Daimaru's Shinsaibashi flagship marks 300 years with a month-long store-wide finale

Daimaru Matsuzakaya Department Stores is marking the 300th anniversary of its Shinsaibashi store, one of J. Front Retailing's flagship sites in Osaka, with a month of store-wide programming -- a new Kohei Nawa sculpture, a Suntory Yamazaki tasting and a samba parade -- running October 31 to November 26.

The floortok desk · 3 min read · 19 October 2026

Daimaru Matsuzakaya Department Stores said its Shinsaibashi store in Osaka turns 300 on November 1, and will mark the milestone with "Sai 300" (300祭), a month-long, store-wide finale to its anniversary programme running October 31 to November 26, according to a release dated October 19. The store is part of J. Front Retailing.

A store turned into a stage

The finale spans the building. Outside, on the Midosuji pedestrian strip, a merry-go-round modelled on the rabbit-and-tortoise relief at the store's Midosuji entrance runs for the full four weeks -- a project the company says it first planned for the 2023 holiday season and shelved, now revived. Inside, a fourth-floor "radio station" broadcasts live with an FM COCOLO host on five dates, inviting customers to submit memories of the store and Shinsaibashi; nearby, Daimaru is selling a reprint, at ¥200 each, of a paper merry-go-round toy it gave away in 1934 to mark the opening of the underground passage linking the store to the subway. On November 1 itself, the Copacabana Samba Team -- a group the company says has won Rio's carnival championship 15 times -- leads a parade through nine floors, themed on the store's peacock emblem.

Exhibitions and a new sculpture

Warm flat-vector editorial illustration of an ornate department-store corner entrance on a tree-lined boulevard at dusk, a small carousel silhouette beside it and a stylised phoenix-bird motif overhead, two anonymous silhouette figures strolling past, warm cream, petrol-teal and terracotta palette, no text, no logos. — Illustration by floortok.com

The fifth floor and above carry the historical programming: a 1927 Shinsaibashi street map and a reanimated ukiyo-e print of Mitsu Hachiman Shrine on five, a Meiji-era delivery cart and pre-2019 building fittings on the sixth and seventh under a revived "Hitomasu Museum" banner, and on the eighth an exhibition built around Osamu Tezuka's Phoenix (Hi no Tori) -- the character the anniversary has adopted as its motif, shown as a 12-story digest alongside objects, video and old in-store advertising. From November 7 to 11, sculptor Kohei Nawa unveils a new work, "PixCell-Phoenix," at the Midosuji entrance -- a sequel of sorts to his 2019 piece "Ho-Oh," which now stands at the Midosuji central entrance. Separately, from October 31 to November 4, the store runs paid tastings of Suntory's Yamazaki single malt, limited in number and restricted to one session per customer.

None of this discounts anything -- the "Sai 300" programme is built almost entirely around things to look at and queue for, not things to buy cheaper, which is itself the point for a store this age. A 300-year flagship's real asset is the history, and J. Front is spending the finale putting that history on the pavement -- a merry-go-round and a samba parade through the aisles -- rather than keeping it behind glass.