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7-Eleven, Lawson Convenience Stores Will Cut Adult Magazines From Shelves

7-Eleven and LAWSON convenience stores in Japan will no longer sell adult magazines come this summer. The move was announced on Monday in preparation for the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games in hopes of making the stores more welcoming to women and children and maintain a positive image of the country among visiting foreigners. Women make up approximately 50% of the stores' clientele.

The announcement did not specifically state that the stores will stop stocking adult manga magazines and only the general term seijin-muke zasshi (adult-oriented magazine) was used. The company is applying a definition for adult magazine based on the voluntary standard used by 7-Eleven's affiliated publishers.The change will affect approximately 20,000 store locations nationwide.

7-Eleven informed publishers of the change on Monday.

Adult magazines make up less than 1% of the convenience store chain's sales. It will be up to franchise store locations whether to actually stop stocking the magazines but the publications will no longer be recommended from the chain's headquarters. It's expected that almost all stores will stop carrying the magazines by August.

Source: The Nikkei via Yara-on

Update: Seijin-muke zasshi's spelling corrected. Thanks, crosswithyou