Modern retailing history in Japan: From the Meiji Restoration of 1868 to the beginning of the twenty-first century

This chapter presents a general view of Japanese retailing history from the Meiji Restoration to the beginning of the twenty-first century and the ways in which government played a key role in this development. Department stores and retail markets began to establish their styles after World War I. Department stores became popular by widening their clientele to include the middle class, but such development caused unrest among traditional retailers, resulting in the Department Store Act of 1937. In the era of high economic growth after World War II, supermarkets emerged as a major retail format. Again, this rapid development caused friction among existing retailers; regulation came through the Large Scale Store Act of 1973 and the amended act of 1979. This eventually gave way to franchising, enabling traditional retailers to convert to a new form of business: convenience stores.