Vending Machines

Japan has 5.5 million vending machines, roughly one vending machine for every 24 people. They collect an average of 50,000 yen per capita per annum.

Somehow, that seems reasonable.

Of course, since vending machines are, after all, machines, the first reaction to them tends toward a condemnation of the forces of technology and convenience, the white boxes of wasted energy standing as avatars of dehumanizing hyperconsumerism.

Well, maybe.

But to stop and have a cold something at any of the white behemoths bolted into concrete corners and onto underused walls is anything but alienating. Rather, in the midst of the mad flow of Tokyo, a slim bullet of cold tea is highly restorative. Stopping to suckle a canful of fluid helps to insert into the jabbering, adult conversation of commuting a pause, a breath, a "ma." Very needed at times.

What you really get for 100 yen, or well, OK, 110 or 120 yen, is a cold, wet shiver of stationary comfort, and a moment of quietude before charging back into the fray.

Of course, you could do that at any of the kissaten or small shops dotting Tokyo, but that's different. Entering into the interior of another space, public as it is, means entering into a whole realm of conventions and obligations. The mere task of ordering an ice coffee sometimes just seems too much.

You could also stop at one of the station kiosks, the ultimate standard for all measures of space efficiency, and briefly engage one of those middle-aged, multi-armed goddesses for a shot of gratification. Yet, the frantic, packed nature of kiosks, where a human is still necessary to negotiate the too many small choices, seems a microcosm of the city, not an escape from it.

Vending machines remain entirely outside of everything. Exteriorized from all social engagement, they are neater, quicker, smoother, and less trouble for everyone. Simple and satisfying, they sanction anonymity.

That doesn't mean cold, distant and inhuman, however. The very simplicity is human, the clinking drop of the coin becomes a gurgling drop of liquid. The moment of purchase focuses not on exchange, but rather on individual desire, pure self-centeredness. Very human indeed.

One can stand and drink and relish the illusion of the importance of one's own personal inner narrative of need---part of your 50,000 yen per year's worth.

After all, the machine is only the outward symbolic front of human input. An entire network of social, psychological, economic, and technological complexity is contained behind the cheerful, bulbous front. Caretakers of the machines come around in off hours, wheeling heavy stacks of boxed cans. One night, I saw six men hefting a pristine new machine up a flight of stairs in a station. It took them about five minutes per stair.

It is always a little shocking to encounter the machine opened for re-stocking or repair. Seeing the revealed innards, the sharply poised sprockets, the punched steel dividers and wild springy wires, is almost obscene. That is, it's alluring and repelling at the same time, embarrassingly eye-opening. We relish the normal covering up, the unexposed magic of the machine, the membrane of functionality.

Yet, the vending machine purchase is not really a loss of traditional, social interaction, not the opposite of the elaborate ritual of the tea ceremony, not a desecration of the amusing anecdote of stopover along the ancient Tokaido highway. Rather, it is its technological re-incarnation. What seems tacky, cold and imposing is rather practical, comforting and spiritual.

It is what Tokyo does so well, reverse the simple and complex, confound the social and concrete, blend the reflectively human and the physically technological. Tokyo subverts the segregation of opposites. And puts a satisfying fleshy face on it. In this case, one's own face, one's own lips.

And out of respect, and a kind of bemused awe, for this mysterious production of pleasure, drinkers, coin droppers, bow deferentially to pick up the can from the black receptacle at this modern shrine with its slim metal slot substituting for the wooden collection box, its button and buzz a rope and bell to waken the gods to hear our petty little silent prayers and to come down and out to enjoy with us a moment of fleeting delight.

---Michael Pronko