The one of Kazuhide Inouea septuagenarian who lives in southwest Japan, is a peculiar job. He is not a porter, although he is dedicated to mailbox in mailbox to review its content. Nor is he a cleaning employee, although every time he finds something inside one of those closed mailboxes he throws it in a bag to destroy it. Inoue is something else, a kind of guardian of Japanese morals that tries to prevent children from going to school finding porn magazines at their disposal.
And it does thanks to those peculiar white mailboxes, the ShiroposutoPlareras designed so that the Japanese can throw their magazines, books and DVD with adult content. For a while, however, they are in a fallen layer.
What is a Shiroposuto? The word does not say much. At least if you don’t speak Japanese and you are familiar with their culture. But in the island the Shiroposuto They are old acquaintances who are part of the urban landscape for several decades. On the outside they look like common mailboxes, with their cleft to throw papers inside and a closed bearing with lock at the base. The usual in a mailbox. They only stand out for their white color.
The really curious thing is inside. If you open a Shiroposuto You will not find postcards, frank envelopes and invoices pending cast. No. For that there are already the normal mailboxes. Blank painted are rather bins, collectors specifically installed so that the Japanese can throw their magazines and porn movies discreetly.
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But … are they new? Not at all. Its origin can be traced at least at least six decades. Recently Sociology Professor Yuko Obi explained to Kyodo News than the first Shiroposuto Known were mounted in 1963 in Amagasaki, west of the country, so that the Japanese could get rid of their “obscene publications” without having to leave them on the street. Three years Then another settled in Tokyo and over time they have been extended throughout the country, filling with thousands of magazines.
What is its origin? Its objective is not so much to offer adults a discreet place in which to get rid of their magazines such as preventing these publications from ending conventional or abandoned bins in the street, within reach of children.
“The campaign to install them was led by mothers who did not want their children to be exposed to anything harmful, including porn books and magazines,” says Obi. To put it even easier for porn consumers, the mailboxes were located outside the train stations, places of passage and discreet to which they could go at night.
And did they work? The idea set. And at least for a while the Shiroposuto They served to make thousands of pages and covers with nudes and sex scenes ended up confined in a metal cylinder closed with lock, out of view of Japanese adolescents. In the 2010 only in Nagasaki they served to collect Between 5,000 and 6,000 Porn articles
The white mailbox network works largely thanks to people like Kazuhide Inoue, collectors who are dedicated to taking a look at the Shiroposuto To remove the magazines or movies they contain. It is not a work that they do daily or every week (Inoue for example several times a year), but at least it is for its main purpose: maintain publications beyond the reach of children.
Why are they news now? Because they are disappearing. The boxes for X content made sense when people bought magazines, VHS or DVS with sexual content, but The statistics They show that less and fewer people do it. It is not that the Japanese no longer consume erotic content. In fact, porn continues present In your society, just as you are in others. What happens is that they do it differently, via online, regardless of the publications that ended decades ago in the Shiroposuto.
“They were a success when they first appeared in the 60s, but Japanese society has changed and the way people consume media has transformed,” Reflect Obi in statements a The Guardian. “At that time a lot of pornographic material was circulating and the activists did a good job to raise awareness about the Shiroposutobut in the era of digital media it is impossible to hide harmful material. “
Goodbye to the Shiroposuto? Yes. And no. There are no statistics that allow to know in detail how many mailboxes were in the 70s or 80 and how many are today, but the Japanese press Explain that are disappearing as society changes. That does not mean that they are all withdrawing. Or that they are no longer going to see more in the streets of Japan. The process is gradual, with steps forward and back: in 2018 the city of Fukui installed, for example, two new white mailboxes in its streets while last year Nagasaki decided to close several of his own when he verified that its use had collapsed in the last decade.
Are they still used? OBI Recognize In addition, although they have served and serve to collect porn items, they are not a perfect solution: “They age and oxidize and have to repair them, but not everyone wants the money of taxpayers to spend on that. They also have to be emptied by an official of the Board of Local Education, sometimes accompanied by a policeman.” For now, Inoue will continue to make his “anti porn” rounds.
In one of the last, the booty was 16 books and 81 DVD in one day. “At night, when the streets are less busy, men of all ages come to get rid of their things,” confesses A 71 -year -old taxi driver who works near a mailbox.
Image | Christian Heilmann (Flickr)
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