Matsuya's Ginza and Asakusa stores post their first sales decline in five months

Matsuya's Ginza and Asakusa stores posted combined sales down 11.0% year on year in August, the department-store operator's first monthly decline in five months, according to a preliminary sales disclosure filed with the Tokyo Stock Exchange on 1 September.

The company attributed the fall to a tough comparison with August 2025, when continuous footfall promotions around the Ginza store's 100th anniversary (it opened in May 2025) and a large-scale luxury-brand event lifted sales across the building, and when Louis Vuitton's Ginza store, fresh off a major renovation completed in mid-June 2025, drove particularly strong spending among its affluent, gaisho (outside-sales) clientele. Both tax-free sales and domestic sales excluding tax-free purchases fell short of last year for the same reason, Matsuya said.

Not every category weakened: cosmetics sales rose about 3% year on year, and womenswear climbed 8%, helped by continued demand for summer goods through the country's prolonged heatwave and an early rollout of autumn merchandise, Matsuya said.

The read here is arithmetic more than appetite: a store the size of Matsuya's Ginza flagship was never going to repeat a one-off, 100th-anniversary quarter, and the comparison was flagged well before August began. Confirmed figures follow on 10 September; the number to watch is whether September's comparison, against a quieter month a year ago, turns positive again.