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“I asked Mitsui, Japan has everything, and especially with such a refined service industry, why would it need Eslite?” remarks Eslite CEO Mercy Wu, recalling in measured tones her first in-person meeting with Mitsui.

That was back in early 2016, when her father, company founder Robert Wu, was still alive. Sumitomo played a video for Eslite on urban renewal in the Nihonbashi district of Tokyo.

Developed during the Tokugawa period in the early seventeenth century, Nihonbashi is the starting point for 14 national highways, and home to the Japan Central Bank, Japan’s first department store (Mitsukoshi), and a plethora of shops dating back a century or more, harking back to the former glory of Tokyo’s Eastern District.

The Nihonbashi District of Tokyo holds a critical historical position for Japan. The unicorn wing patterns on the bridge are a major motif providing the backdrop for the novels of Keigo Higashino. Nihonbashi is set to be the latest showcase for urban renewal in Tokyo. (Photo by Ming-Tang Huang/CW)

In the video, the highway overpass looming over the Nihon Bridge will be demolished, and Nihonbashi will take on a fresh new look. “They didn’t offer us any invitations on that occasion; they just encouraged us to take advantage of the cherry blossom season to do some networking.”

Mercy Wu only later learned that well before that presentation, as far back as Eslite Spectrum’s 2013 grand opening, Sumitomo had made multiple secret visits to the Songshan Cultural and Creative Park. “They love the Songshan Cultural and Creative Park. Because there’s nothing like it in Japan,” observes Wu.

Nothing Like It In Japan?

This is quite a surprise.

With a population of 120 million and the world’s third-largest economy, Japan is widely recognized as the world’s most competitive retail market. For decades, from department stores to convenience stores, Sogo to Mitsukoshi, Takashimaya to 7-Eleven and FamilyMart, Japan has always been the ancestral homeland of the Taiwanese service industry.

Established for 30 years, the original Taiwanese Eslite brand, which grew out of a bookstore, had something that Japan did not. Not only that, but it inspired Japan to break numerous precedents.

Eslite’s new home at the Coredo Muromachi Terrace in Nihonbashi is set to be the new headquarters of Mitsui Fudosan, one of Japan’s top three real estate firms. In the effort to attract Eslite, Mitsui broke from established practice of only acting as a landlord to enter into a joint investment with Eslite to form a brand license holding company, showing their commitment to long-term cooperation.

Eslite Spectrum Nihonbashi has been invited to occupy the second floor of Japanese real estate giant Mitsui Fudosan’s new headquarters at Coredo Muromachi Terrace. (Photo by Ming-Tang Huang/CW)

Mitsui Fudosan boasts annual revenue of around 1.8 trillion Japanese yen, or around NT$530 billion. This is around 30 times that of Eslite, yet Mitsui’s share of the investment is 39 percent, whilst Eslite’s 61 percent gives it control. “This is a world’s first for Mitsui to form a jointly-invested company with an overseas brand,” exclaims [黑田耕弘], director of the First Operations Office of the Mitsui Fudosan Facilities Department.

“I’ll remember that day for the rest of my life. Because starting on January 31, 2018 I got really busy,” remarks Kentaro Mastunobu, senior managing director of Yorindo Co.

Named one of the best and most interesting bookstores in the world by TIME magazine and CNN, Eslite gained notoriety in Japan as the model for Tsutaya Books. Prior to that time, the publishing industry was rife with whispers of Eslite’s intentions to come to Japan, and Kentaro Mastunobu had never imagined that he would become the first licensee that Eslite and Mitsui took interest in.

“I felt like I had to do it. Since reaching its apex in 1996, the Japanese book market has continued to shrink. Eslite is one of the world’s most highly-rated bookstores, and I hoped to learn from its excellent approach,” he says. Founded in Yokohama, Yorindo is a century-old bookstore chain. The new Eslite Spectrum Nihonbashi store will become its fifty-fifth store.

