is a

department store A department store is a retail establishment offering a wide range of consumer goods in different areas of the store under one roof, each area ("department") specializing in a product category. In modern major cities, the department store mad ...

Shibuya, Tokyo is a special ward in Tokyo, Japan. A major commercial center, Shibuya houses one of the busiest railway stations in the world, Shibuya Station. As of January 1, 2024, Shibuya Ward has an estimated population of 230,609 in 142,443 households ...

, Japan. The store is operated by SHIBUYA109 Entertainment Corporation, a subsidiary of the

Tokyu Group The , a contraction of and formerly until 2 September 2019, is a Japanese '' keiretsu'' or conglomerate headquartered in Shibuya, Tokyo. While a multinational corporation, its main operation is , a wholly-owned subsidiary operating railways ...

History and description

The building, located just across the street from

Shibuya Station is a major railway station in Shibuya, Tokyo, Japan, operated by East Japan Railway Company (JR East), Keio Corporation, Tokyu Corporation, and Tokyo Metro. It serves as a terminal for six railway lines, five of which are operated by Tokyo Metro ...

, opened in April 1979. The architect was Minoru Takeyama. Tokyu, the building's operator, designed the building as a "Fashion Community" containing small retail stores targeting the early-30s female consumer. Tokyu intended the store to compete with

Seibu Department Stores is a Japanese depato, department store. The first store to trade under the name opened its doors in 1949. Seibu is typical of Japanese department stores with a wide variety of stores doing business on several floors. The company is now a subsid ...

, which was making inroads into the Shibuya area.Bull, Brett, "Decades as Tokyo's tower of girl power", ''

Japan Times ''The Japan Times'' is Japan's largest and oldest English-language daily newspaper. It is published by , a subsidiary of News2u Holdings, Inc. It is headquartered in the in Kioicho, Chiyoda, Tokyo. History ''The Japan Times'' was launched by ...

'', January 22, 2009, p. 17. The name of the building, ''109'', is a form of word play ( goroawase, specifically numerical substitution) and is taken from the Japanese characters ''tō'' (meaning 10) and ''kyū'' (9) as in '' Tōkyū''. The numbers 10 and 9 also signified the operating hours, which was 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. The interior of the building is designed to move shoppers in a loop on each floor from the elevators past various shops. A movie theater was originally planned for the top floor, but the fire department would not grant approval due to emergency-evacuation routes not meeting appropriate standards. Although originally targeted at women in their 30s, the building later became more known as a sanctuary for young women from the ''

gyaru (, ) is a Japanese street fashion, Japanese fashion subculture for young women, often associated with gaudy fashion styles and dyed hair. The term is a Japanese transliteration of the English slang word . In Japan, it is used to refer to you ...

'' subculture. The original

emoji An emoji ( ; plural emoji or emojis; , ) is a pictogram, logogram, ideogram, or smiley embedded in text and used in electronic messages and web pages. The primary function of modern emoji is to fill in emotional cues otherwise missing from type ...

set from SoftBank Mobile (as used by

iOS Ios, Io or Nio (, ; ; locally Nios, Νιός) is a Greek island in the Cyclades group in the Aegean Sea. Ios is a hilly island with cliffs down to the sea on most sides. It is situated halfway between Naxos and Santorini. It is about long an ...

prior to the Unicode emoji standardisation) included one for Shibuya 109, . As a corporate icon, it was not assigned a standard

Unicode Unicode or ''The Unicode Standard'' or TUS is a character encoding standard maintained by the Unicode Consortium designed to support the use of text in all of the world's writing systems that can be digitized. Version 16.0 defines 154,998 Char ...

code point, but it continues to be supported by Twemoji at its location in SoftBank's

Private Use Area In Unicode, a Private Use Area (PUA) is a range of code points that, by definition, will not be assigned characters by the standard. Three Private Use Areas are defined: one in the Basic Multilingual Plane (), and one each in, and nearly covering ...

Due to its prominent location in Shibuya, the building appears in various Japanese media like anime and video games; however, since 109 is a trademarked brand, the number is usually altered.

Collaboration with Ayumi Hamasaki

In April 2023, the 109 building was used for Ayumi Hamasaki's "25th Anniversary Shibuya109 Campaign", showcasing the artist both on the tower and through participating stores. Famed for being an inspiration for gyaru culture in the 2000s, Hamasaki collaborated with numerous brands for limited edition clothing, merchandise, and confectionary, along with a playlist of her music being used across the building. A ViVi representative described the event as "a perfect envisioning of Ayu's world", and "a treat for visitors, regardless of whether they're a big fan or not".

Stores

* Shibuya 109 (Shibuya, Tokyo) - April 1979 * MAGNET by Shibuya 109 (Shibuya, Tokyo) - April 2018 *:Opened as 109-2 in April 1979, renamed to 109Men's in March 2011 before being renamed once again to its current name. * Kohrinbo 109 (

Kanazawa, Ishikawa is the capital of Ishikawa Prefecture in central Japan. , the city had an estimated population of 466,029 in 203,271 households, and a population density of 990 persons per km2. The total area of the city was . Etymology The name "Kanazawa" ...

) - September 1985 * 109 Machida (

Machida, Tokyo is a Cities of Japan, city located in West Tokyo, the western portion of the Tokyo Metropolis, Japan. , the city had an estimated population of 428,851, and a population density of 6,000 persons per km2. The total area of the city was . Due to ...

) - July 2002 - Closed * Shizuoka 109 (

Shizuoka, Shizuoka is the capital city of Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan, and the prefecture's second-largest city in both population and area. It has been populated since prehistoric times. the city had an estimated population of 677,867 in 106,087 households, and a ...

) - October 2007 *: Created in March 2006 as Shibuya 109 Dreams, later recreated into the current 109. * Minatomirai 109 (

Yokohama is the List of cities in Japan, second-largest city in Japan by population as well as by area, and the country's most populous Municipalities of Japan, municipality. It is the capital and most populous city in Kanagawa Prefecture, with a popu ...

) - April 2010 * Shibuya 109 Abeno (

Osaka is a Cities designated by government ordinance of Japan, designated city in the Kansai region of Honshu in Japan. It is the capital of and most populous city in Osaka Prefecture, and the List of cities in Japan, third-most populous city in J ...

) - April 2011

References

* * *

External links

Official website

109Men's

Kohrinbo 109

109 Machida
{{DEFAULTSORT:109 (Department Store) 1979 establishments in Japan Shopping malls established in 1979 Buildings and structures in Shibuya Tokyu Group Department stores of Japan Articles with unsupported Private Use Area characters