This is something that has really amazed me. I have been talking to my Japanese friends and they tell me they go to the video store. Here in America, they are virtually non existent anymore. Is there a reason they are still around there?
Copying videos online is difficult and illegal, so nobody definitely commits 92% of that particular crime.
But with video rental stores, they have blank DVDs very conveniently placed right next to the cash register, so it is simple to make backup copies, so that you know what you’ve already watched.
This ranks up there as one of those great Japanese “mysteries” to me. Right alongside why is there a Tower Records here for physical CDs.
Japan has higher ratio of elder people than other countries. They can’t use internet.
Small homes - many people don’t want to accumulate stuff or have subscriptions they may not use much. Despite the space issue physical media is still popular and may be an earlier way to view some content (especially in Japanese) add to that rental stores may also have harder to find titles no longer on sale.
Because renting DVDs have become dirt cheap to compete with online services and they are usually located near train stations so you don’t need to go too much out of the way to rent and return them.
That being said, they are way past their prime and will likely go the same way as the US pretty soon.
Availability, especially new releases. Also the general dislike of change. Some things are rental shop exclusives too.
I don’t get DVDs, but I find renting manga from GEO and Tsutaya to be cheaper than digital. Especially new releases. Unless the title is on a 100 yen sale or free for a limited time, I rent physical copies.
Not sure, but I’m assuming it’s because fewer people have smart TVs or computers at home. I was surprised to find out that probably around a 3rd of my coworkers don’t have PCs or laptops at home. Try asking your friends if they have anything to watch Netflix or Hulu on at home.
Because you can’t trace who watched an adult dvd, but you can for streaming.
Better answer: The selection on Netflix/Hulu sucks for a lot of series.
They are not popular by a long shot.
Most people have amazon prime or netflix for streaming and dvd shops have lost tons of customers. You might be talking about 2005-2014. Before netflix
I use them because I could never work out how to fax Netflix my selection
A lot of the comments here are spot on, but for us we still use them because they have all the Japanese subtitles. It can be hard to find the movies you want online with good subtitles. Its so cheap to rent a few DVDs every week that Netflix isn’t really worth it.
Most Japanese households don’t have computers to download illegally. Netflix isn’t a big thing here.
I think that movies and TV are not strongly embedded in their culture the way it is with some Western cultures.
For example, how movie quoting can be used in dialogue between friends.
The few older students that I’ve had that have been interested in movies, do not feel the intense urge to rewatch films over and over again, or at least they don’t feel the need to purchase it.
A ton of movies just do not come out in the theaters over here. I’m lucky to go to the movie theater maybe twice a year when I used to go twice a month in America. I kind of think that the Japanese just don’t know what they’re missing out on, in that regard.
but are these japanese stores renting sd dvds or bluray? there still are cinephiles in the us that prefer bluray because of the higher quality.
No one has mentioned that you can also rent comic books at Tsutaya. That’s why it’s popular with my family.
Physical video rentals are still massively popular in the US. Customers just switched to Redbox and libraries from brick-and-mortar shops.
For $5, I can rent a 30-year-old movie for 48 hours on Amazon. At a Japanese video rental store I’d get it for a week at that price.
And you can rent music CDs.
It’s because – as in so many other cases – history never really moved forwards from the 1980s in Japan. See also: the prevalence of fax machines, the abysmal standards of web design, all forms being on paper.