Journaling Mitsukoshi
The first foray into the field, Hanagoromo, or “Holiday Best,” ran to almost four hundred image-filled pages, included various articles and fiction, and was warmly reviewed for its high quality production values in newspapers and journals of the day.
In 1903, the retailer began publishing the monthly Jikō, or “Vogue,” anchored by fiction and essays on such topics as literature, art, performance, and travel by prominent intellectuals. In 1908, a new series entitled Mitsukoshi Taimusu supplemented, then absorbed Jikō, and in 1911, the store finally settled on Mitsukoshi as the name for its flagship publication. Regular publication ceased in 1933 as a “self-restraint” (jishuku) measure in response to troubled economic times, although occasional issues still appeared thereafter through 1943.
In this and the following pathway, we consider various types of places that are often overlooked in their spatiality in the pages of a journal issue. The vehicle of the journal conveys the store, the city, the country, and the empire to the reader through an implicit network of people and goods.
