Posts showing people bulk buying daily necessities, including toilet paper, for fear of shortages have gone viral on social media, according to the Japan Times.
“The nearby drugstore was sold out of toilet paper! It seems like everyone’s stockpiling it,” one online user said on X.
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People wearing protective masks, following an outbreak of the coronavirus, queue to purchase toilet paper and tissues at a drug store in Tokyo, Japan, March 2, 2020. Photo by Reuters |
Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry issued an urgent notice on Monday calling on citizens to avoid panic buying toilet paper, the Times reported.
“Lavatory paper is made from domestically collected recycled paper and pulp, with little reliance on the Middle East, so there will be no direct impact on production. In addition, there is ample capacity to increase production.
“We ask that the public make calm and rational decisions regarding the purchase of lavatory paper based on accurate information,” it said.
But the mass purchases continued to spread.
Experts described the phenomenon as a “bank run,” in which panic-driven demand creates artificial shortages despite adequate supply, according to Fortune magazine.
A similar pattern was seen in the United States early in the Covid-19 pandemic, when toilet paper sales on online platforms rose 734% in a single day, leaving 70% of grocery stores out of stock.
According to the Straits Timesconsumers in South Korea are also buying garbage bags in bulk after the U.S.-Israel-Iran conflict disrupted the supply of naphtha, a petroleum-based material used to produce plastic.
Concerns over toilet paper shortages in Japan originated from the 1973 oil crisis, when Yasuhiro Nakasone, then the minister of international trade and industry, called on the public to conserve paper products. It triggered rumors of paper shortages and prompted consumers to buy large quantities of toilet paper.
The earthquake and tsunami disaster of 2011 and the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 also prompted a similar hoarding behavior in Japan.
“Toilet paper embodies security. It has a past that places it right in the middle of modern consumer culture. It sustains our homes,” anthropologist Grant Jun Otsuki wrote about the toilet paper shortage brought on by Covid-19 in 2021.
“The mere thought of the disappearance of toilet paper from the world spurs some to act so quickly and decisively to secure their own supplies,” he said.
