A Tokyo events studio turns a vacant Matsuya Asakusa floor into a seven-week spy game, backed by Suntory
Kyuzitsu Hack has booked the third floor of Matsuya Asakusa —a vacated Tokyo department-store shop —for a ticketed, 20-and-over mystery game co-planned with Suntory Holdings, the kind of floor-use deal department stores are increasingly cutting to monetise space they can't merchandise.
Kyuzitsu Hack Inc., a Tokyo immersive-experience operator, has booked a vacated shop floor inside Matsuya Asakusa for a seven-week ticketed mystery game co-planned with Suntory Holdings, the company said on 22 October.
The event, called "Infiltration Department Store" (潜入百貨店) and run under Kyuzitsu Hack's ヰ空間 (i-kukan) experience label, takes over the third floor of Matsuya Asakusa, in the space of a former shop that has since closed, from 29 October to 14 December. It runs daily except Tuesdays, with one swap: open on the 3 November holiday, closed instead on 4 November. Up to four participants per session take on roles as art-exhibition staff while secretly completing a mission, in sessions of about 70 minutes running between 10:20am and 6:40pm; the experience is restricted to ages 20 and over.
Tickets, on sale since 22 October through the Machihack! platform and generally non-refundable, cost ¥4,000 on weekdays and ¥4,500 on weekends and holidays, tax included. Anyone who completes the experience by 23 November receives a limited gold-coloured sticker, a reference, Kyuzitsu Hack said, to the house colour of co-planner Suntory's Premium Malt's beer.
Suntory Holdings is named as co-planner rather than simple sponsor: staff from its in-house Suntory Design Center worked on the event's main visual and part of the experience design, according to Kyuzitsu Hack.
Department stores have rented out awkward or vacant floors to pop-up tenants for years, but a seven-week, ticketed, adults-only game —with a beverage group as creative co-planner rather than just an exhibitor —goes a step further toward treating floor space as a venue booking rather than a merchandise lease. For Matsuya Asakusa, filling one specific vacancy this way brings in footfall and ticket revenue, in a tourist district where visitors are likely to spend further nearby, without the restocking risk of a conventional new retail tenant.
Whether Matsuya extends the format to other vacant floors in its network, or this stays a one-off fix for a single vacancy, is the thing to watch as the run plays out through mid-December.