For many of us, convenience stores are retail spaces that we take for granted. We seldom think about them when we use them to buy a newspaper or get a carton of milk

• pharmacy-convenience stores
• gas station food marts (Mobil Mart)

Pop culture has consumed and repackaged them

• Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure features the Circle K
• Clerks and its Gen-X staff of slackers

Like other ubiquitous service sector locations in national and increasingly global economies (e.g., fast food restaurants, supermakets, department stores, auto dealers), we tend to assume that convenience stores are everywhere alike.  This is not so, and Japan's convenience store industry is a case in point.

1. The relationship of the modern and the traditional

2. Themes of family, work, education

• "family" run stores, often owned and operated by couples which support busy workers and families
• reflect part-time labor and changing patterns of work
• education; a key to the store's success has been a competent work force able to use equipment, collect data, and comply –  at least to some significant extent – to the rules set down by the convenience store managers

3. Globalization and domestication

• peddlers
• small shops
• innovative advertising
• origins of complex distribution system

Image 2: 1858 Hiroshige

• yamakujira (mountain whale = wild board meat) and maruyaki jusanri (whole-cooked imo, better than kuri, chestnuts)

Image 3: Mitsukoshi/Mitsui flier of women shopping for kimono fabric

• Osaka – Edo connection
• stores grow larger and begin premodern gchainsh (often involving intermarriage of wholesaler and distributor families)
• specialty stores expand into department stores
• floors featuring different items, often sites where Western goods are first displayed and sold

Image 4, Image 5 & Image 7: Mitsukoshi lions at Ginza store

• department store model imported from Europe
• merchant delegations visiting London to look at department stores
• first department store architecture show that they were meant to be a different kind of shopping experience
• modern consumption and social space (museums, restaurants, cafes inside)
• Mitsukoshi still has lions, a copy of Harrods of London, but the lions are also curiously like the guardian dog diets outside of Shinto shrines – open and closed mouths
• due to resistance on the part of small shop owners, corporations building department stores at the terminals of train lines (also an idea that was used in U.S. by certain railroad companies); example Kintetsu, Keio
• interaction between state and business, linking work to consumerism

Image 6: woodblock of items under glass display

• "Mise" (from miseru = to show)
• Store clerks playing important role; items seen, identified then fetched from shelf by clerk behind counter.  Kept shop lifting (by customers) at a minimum and prevented soiling and damage
• Contrast with today's stores where customer does most of the work

Image 8 & Image 9:  catalogs and specialty soap

• importance of using print media to draw in customers
• rose scented soap as a specialty product of Mitsukoshi (see konbini specialty items like Lawson tea)

Image 10: woodblock of old and new stores

• not just a sudden conversion of old to new but rather a contentious process of development and change
• merchant guilds and distributors formed tight political units
• Daitenho and various revisions keep the bigger department stores from setting in small neighborhood communities

• small-scale and family run
• see themselves as upholder of tradition, opposed to office salaryman
• have been chastised for their political force – strong connections ("Full Moon Lunch" and Tsukiji) and political teeth that keep larger firms and foreign goods at bay.  The reality is much more complex
• house and store often attached; sometimes the living room is literally a body's turn away from cash register
• konbini don't always fully break the store from the home, but work to create a separate space.

Image Series: 37-38-39: Yamazaki Store, Kushibiki-machi, Yamagata-ken

"Full Moon Lunch" provides a detailed look at the life of a Tokyo Mom-and-Pop [see also this video clip]

Image 11, Image 12, Image 13, & Image 14: Hiranō-ya, Hirosei-cho, Shimane-ken

• alcohol (license): still deliver to different organizations and family; lines of credit extended (sought after by franchisers)
• salt (once licensed)
• delivery service
• rice (once licensed)
• daily sundries
• local tofu
• sign now ask customers to serve themselves (no need for these signs in konbini)
• truly need the owners assistance to find what you are looking for
• kamidana in sight of register (in konbini, the kamidana is now hidden from the customers view; shrine perched above the computer terminal where orders are processed and daily sales totaled)

Image 15 & Image 16: Tsukishima Kusaichi (matsuri)

• another small business, but connected to larger, underworld distribution channels
• consumption as entertainment
• shrines and local shōtengai – long relationship and constantly renegotiated

• Bestor Neighborhood Tokyo: Matsuri where neighborhood relations become visible
• Kondo Crafting Selves: production as the focus
• Image 17: covers of Neighborhood Tokyo and Crafting Selves

• first convenience store = My Store
• FamilyMart was No. Two, but failed
• 7-Eleven established in 1974 in Koto-ku, Tokyo
• Franchisee, Yamamoto – liquor store owners concerned about sagging sales and store succession
• franchise system allowed big stores to get around restrictions and help mom and pops who wanted to compete
• Project X – first documentary of NHK series was about 7-Eleven, store has become a shining example of Japan's success at adapting models (see McCraw Creating Modern Capitalism, Harvard Business School – one entire chapter by Bernstein on 7-Eleven)
• Image 24: Smap's MIJ (Made in Japan) billboard--another popular formulation of this pride in Japan during current period of economic uncertainty.

  Interesting that pride is pitched in terms of Western things that have been Japanified  or Japanese winning notoriety in Western competitions and under Western rules: Ozawa Seiji, Ichiro, Nomo, Ise Miyaki

• Image 25: kintarō ame cross-section: traditional candy; no matter where it is cut, come out with the same face of folk hero Kintarō
• pressure to differentiate in order to appeal to micromassification
• intense competition and differentiation (Image 26: konbini trade journal)
• leads to new experience for former mom and pop owners and datsusara looking for a new beginning in a society with a fairly rigidly structured white collar job market (Image 27: article on becoming a konbini owner)

• Image 28: Watson Golden Arches East and Raz Riding Black Ships: localization takes different forms as well

• Image 29 & Image 30:  7-Eleven localized in Hawaii (e.g., offers spam musubi in addition to the hot dogs and Slurpies)

• assisted to a large extent by franchising through mom-and-pops

• items different

• stores support local events like other local businesses (Image 40)

• even incorporated into graffiti (Image 40)

• changing family making the konbini even more used than stores in the past – one-stop shopping at its extreme; konbini replacing kitchen

• different logos (Lawson bought theirs from Ohio dairy convenience store chain); benibana of Yamagata Friendly Convenience Store, Hiroshima-based Poplar (Image 45)
• street corners, office buildings, rural roadsides (Image 31 and Image 32: Lawson in Yurakucho Denki, home to the Foreign Correspondents' Club) [video clip]
• question of royalty payments (discuss franchise system)
• 3000 items, change rapidly (Image 33, Image 34 & Image 41: make-up, instant foods, magazines, obento) [people have choices to make when konbini shopping ]
• on obento production and small, family run business: see Full Moon Lunch
• computerized registers which gather marketing data (POS)
• every item is tracked from the point of shipping to the point of sale (Image 35: school girls shopping and clerk scanning in items before they go on the shelf, Poplar, Shimane-ken) [video clip]

• new stores opening constantly (Image 43: Lawson in the making, Amarume-machi, Yamagata-ken)
• but old stores are also closing constantly (Image 44: Failed Sunkus, Hirata-machi, Yamagata-ken)
• competition is driving innovation in services – Postal Lawson, automated konbini am/pm, gas bill and ticket ordering [video clip]
• food is also a battle field, Lawson rebuilt itself with value added, kokyū onigiri (high end rice ball)
• kombini are also a space that fills time. Consumers stop by konbini to flip through magazines, use the rest rooms, or rendevous with acquaintances [video clip]

• working housewives
• furiitaa
• store owners
• consumers
• foreigners