PLAZA opens a new Tokyo-branded format at Shinjuku Marui for its 60th anniversary

Marui Group said PLAZA TOKYO+, a new store format from the lifestyle and character-goods chain PLAZA, will open on November 20 on the basement floor of Shinjuku Marui's main building, in a release dated September 30. The store will run 11:00 to 21:00, the company said.

The opening marks PLAZA's 60th anniversary, and the company said the format is meant to position Shinjuku — which it described as a district where visitors from around the world pass through and global and domestic trends meet — as the basis for what it calls a line of new Tokyo souvenirs. The store will carry what Marui called one of PLAZA's largest character-merchandise zones, alongside rotating pop-up shops, time-limited collaborations and items sold exclusively at the location.

The store also houses a café, PLAZA CAFE on 3rd, built around frozen yogurt, a dessert Marui said is regaining popularity overseas. Creative design and store supervision were handled by Fantasista Utamaro, a Tokyo- and New York-based pop artist whose past clients include Apple, Google, Netflix, Nike, Disney and Sanrio; Marui credited the artist with a BAFTA award for art direction on the BBC's Tokyo Olympics-related coverage in 2022.

Shinjuku Marui's basement is prime, contested footfall — the kind of floor department stores usually give to a food hall, not a specialty retailer's flagship. Handing it instead to a character-goods chain built around collaborations and limited exclusives is a bet that fandom retail, not food, is what pulls both Tokyo residents and the tourists now filling Shinjuku's streets down to B1F. It also puts a domestic operator ahead of the curve on a trend it is importing rather than exporting: frozen yogurt, treated here as a novelty worth building a café around, has been a mainstream US mall staple for well over a decade.