Fashion department stores exclusively targeting youths have become common landmarks of major transit terminals like Shinjuku and Umeda, as well as regional cities, from Sapporo to Kagoshima. This retail format has recently made international advances to Asian cities of Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Singapore. Taking the “fashion buildings” as a retail format that emerged in response to exploding railway ridership during the 1960s and 1970s, this talk traces its genealogy from the late 1960s to the present. 
The talk claims that the retail format went through four developmental stages. First, the format was established during the 1970s amid the intense rivalry of Tokyo-based retail chains, most notably Seibu, Tokyu, and Marui. Second, rival private railway companies and general merchandiser appropriated the concept and expanded fashion buildings to metropolitan suburbs and regional cities during the 1980s. Third, the privatized Japan Railway (JR) embraced the retail concept at the heart of is diversification strategy from the 1990s onward. And fourth, the format was exported to Asian societies and, in Hong Kong, being evolved into “art malls” by Adrian Cheng.
 

Speaker 

Dr. INUZUKA Satoshi (Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Japanese Studies, CUHK)
Ph.D. in Japanese Studies, National University of Singapore