Tokyo Metabolism – The Japanese Convenience Store
“As of 1996, Japan had 48,567 convenience stores with total annual sales of ¥7,378 billion.The number of stores exceeds the combined number of police stations, post offices, and telephone offices in the country’s metropolitan areas. Since their introduction to Japan in 1974, convenience stores have fundamentally changed life in the city and are now considered one of its main amenities. The large chains usually stay open for twenty-four hours, seven days a week, bypassing regulations regarding opening hours due to their small size. Yet most convenience stores are owned or franchised by large retail conglomerates. They constitute a distributed retail system with all the financial might but much greater political, economic, and urbanistic flexibility than the older larger store formats.”
Hosoya, Hiromi and Schaefer, Markus: “Tokyo Metabolism – The Japanese Convenience Store”. in: Tokyo Life, London May 2001, p. 19-21
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