What Takashimaya is known for
Takashimaya's Nihombashi department store brings a broad shopping selection to central Tokyo. The company began as a Kyoto clothing shop in 1831, well before its Tokyo department-store history. Choose the Nihombashi branch when planning your visit, since Takashimaya operates separate stores across Japan.
Takashimaya began in Kyoto in 1831, when the first Iida Shinshichi opened a dealer in second-hand cotton clothing. The trade changed early. The shop gave up used goods for kimono cloth and dry goods, and that decision set the direction of everything that followed.
The nineteenth century treated it roughly and inventively by turns. The premises burned to the ground in the fighting at the Hamaguri Gate. An American trading company called on the shop not long afterwards, which opened an export trade in embroidery and in brocade weaving.
The house ran a nationwide competition for fukusa designs, offering prizes for drawings sent in from across the country. It also fitted the first show window any kimono merchant had used.
The move east came with a Tokyo store in Kyobashi, and the house exhibited at the Japan-British Exhibition in London and took an award there. It later put up the first reinforced-concrete building used for commerce in Japan. The department store still carries that record with it.
How ORBIS reads this city
Best for — Department-store shopping in Tokyo's Nihombashi
Global
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