Japanese Household Goods Retailer Nakagawa Opens Pop-Up Store in London

By Keisuke Kawabe / Yomiuri Shimbun Staff Writer

13:46 JST, October 22, 2025

NARA — Nakagawa Masashichi Shoten, an established Nara-based company planning and retailing household items, opened a pop-up store in London.

This is the first time the company, founded in 1716, has opened a store in Europe and it’s utilizing the experiences it gained in the Asian market.

At Nakagawa’s London pop-up store, which will be open for almost a year, the company will sell about 500 varieties of products. Also, Japanese crafts will be shared through hands-on events such as tea ceremonies and the kintsugi lacquerware mending technique using powdered metal.

The company aims to launch its first overseas flagship shop by 2030.

It is said Britain has a deep-rooted culture of treating things carefully for a long time. This is why the company chose it to make its first step in expanding to Europe as it has the right setting to accept Japanese crafts, which are made elaborately with utmost care.

The pop-up store is located on the first floor of a building in Shoreditch in central London, as the company considers it a place where diverse cultures meet up with each other and one can meet people with keen interest in designs and lifestyles.

“[London] is a city where tradition and innovation coexist. It should resonate with Nakagawa Masashichi Shoten’s philosophy of ‘changing while preserving,’” a company official said.

The pop-up store is scheduled to operate until July next year. It has a floor space of about 30 square meters, and its interior was designed by an architecture firm in London using sycamore wood.

The items sold at the store vary from food to sundry items. They include monpe wide pants, kappogi sleeved aprons and other work clothes, bancha tea leaves from Nara Prefecture, tea ceremony utensils, donabe ceramic hot pots, handy mops made of hinoki Japanese cypress from Yoshino district in Nara Prefecture, senko incense and manekineko cat ornaments in modern designs. Apparently, the work clothes and senko incense have been among the most popular items since the shop’s opening in September.

In addition, the shop sells exclusive limited-edition tea towels in two different designs depicting the Columbia Road flower market in London, where there are many florists. One is called “Hana fukin” (flower towel), and the other “Kayaori fukin” (gauze towel). The company is also planning to hold workshops to allow participants to experience Japanese culture, such as tea ceremonies and kintsugi.

The company began venturing overseas from 2018, starting mainly in Asian countries and regions where people’s lifestyles are relatively similar to that of Japanese. In 2019, the company held a major event in Taiwan. In recent years, the company expanded its sales channels to major Asian cities, such as Taipei, Shanghai, Beijing and Seoul. The company’s social media account in China is popular and has more than 18,000 followers.

“The form and application of crafts change depending on the lifestyle of the place they are used,” said Natsumi Sato, who oversees public relations at the company. “We’d like to understand what kind of products receive more support and how they are used [in Britain] to find the road map for making further advances in Europe.”