Visitors to Japan just lost one of their favorite tell-the-folks-back-home anecdotes, the one that goes: They sell beer in vending machines here! Every guidebook mentions the fabled dispensers; sooner or later, every tourist gets photographed standing next to one. It is modern Japan's answer to Mount Fuji. There are even beer-vending machines on Mount Fuji. Or there were. As of last week -- provided liquor-store owners continue to comply with a voluntary ban on machine sales of alcohol -- this national symbol looks set to become a museum piece.
Surprisingly, the public has not worked itself up into much of a froth over this. It is early summer, after all, and in the summer, as Lord Tennyson nearly said, a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of a brew. A lot of middle-aged and old men's fancies do, too. Cold beer -- like grilled eel, wind chimes, "mugi-cha" and mosquitoes -- is one of the things hot weather is all about. When you think about it, June is an odd month in which to shut off self-service. And yet, according to an estimate by the All Japan Liquor Merchants Association, at least 70 percent of the nation's 170,000 alcohol-vending machines were duly unplugged by last weekend, and life does seem to have gone on unabated.
Perhaps it's not so surprising, really. This is not prohibition. Beer is still available inside the liquor stores that generally operated the machines, as well as in bars, pubs, restaurants, supermarkets and, increasingly, convenience stores. It seems safe to say that not too many people will be ailing for want of an ale. But this of course highlights the very problem the machine ban is designed to address. For certain categories of drinker (i.e., those for whom the pleasure of imbibing is a matter of volume rather than taste), alcohol is just a little bit too easy to come by in this country. Shut off the vending machines? Yawn. It's cheaper in the shop, anyway.