Photo/Illutration A vending machine offering a variety of canned coffee. This one in Osaka's Chuo Ward was photographed in 2015. (Asahi Shimbun file photo)

I noticed the season’s first appearance of hot canned coffee in vending machines only a few days ago, and since then, their numbers have multiplied rapidly.

People bundled in scarves now hurry past these glowing machines, seemingly rushing toward their destinations, or perhaps simply toward warmth. In Tokyo, the signs are clear: winter is just around the corner.

A poignant image of this bittersweet urban season was immortalized by singer-songwriter Yutaka Ozaki (1965–1992); he was a poetic voice of youthful rebellion and yearning, and a cultural icon of the 1980s and early 1990s who died young.

In his song “Jugo no Yoru” (A night at 15), Ozaki captured the fragile solace of a boy rebelling against adults yet longing for human connection, finding comfort in a humble offering from a glowing metal box: “Warmth you can buy with a hundred-yen coin, gripping a can of hot coffee tight.”

The song was released in 1983. Back then, a single 100-yen (65 cents) coin was enough to warm your cold hands. Today, the going rate is around 140 yen. This autumn, beverage makers raised prices, and 500-milliliter plastic bottles of coffee now cost nearly 200 yen.

Because vending machine drinks often strike consumers as pricey compared to supermarket offerings—and due in part to a shortage of workers to restock them—the number of beverage vending machines has been steadily declining.

According to the Japan Vending System Manufacturers Association, about 2.19 million machines were in use last year, roughly 80 percent of the total during the heyday of the “100-yen coin.”

Once, finding a vending machine on every street corner might have signaled an excess of availability.

Yet, Yu Aku (1937-2007), a highly influential Japanese lyricist and poet, once wrote about these fixtures of the Japanese streetscape, remarking that without those boxy silhouettes with their glowing faces, “the cityscape (in Japan) couldn’t exist.”

The brightness floating in the darkness, he observed, “feels so alluring to a lonely soul, it’s almost as if it gives off a sweet scent.”

Today, even vending machines routinely accept electronic payments. Convenient, yes, but now it’s an automated voice that greets you: “Please hold your card until the sound beeps.”

Even a master lyricist like Aku might struggle to turn that sterile phrase into a song that stirs the heart.

—The Asahi Shimbun, Nov. 14

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Vox Populi, Vox Dei is a popular daily column that takes up a wide range of topics, including culture, arts and social trends and developments. Written by veteran Asahi Shimbun writers, the column provides useful perspectives on and insights into contemporary Japan and its culture.

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