Mitsukoshi Shinjuku grand opening, Shinjuku, Tokyo, 1930. The Shinjuku Mitsukoshi emporium officially opened on October 10, 1930.
See also:
Isetan Department Store, Shinjuku, c. 1935.
Hoteiya department store, Shinjuku, Tokyo, 1929.
Prior to constructing an 8-story department store on Shinjuku-dori, Mitsukoshi operated temporary market outposts in the area following the 1923 Great Kantō Earthquake (first at the Shinjuku Oiwake junction and later near the station). The grand opening on October 10, 1930, marked Mitsukoshi’s permanent transformation into Shinjuku’s premier (but practical) department store.
“The Night View”, Mitsukoshi Shinjuku grand opening, Shinjuku, Tokyo, 1930. A dramatic low-angle perspective showing the ground-level grand entrance and upper facade lit up by searchlights and festive vertical banner streamers. Despite its outward appearance, the Shinjuku branch catered to a more middle-class customer than did its Nihonbashi or Ginza sister stores.
Modern-day Mitsukoshi was founded in 1673 as Echigoya, a small Nihonbashi-based kimono drapery that revolutionized Japanese retail with fixed cash prices and over-the-counter sales.
In 1904, the firm issued its historic “Department Store Declaration,” formally transforming itself from a revolutionary but specialized fabric merchant into a full-scale Western-style multi-department retailer.
Mitsukoshi would expand beyond the city core in the 1920s after establishing the temporary “Mitsukoshi Market” in the area around Shinjuku Station following the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake, growing to two provisional outposts that sold everyday household goods, clothing fabrics, and sundries out of temporary barracks structures. Their success was convincing enough for Mitsukoshi to secure prime real estate along Shinjuku-dori, paving the way for the grand opening of a state-of-the-art multi-story steel-and-concrete department store on October 10, 1930.
After the Pacific War, Mitsukoshi would grow into a global brand. It would ultimately merge with rival Isetan in 2008 to form the international retailer Isetan Mitsukoshi Holdings
