Isetan marks its 140th anniversary with a six-store campaign running into next spring
Isetan Mitsukoshi Holdings is marking Isetan's 140th anniversary with a campaign spanning six stores and five months, built around a new tartan motif, a judged shopping-memoir anthology and an 80,000-light rooftop illumination -- a bet on store-level events to carry Isetan through the holiday season.
Isetan Mitsukoshi Holdings said it will mark Isetan's 140th anniversary with a company-wide campaign called "WAKU WAKU TO YOU!," running from November 2026 into March 2027 across six Isetan stores: Shinjuku, Tachikawa, Urawa, Niigata, Shizuoka and JR Kyoto Isetan. Isetan traces its founding to November 5, 1886, and the project is built around a new logo drawn from the diagonal lines of the "McMillan/Isetan" tartan the store has long used on its shopping bags.
The centrepiece is an anthology titled, in floortok's translation, "I Love My Own Shopping" (わたしはわたしの買い物を愛す), collecting customers' memories of shopping at Isetan. Submissions open November 4 and close November 24, and entries will be judged by novelist Mitsuyo Kakuta (角田光代), Akari Hasegawa (長谷川あかり) and designer Akira Minagawa (皆川明), with the collection edited by Yoshitaka Haba (幅允孝) and printed in a tartan-bound book that Isetan says will go to contributors, stores and libraries.
Isetan Shinjuku carries most of the physical programme. A "Masterpiece Collection" of products chosen for craftsmanship and lasting appeal runs across every floor of the Main and Men's buildings from November 4 to 17, and an illumination display, styled "I Illumination (ISETAN Illumination)" (伊ルミネーション), lights a giant Christmas tree and about 80,000 bulbs on the Main Building's rooftop garden from November 11 to February 7, nightly from 5pm to 8pm. Isetan is also giving away 1,886 free tartan-coloured "Gummitzel" gummies at the Main Building's entrance from 10am on November 5, one per customer while supplies last.
A flagship anniversary rarely needs this much scaffolding, a judged literary prize, a five-month illumination, a branded giveaway, unless the point is to manufacture reasons to visit across an entire holiday season rather than on one date. Running the campaign at six stores instead of Shinjuku alone also spreads the format beyond Isetan's best-known flagship into regional stores, Niigata, Shizuoka, Urawa, where a locally run version of the same programme gives each one its own reason to draw shoppers through the new year.