecture beautiful. Society on cutting edge of progress!").

Now, had he been allowed to leave the airport and venture abroad for even a short while, my guess is that his next observation would likely have been what many foreign visitors to Japan first seem to notice: "Vending machines, everywhere!"

In major cities, they are practically on every street, and even in smaller towns a person would be hard-pressed to travel very far without losing sight of one. I keep finding them turning up in unexpected nooks and crannies - deserted parking lots in the middle of nowhere, their lonely hum an odd accompaniment to the song of insects or birds - and I've even heard tell of them being on Mount Fuji, though I have yet to confirm this. I do know for a fact that the gym I once frequented (many years and kilograms ago!) had a beer and saké machine in its lobby - and since I am confessing to guilty pleasures in this column, I might as well admit that I had, on more than one occasion, patronized this machine after a workout (thereby defeating the entire purpose of going to the gym in the first place!).

But be that as it may, there are reportedly over five and a half million vending machines in Japan, serving a seven trillion Yen per year industry. Now, any way you look at it, that is an awful lot of "can coffee" and "corn pottage!"

When talking about this enormous industry with my students, I often find them deeply divided in their opinions. On the one hand, everyone seems to agree that they enjoy the convenience of having a machine on virtually every corner, while on the other, many people are critical of the tremendous consumption of energy and production of trash that these millions of machines entail. And this brings up a larger question, concerning impulse consumption, instant gratification, and the changing shape of Japanese (perhaps "modern," or even "postmodern") society.

In one class, we read a newspaper article, which asserted that Japanese people are "fascinated with machines" and that they "clearly want to purchase things without having to talk to others." My students didn't seem to think that either of these claims was necessarily true, or, better yet, they didn't see how this was a particularly "Japanese" trend in any case. One student pointed out how customers really needn't have any meaningful dialogue or interaction with, say, a convenience store cashier, and another mentioned the growing trend toward Internet shopping, which has been relatively slow to catch on here in Japan. Another student talked about how this all fits into a larger pattern of consumption and aesthetic sensibility - she used the phrases "mania for fads" and "taste for superficial appearances" - which leads to what I guess I would call a marketing strategy of "old wine in new bottles," in which the packaging of a consumer item seems to change every few months while the product itself remains basically the same. One person interviewed in the article that we read lamented our modern society's culture of hedonism, which he argued would lead, on an individual level, to a loss of control over one's desires.

Now, I am not sure that anything like that is happening, but regardless of one's opinion of this culture of convenience, it seems safe to say that it is deeply ingrained in Japanese society and is likely here to stay. Whether this leads to more opportunities for people doing business in Japan, or to increased creativity and a sense of individuality among the younger generation - or, more likely, to a steady decline in manners and social skills - is not clear at this point.

But one thing I will say for vending machines is this: we don't realize how much we take them for granted until they are no longer there. Among my friends who once lived in Japan, but now live elsewhere, the most common thing they seem to miss is the humble Jidohanbaiki - especially those selling beer! And in my case, I can tell you that I found myself heartbroken, oddly enough, when an assumedly under-performing soft drink machine was removed from behind my apartment building a few months ago. It used to light up the dark, lonely, country road that winds its way between the neighboring rice paddy fields, and I never realized, until it was gone, how much its soft glow had become a part of my sense of "home."