Hanshin Umeda runs a third Wajima food-and-craft fair, two years after the Noto earthquake

Hanshin Umeda's main store runs the third edition of its Wajima food-and-craft fair October 21-26, bringing 11 lacquerware and food makers from the earthquake-hit region back to its first-floor event terrace -- a measure, two years on, of how far Wajima's small producers have travelled from the January 2024 Noto Peninsula earthquake toward normal trading.

The floortok desk · 2 min read · 7 October 2026

Illustration of a spacious department-store food-event floor with a row of lacquer-style bowls and sake bottles on a long counter, and two silhouette shoppers walking from behind. — Illustration by floortok.com

Hankyu Hanshin Department Stores said Hanshin Umeda's Main Store will hold the third edition of a fair devoted to Wajima's food and lacquerware makers on its first-floor Shokusai Terrace from October 21 to 26 -- six days, eleven shops.

The fair has run since the January 2024 Noto Peninsula earthquake struck Wajima, and the department store said it is now deliberately moving the framing away from reconstruction support and toward treating the region as an equal commercial partner, citing residents' own wish to do what they can now rather than wait for full reconstruction.

Among the participants, lacquerware maker Wajima Kirimoto has reopened its workshop as a space styled on a lacquer museum and continues a programme restoring lacquerware damaged in the quake; Tanikawa Brewery built a new brewery on the site of the one the earthquake destroyed, now selling items including a kiwi beer (¥990); and Shirafuji Sake Brewery, which resumed brewing about two and a half years after the quake, is bringing sake priced from ¥2,200 to ¥4,180. Hidy Winery, whose restaurant was destroyed, is selling wine from ¥3,080 to ¥5,720 while it works toward reopening its dining room, which it is targeting for around next July.

Running the fair a third time -- and widening its remit from disaster relief to ordinary retail partnership -- is Hanshin Umeda's own way of signalling that Wajima's craft and food producers are worth a shopper's attention on their output, not their story; for a department store that otherwise competes on seasonal regional fairs, giving a recovering maker community a recurring, dated slot on its event terrace is a small but concrete form of continuity most one-off charity promotions don't offer.