May 22nd was our first full day in Japan. The group was fresh and excited for what was to come. Jet lag was a word that seemed not to exist (at least for myself).
Our first stop was the Edo museum, in Tokyo. The installation is gigantic. Information was so abundant it became impossible to retain everything meaningfully. That is a good problem to have. The experience was very good. Besides being informative, many features were interactive, which made the tour more fun. I was exposed to a lot of new information about the Edo period (new for me) and I feel like I learned a lot.
On the lower flor, aspects of commerce and the life of townspeople (among MANY other elements) are displayed. On a future blog post, perhaps I can elaborate on other elements and things I have learned from our visit to the museum. There is a lot to it. But the title of this post concerns vending machines, and until now, those words haven't even been mentioned yet. The transition is near!
We arrived at the section of the museum that concerns the merchant life and commerce of the period. According to the Edo Tokyo museum official website (https://www.edo-tokyo-museum.or.jp/en/p-exhibition/):
"The Edo period saw not only changes in the people’s lives, but also dramatic transformations in economic activities. Vast quantities of goods began to be shipped to Edo from the Kansai area, particularly Osaka. Subsequently, the distribution of goods in Edo increased in both quality and quantity. This period also saw the emergence of new transaction practices which are now common, including cash sales at shops, as demonstrated by the “tanasaki uri” (over-the-counter sales) and “gengin kakenenashi” (cash sales without surcharges), which were adopted by the Mitsui Echigoya shop. This corner shows how goods were transported, how they were traded in Edo, how currency was used, and much more"
The centralization of power in the hands of the Tokugawa shogun marked the end of a period characterized by civil wars, and the beginning of a time of greater peace. The economic context of the edo period was one of fast development. Merchants, who were at the bottom of the confucian social hierarchy, saw the greatest progress on their social and financial situation. Increasing wealth of the population lead to unseen mass production, purchase and transportation of goods. All of which benefited merchants the most.
In the museum, we saw, first hand, some of the tools, techniques and practices that were used by the merchants at the time. The central photo below depicts a vending device used to cook, display and sell food- all while being mobile, at the same time. On the sides you can see a ukiyo e artwork that depicts the merchant life in Edo.
This was the context that gave rise to the first vending machine in Japan (finally!)
Before getting into vending machines in Japan, I feel like there is a final piece of context that is curious enough to be included here. It is regarding the first vending machine in the world. It is believed to be created in Alexandria, Egypt, around 215 B.C. Out of all things, the world's first vending machine sold... Holy water. After all the unholy things I saw being sold in vending machines during this trip to Japan I thought that no other item would ever intrigue me again. Perhaps exactly for this reason, holy water did it. What a way have vending machines came... Here follows a list of "12 weird Japanese vending machines" you can find today. (You can scroll through the article without leaving the page)
The sight of innumerable vending machines, ever since the very first day of the trip, was in fact the first thing that intrigued me about Japan. [Correction: the very first thing was the automatic toilet functionalities. Vending machines was a close second]. That is partially because my flight arrived many hours before the rest of the group, so even before I walked the streets of Japan I already had plenty of time to look around the airport until vending machines were impossible to be ignored. In our visit to Ryukoku University, in Kyoto, this was the answer that I gave when one of the students questioned the group about things we found curious about japan (or things that were different back home?). Especially in Tokyo, they are everywhere. I don't have any memory of buying anything from a vending machine in Brasil, outside of airports. In Vancouver, my consumption is limited to night study sessions on the College library, when all restaurants and cafes are already close. In Japan, it didn't take more than a couple of days for vending machines to become an integral part of my daily life.
The first vending machine in Japan sold tobacco products. It was created by a furniture artisan and inventor in 1888 Bakan (now Shimonoseki, Yamaguchi Prefecture). His name is Tawaraya Koshichi, and he is, in fact, the same man who created the oldest vending machine that still exists in Japan, today. It currently resides in exhibit in the Communications Museum, Tokyo. Here follows an illustration.
