The original purpose of starting a department store was to enable consumers to purchase their demanded goods in one place.¹ Then the appearance of department stores made consumption and purchase more convenient for the more and more condensed and urbanized society. During the process when the department store was adapting to Japanese society, the function of department stores exceeded the original one. Rather than solely advertising and selling consumer goods, they also sell lifestyle, culture and a sense of belonging to certain classes and groups. Therefore, Japanese departments are very keen on creating their own brand culture for their consumers. To sum up, Japanese department stores sell certain concepts to their customers. Through investigating the media of advertisements used by different department stores, a tendency of supplying and consuming concepts and cultures of the department stores could be observed. Moreover, it is not just a postwar phenomenon in Japan, but also significant in the prewar period. Starting in the prewar period, it reaches a peak in the 1970s and 1980s. Exceeding the sale of material goods, department stores gradually are made into hyper-real space.

In Ueno’s case study of the Seibu department store, she offers three advertising posters designed by the Seibu department store. Neither of them displays specific goods or brands. They are composed of photographic portraits of people and a short slogan. The explanation for this kind of design is that these poster does not serve the purpose of selling specific goods, but rather aim to sell a concept to customers. Themes used by Seibu included ‘research for one’s self’, ‘women staging themselves’ and ‘My Own Expression’. When people buy certain customer goods from Seibu, they are not just buying the good, but also consuming one of the concepts and lifestyle printed in these posters. In order to better help their customer to construct a lifestyle of their own Seibu’s business plan of constructing specialized merchandise includes all kinds of goods, such as sports goods, interior furnishing and so on.² They almost covered all aspects of one’s daily life. Therefore, Seibu department stores had a mature system of advertising and selling. In this system, the customers consume more than just material goods, they could also enjoy a sense of satisfaction and superiority when they feel that they have demonstrated and affirmed their personality or certain social identity while purchasing. Moreover, not only the action of purchasing could affirm make conspicuous of one’s identity and self-awareness, but which department store one chooses to go shopping in is also a way to show one’s choice of lifestyle.

Then the department store became a hyperreal space. According to Jean Baudrillard, a hyperreal is generated by models of a real without origin or reality. In contemporary society, the signs of the real substitute the real.³ Based on this theory, Osawa Masachi argues that the urban heart of Tokyo, places such as Shibuya and Ginza could be seen as hyperreal space created by the investment of capitalist groups. In these spaces, people define their personal interest and taste through the consumption of the fruits of hyperreality, which helped them to be recognized or develop a sense of belonging to an ideology or certain group. Osawa defines this generation of people as ‘shinjinrui’ or new people.⁴  Referring to the case study of Seibu, the culture and themes created by Seibu had these effects. For example, the theme ‘My Own Expression’ would help customers to recognize themselves as someone who seek their true self and active expression of the true self, which is a different ideology and concept of life from the interwar period when people chose to identify themselves as a member of a mass or collective.

((‘Mitsukoshi Opening Up’, https://bodiesandstructures.org/bodies-and-structures-2/mitsukoshi-opening-up?path=in-the-pages-of-mitsukoshi [accessed 12.2.2023].))

The precedent of this phenomenon could be traced back to the prewar Mitsukoshi department store. Similar to Seibu, Mitsukoshi also published its own magazines as a means to advertise its brand and goods. Compared to the posters of Seibu, the magazines edited by Mitsukoshi contained more specific information and display of material goods. However, there were still some sections in the magazine which were not directly related to the marketing of goods. The first example is a traditional section of the journal: the special feature of spotlighting daughters (reijo) of the local elite.⁵  These featured articles offer detailed descriptions of the honoured daughter’s lifestyle, personal interests and tastes and used them as a way to sell a type of lifestyle to the prospective customers of the department store. Their elite background and traditionally admired hobbies would attract other people to imitate the lifestyles of reijos. The second example is the spatial arrangement of the department and its decoration, especially the Mitsukoshi department store. It has an intentional imitation of western-style department stores.  The traditional Japanese stores do not involve the movement of customers. There would be only one counter, and the customer speaks to the salesperson who would find the item for the customer and show it to him or her behind the counter. Then the customer only needs to wait. Mitsukoshi adopted a spatial arrangement of western department stores which allows customers to move around the stores and its architectural and decoration styles was also westernized. These traces of imitation of the West targeted upper-middle-class customers. This intentionally made the western environment serve the upper-middle-class people’s mental need to experience the modernity imported from the West. Additionally, the discipline in the department store shows its exclusivity to other groups of people. Therefore, the spatial arrangement, decorations and atmosphere created in the Mitsukoshi department store created a space where people from certain classes can affirm their identity and have a taste of western modernity.

Moreover, the creation of hyperreal space and selling concepts does not only have an influence on customers. They attracted prospective female workers to the department store as well. The typical case is the elevator girls. Laura Miller, the author of “Elevator Girls Moving in and Out of the Box”, argues that the uniform, training accepted by the employees and script used by the elevator girls gave these female workers chance to participate in the middle-class imagination.⁶

In the future, this tendency of conceptualization of goods may even continue and accelerate, as now Mitsukoshi’s app could even provide people with a virtual shopping experience online. Without actually being present in the department store, customers could use their avatars to shop in the 3D setting of the stores. Beyond material goods, there is an inevitable tendency of consuming and selling signs and concepts to fulfil the demand of consumers in Japan.

1. Ueno Chizuko, “Seibu Department Store and Image Marketing – Japanese Consumerism in the Postwar Period” in Kerrie L. MacPherson ed. Asian Department Stores, p.342. [↩]
2. Ibid, p. 326. [↩]
3. Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, trans. Sheila Faria Glaser, p. 1-2. [↩]
4. Osawa Masachi, Kyokou No Jidai No Hate, p. 47-48. [↩]
5. ‘Locating Reijo’, https://bodiesandstructures.org/bodies-and-structures-2/locating-reijo?path=peopling-the-place-of-mitsukoshi [accessed 12.2.2023]. [↩]
6. Laura Miller, ‘Elevator Girls Moving In and Out of the Box’ in ed. Freedman, Modern Girls on the Go: Gender, Mobility, and Labor in Japan, p.65. [↩]