Closing Kanda, moving the whole company to Shinjuku, and incorporating (1930)

Closing, with its own hands, the store it had rebuilt with its own hands

The store Isetan rebuilt in April 1924 it closed in September 1933. The same company took two opposite decisions about the same piece of ground within nine years. What made the difference was how early it wrote off the rebuilt store as being on “bad ground.” The option of staying in Kanda out of reluctance to waste money already spent was available, and for a company capitalized at ¥500,000 it was the safer one. That the second Kosuge Tanji chose a move with no line of retreat may be because losing the store to the earthquake had left him suspicious of land rather than of buildings.

The Isetan of 1930 did not know that Shinjuku would become one of Tokyo’s great commercial districts. As an established shopping quarter it ranked behind Ginza and Nihonbashi, and the suburban railways that were shifting the flow of people were still a work in progress. The move looks correct only because we know what came after. Even the momentum that carried selling space past 10,000 tsubo was stopped from outside, when the third extension was abandoned in April 1938. What settled the merits of the decision was not Isetan’s reading alone.