Growing up in Tokyo, where entire neighborhoods can feel like shopping corridors, my grandparents sometimes took me to Mitsukoshi, one of Japan’s largest retail emporiums. The store was a veritable monument to beauty and abundance, stocked with everything from fine silks to sweet treats and plush sofas. As we walked from floor to floor, they would buy me “proper” clothes and take me to the fruit parlor on the top floor to eat strawberry parfaits while overlooking the entire city.

As I got older, I grew more curious about how these stores evolved into the grandiose institutions they are today, particularly in Japan. What I found as an academic surprised me: They have a very long and rich lineage, starting as comparatively humble enterprises hundreds of years ago.

We can trace many of Japan’s most prominent department stores, such as Mitsukoshi, Takashimaya, Shirokiya, Matsuzakaya, and Daimaru, back to the premodern Edo period (1603–1868).

Mitsukoshi, for example, started off as an expansive kimono fabric store (gofukuten) in 1673 in Edo (today’s Tokyo). Inside the establishment, originally called “Echigoya,” well-off customers shopped while seated on tatami mats, selecting designs from fabric pattern books (hinagatabon). In the premodern print below by Okumura Masanobu, one can see attendants presenting several bolts of fabric to a group of customers, while other patrons are being served tea. The seated figure in the foreground smokes a pipe while shop attendants bundle her purchases. The shopping experience was meant to be both leisurely and luxurious, reserved mostly for wealthier customers.