Takashimaya closes its 44-year-old Rakusai store in Kyoto, reopening a much smaller food-and-gift shop in September
Takashimaya closed its 44-year-old Rakusai store in Kyoto on Aug. 3 and will reopen a much smaller food-and-gift satellite shop on the same site in September — a concrete instance of the format Japan's suburban department stores are increasingly shrinking into.
Takashimaya closed its Rakusai store in western Kyoto on Aug. 3, ending the full-line department store it had operated on the site since 1982 — 44 years — the company said in an announcement posted on its site.
In its place, Takashimaya will open a far smaller satellite shop called Takashimaya Rose Shop Rakusai on Sept. 1, inside the Laceine specialty-store building on the same site, the company said. The new shop, open 10am to 7pm, will sell food — Japanese and Western confectionery and alcohol — and gifts, including catalogue-gift items; it will not offer delivery for its food products.
Takashimaya is also opening a seasonal gift centre at the nearby Hotel Kyoto Eminence from Oct. 30 to Dec. 20, taking orders for gifts and New Year osechi meals for delivery, the company said.
Takashimaya's own announcement gives no reason for the closure. But the shift — a 44-year full-line store giving way to a food-and-gift-only satellite a fraction of its size — fits a pattern showing up across Japan's department-store sector, where operators have been paring back suburban, full-line locations into compact formats built around the two categories that still reliably draw a local customer: food and gifting.