Adult magazines are displayed outside a bookstore in Tokyo, Japan. Photo taken by Jo Carter. Used with permission.
Sexualized images featuring female bodies saturate public spaces in Japan, from magazine covers in convenience stores to billboards in the streets, and have become largely trivialized.
In October 2025, a petition on Change.org titled “Protect Our Children’s Future – Say No to Sexually Explicit Magazines in Convenience Stores” garnered over 5,000 signatures, calling on stores to remove these adult magazines in order to protect minors. It argues that this explicit content constitutes a form of sexual harassment and will have a negative impact on children in the construction of their identity.
Around the same time, writer Emi S. shared her reflections on her Medium blog:
When I was a child, I remember seeing billboards with women’s faces and prices displayed beside them. And yet, I don’t recall feeling any discomfort at the time. Because it was simply there — treated as something normal.
When I was a child, I remember seeing billboards with women’s faces and prices displayed next to them. And yet, I don’t remember being embarrassed at the time. Because it was just there – considered normal.
Emi S. made an important point regarding the normalization of the objectification of women in Japanese popular culture. Many women accept sexualized images as normal, to the point of not questioning this norm, and when some express discomfort, their voices are dismissed as an exaggeration.
Sexualized images and Japanese popular culture
But where does this standard come from? After the war, the rise of media and popular culture in Japan encouraged the development of a visual environment dominated by manga, anime and the written press. Furthermore, the expansion of convenience stores in the 1980s and 1990s facilitated access to magazines, including pornographic publications, in daily life.
According to a 1989 survey cited by Nippon.com, 92.3% of convenience stores sold pornographic magazines. Subsequently, the rise of aesthetics moe in anime and manga has further disrupted the boundary between entertainment and eroticism. This is particularly evident in the development of “lolicon” content, where young or childish-looking female characters are sexualized.
Profit has been the main driver of the erotica market, with adult magazines providing steady income for many stores. However, ahead of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games, major Japanese convenience store chains – 7-Eleven, Lawson and FamilyMart – announced that they would stop selling these magazines nationwide. This decision, aimed at making stores more welcoming to women and children and preserving Japan’s image among tourists, marked an important symbolic change.
This decision sparked mixed reactions online. Supporters saw it as long-awaited progress toward better consideration of gender sensitivity in public spaces. Critics, on the other hand, considered it symbolic, saying that Japan had only acted under pressure from foreign scrutiny. One user, @asitafukukazen, wrote on X in reaction to this change in 2019:
ä»Šã ¾ã §æ•£ã€…å¥³æ€§ã Œè‹¦è¨€ã‚’å’ˆã —ã ¦ã‚‚å‹•ã ‹ã ªã ‹ã £ã Ÿã ®ã «ã€ å®¢ã Œæ ¥ã‚Œã °å›½ä¸»å°Žã §ãƒ›ã‚¤ãƒ›ã‚¤å‹•ã 。女性軽視㠮社会㠪㠮㠯æ´ç„¶ã€‚
Women have been complaining for years, but nothing changed until the Olympics. That shows how little this country values women’s voices.
Women have been complaining for years, but nothing changed until the Olympics. This shows how little importance this country gives to women’s voices.
Although sexual images have become less visible in major convenience stores, they remain important parts of popular culture and public spaces in Japan. In recent years, concerns have also been raised about the presence of suggestive advertisements on sites not intended for adults, as well as the exposure of children to sexualized content in games, manga and other community media.
However, calls for more restrictions such as the establishment of dedicated areas or age controls for access to sexual content, both online and offline, have often sparked negative reactions, with some critics believing that these measures amount to censorship.
Sex remains a taboo at school and in society
The debate on freedom of expression and the right not to be dehumanized, around the public exhibition of erotic and sexual images, has continued for years without reaching an agreement.
Yet even though sexualization remains common, educational discussions about sexuality and consent are insufficient in the Japanese school system. Today’s courts still consider sex primarily as a biological phenomenon linked to reproduction. Sex education classes are often separated by gender: girls study menstruation, while boys attend general health or sports classes. Topics such as consent, safe sexual practices, healthy relationships or sexual orientations are rarely discussed.
The gender-segregated educational program reinforces the idea that knowledge about sexuality is something gendered, private, shameful, or even useless. As blogger Musashi explains on Medium:
Japanese sexual education tends to reinforce old norms and stereotypes regarding gender roles. […] The narrative often emphasizes the differences between genders and underscores that men and women are to fulfill distinct roles.
Sex education in Japan tends to reinforce old norms and stereotypes related to gender roles. […] The discourse often highlights differences between the sexes and emphasizes that men and women must fulfill distinct roles.
As a result, even today, some people in Japan view menstruation as private and embarrassing rather than a public health issue, as MP Ayaka Yoshida pointed out.
On September 1, 2025, a national petition titled “Abolish the Ministry of Education’s Restrictive Guidelines on Sex Education: For Realistic and Inclusive Sex Education in Japan” was launched on Change.org. She calls for removing these guidelines, known as the “Hadome Clause” (ã ¯ã ©ã‚ è¦ å®š), which suggest that classroom lessons on sexuality need not address “the process leading to fertilization” or “the course of of pregnancy.”
The authorities say, however, that these guidelines give schools some freedom to decide how in-depth their sex education lessons should be.
Indeed, in a society where sexual images are now part of everyday life, more comprehensive sexual education is necessary in order to limit stereotypes linked to gender and sexuality. As studies in media psychology suggest, repeated exposure to sexually objectifying content can shape viewers’ views of gender roles and relationships.
In Japan, misplaced sexual jokes, comments about appearance and prejudice about women’s behavior are common in workplaces and schools. Among adolescents, repeated exposure to erotic content in public spaces can reduce their sensitivity to what constitutes respectful or inappropriate behavior. This helps to reinforce stereotypes and can even trivialize sexual harassment and body-related stigma from a very young age.
These actions are common. For example, a 14-year-old girl complained on an online forum for teens that boys often commented on her chest, asking her, “Aren’t you ashamed of your big chest?” and that even teachers seemed to look at her chest before her face. His messages largely had consequences from his comrades, but also sparked several sexist jokes, especially from boys.
In such an environment, women are more likely to view themselves as an object by considering sexual attractiveness as a primary criterion of their worth.
The challenge for Japan is to reconcile the desire to preserve freedom of creative and erotic expression with the need to ensure that public spaces respect the diversity of individuals. A first step could be to introduce a more open, comprehensive and inclusive sex education curriculum.
