The ultimate Muji experience – across seven floors

For almost 20 years, Muji’s flagship store in Tokyo’s Ginza district served as the perfect symbol of the world’s most successful value-focused, no-brand mega-brand. It was headquartered in a temporary-looking metallic wedge topped with a red tin roof. A simple and eminently functional building. 

Ginza itself, under ever heavier visitation from big-spending tourists, was becoming more saturated with high-end luxury names. But as Muji’s evangelical minimalism evolved from marketing to philosophy to quasi-social movement, the Ginza store stood as hard evidence that Muji was walking the walk. Despite a difficult few years in the UK, the brand has continued to thrive in its domestic market, in the face of fierce competition from Japanese retailers such as Uniqlo or Daiso. Its strategy in Japan of stocking individual stores in a way that is highly tailored to the local customer has been key to its continuing success and the strength of the company’s shares.

City planning for the Tokyo Olympics in 2020 created an opportunity to make an even bolder statement. The land on which the flagship stood was owned by the government and had to be handed back for use in the games. So they started work on a new shop 200m away, even deeper in the Ginza backstreet burrow of Graff, Canada Goose and Chanel. 

All the elements of Muji’s ‘all value, no frills’ ethos are there

The result – from the ground-floor market selling fresh fruits and only-in-this-store “Ginza blend” coffee to the design studio for product personalisation – is powerful. All the elements of Muji’s “all value, no frills” ethos are there; that perfection of elegant practicality that causes a shopper to imagine every item fitting seamlessly into one’s kitchen, wardrobe, living room and life. There are the classic ballpoint gel pens (¥120, about 63p), the rainbow of ribbed socks (about £2) and the plastic storage boxes no Japanese home is complete without (from about £2.50). But this is also, to some extent, a theme park: a concentration of all that Muji is for a generation of shoppers that demand experience. 

The new store is home to seven floors of retail, exhibition spaces, art installations, a café, a bakery and Japan’s first Muji Hotel. Muji seems to be saying: “Our neighbours can do consumerism bold, bling and blatant, but we will do it right.”

The idea behind the store, which feels simultaneously huge but homely, was to create a place in Ginza that people could identify as what its store manager, Takuya Narukawa, describes as a “natural base”. “Ginza is a very unusual district, because the actual residential population is no more than 10,000, but the daytime population is 30 times that – working people and tourists. A lot of those will have a Muji near where they live, but when they come to Ginza they want a special experience,” says Narukawa. “There would be no point in having this store here in Ginza if people thought they had come all this way for something they could have elsewhere.”

Interior fragrance oil, about £12 for 200ml

Women’s cotton-mix long-sleeve T-shirt, £14.95

Hasami Ware rice bowl, £8.95

Coloured gel pens, £12.95 for 10

There are ambushes around the store that make it unique as a Muji outlet: between the second and third floors is a hanging sculpture formed of thousands of metal bobbins recycled from clothing factories. As Muji has evolved through its upscale Idee range, its offerings now also include crystal wine decanters (about £46) and side tables made from solid wood (about £300). 

But the real push for something unique, says Narukawa, is centred on the food offerings on the ground floor. “We decided to learn from the cultures and wisdom of the world, and I thought food was the place where we could experience this the most,” he says. Upon entering the store, the visitor is drawn into an embrace of what has, for Muji, become a signature range of pre-made curries, pasta sauces, dried foods and gourmet coffee blends. This is a shop that perfectly meets the exact demands of the real consumers of modern Japan – a land that Muji has, quietly and minimalistically, had an extraordinarily influential hand in shaping. 

Leo Lewis is the FT’s Tokyo bureau chief