It didn't limit itself to be a stamp and postcard vendor, but also served as a mailbox, which gave change and displayed prices. Perhaps not as fascinating today, but the idea of one man developing such a machine with the technology available to him in Edo Japan is in fact interesting. I wonder if it ever crossed his mind the incredible influence that his machine would have, or the trend it would create.
(*I intended to only use original photos in this blog, but I think that a visual representation of Japan's first vending machine on a post about vending machines in Japan would be relevant).
By Momotarou2012 - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=26479790
Vending machines began to gain increasing popularity in the late 1950s. The pioneer was a Fountain-style Juice Dispenser, that attracted customer's attention and curiosity due to it's fountain performance and reasonable price (10yen).
"From 240,000 in 1964 to 1 million in 1970. In 1973, the number exceeded 2 million and by 1984 it had reached 5 million." ( Att. Japan: https://att-japan.net/en/archives/306)
Today, Japan has the highest ratio for vending machine per person: 1 machine for every 25 people. That is more than 5.5 million throughout the nation.
The following is a selection of the different vending machines I saw in the 7 minute walk from my hostel to the okonomiyaki place I had dinner. Only capturing the machines that were in my way, without looking for it, without registering repeated designs.
Why are vending machines so popular in Japan?
Overall, the main factors seem to be the following:
general safety in Japan;
aging profile of the population and low cost of running;
real estate
fascination with automation
convenience
abundance of coins available
"In other countries, for security reasons, the locations used for vending machines were limited to indoor places such as offices, factories, and schools. Customers who buy products from the machines are, therefore, also limited and specified. In Japan, however, its low rates of vandalism and petty crime ensured that vending machines could be placed outside. As the number of vending machines increased, the machines came to cater to a larger number of customers. As a result, the number of users expanded."
Japan has an aging population. The average age in the nation is currently 46 years old. (for reference, the average age in Canada is 40, and 30 in Brasil), whereas the fertility rate is 1.4, which means the population is shrinking. A consequence of this fact is that the labour market became very expensive, and there is scarcity of low skill labour. In this context, it makes sense for vending machines to be deployed instead of paying for expensive labour.
Regarding factor (4), Japan is one of the most dense countries in the world. A large portion of the population lives in cities, and as we learned in our visit to rice fields and farm houses in Mito, the tendency is for the number of people immigrating from rural to urban areas is to increase. This causes the property prices in cities to rise, and once again it makes sense to deploy a vending machine instead of paying expensive rent prices for a store front.
For this reason, many prefectures implement policies to attract foreign labour to occupy the increasing number of abandoned houses in the fields. In Mito, I watched a news report on the increasing number of brasilians who came to Japan to work on the fields. This is interesting to me as I am used to the opposite side of this relationship: Living in Sao Paulo (one of the biggest concentrations of japanese people outside on Japan), I grew up with many Japanese friends- most of their relatives having migrated to work on brasilian fields. The movement was very extensive.
Another factor is what I listed as the japanese "fascination with automation". An entire blog post can be dedicated to this topic. Signs of it can be found in many instances during the trip. Automatic taxi doors, the system adopted by a huge number of ramen shops, in which one selects the meal and pays for it through a machine (the same system was even seen by some of us on onsen bath houses); not to mention interaction-free restaurants, in which one can have the entire dining experience without seeing or interacting with a single human being. Examples are everywhere. It is said that in Japan, whatever can be automated, will be automated. Vending machines are not an exception.
Convenience culture is another point worth mentioning but without getting too much into it, as entire blog posts can also be done about it. Japan values it's convenience. The main signs are, in my eyes, the abundance of convenience stores.
Finally, Japan is still, to a great extent, a cash-based country. Credit card machines haven't yet been implemented in many places, so it is very common to end up having many coins available. As a gaikokujin who walks all day from one shrine to the next, I find that the feeling of coins jumping around in my pocket is not the most pleasant. BOSS coffee, on the other hand, is very pleasing. Not losing money is, too. Apparently many people feel like me, and enjoy the pleasure of getting rid of coins while receiving oishii treats in return.
10:44pm
The Dorm library, Osaka
Japan 🇯🇵