Last Space Hand Picked by Robert Wu

CommonWealth got a sneak preview of the Eslite Spectrum Nihonbashi store prior to the September 27 grand opening. Taking the escalator from the ground floor, on the way up wall murals designed by Taiwanese architect Kris Yao transport visitors to Nihonbashi during the Edo period at the meeting point of Eastern and Western commerce, guiding them into Eslite, which positions itself as a “cultural ferryman.”

Wall murals designed by Taiwanese architect Kris Yao transport modern-day escalator riders through time to encounter Nihonbashi at different times throughout history. (Source: Eslite)

“Mr. Wu described the keywords for this store as ‘bridge,’ ‘passage,’ and ‘transcendance.’ We want to be the ferryman between Japanese and Chinese culture, and a guide to cultural history; we want to make space within space; and we want to facilitate harmony and inclusion of body, mind and spirit. And he even specially explained that it should be mix and match, both harmonizing and embracing,” relates Mercy Wu as she flips through a notebook from three years ago. Finding her father Robert’s words, a little daughter’s look of contentedness comes across her face.



“Coming from bookstore families, both Mercy and I share similar motivations and commitment to preserving bookstores,” says Kentaro Mastunobu, senior managing director of Yorindo and a member of the third generation of his family in the business. (Source: Ming-Tang Huang)

Although he never met Robert Wu, Kentaro Mastunobu describes Eslite in unusual philosophical terms, keeping Wu’s wisdom alive in this space. And truly, this was the last Eslite space that Robert Wu personally approved just a week before his death in July 2017. On that day, the normally camera shy Wu broke precedent and asked colleagues to take some pictures of their meeting.



The late Robert Wu at Nihonbashi. (Source: Eslite)

Wu asked architect Kris Wu to forge an elegant, tranquil space for creating precious times.

Upon entering Eslite Spectrum Nihonbashi, the first element that catches the eye is a slate-colored corridor that runs through the entire bookstore, cultural and creative shops, activity space, dining areas, and glass-blowing studio. In addition to creating a feeling of continuity, it serves to settle the air.

Architect Kris Yao lined the slate pathway with aluminum lamp posts, like streetlights alternating between indoor and outdoor atmosphere. Strolling along the slate walkway, proprietors along the sides have put up blue noren (fabric dividers), tempting one to lift them up to see what is inside, while seemingly sealing the space inside from the tumult of the world outside. Ceiling lights in the corners of the corridor are festooned with verses on spring, summer, fall, and winter by the legendary Japanese poet Bashō, transporting visitors through all four seasons.

Eslite Spectrum’s color palette has taken on greater warmth in Japan, which features slate tiles with cool blue and gray tones to make it the Eslite most unlike other Eslites. (Source: Eslite)

Describing his design approach, Kris Yao says, “Eslite has never been the kind of place one can size up immediately, where everything is within view at once. Without these different layers, everything would be right there before one’s eyes, and it wouldn’t be such an interesting bookstore or commercial marketplace.”

Most Atypical Eslite

Elements that make this the most atypical Eslite include the use of cool gray and blue colors, as well as the noren. And this is quite a gamble for the company.

Mercy Wu shares that Mitsui and various vendors hesitated to hang out noren, believing that they would obscure their branding. And Mitsui repeatedly suggested to Eslite that, since many Japanese were unfamiliar with Eslite, they should just scale down the Songshan Eslite Spectrum and bring it to Japan in its rawest form, rather than innovating from the start. She admits that what Mitsui said made a lot of sense.

However, she was repeatedly reminded of a conversation she had with her father after he had taken a walk through Ginza Six, the largest shopping center in Tokyo’s Ginza District.

“Mercy, what’s the difference between putting a shopping center like this in Ginza and New York?,” he asked her.

“Mercy, if we open a store, we should make it so everyone knows it’s Eslite. But removed from the city and district in which it’s located, it’s not the same thing. If it just makes sense wherever you put it, then it’s not for us,” he said.

Taiwanese flair is one of the most alluring nooks for Eslite Spectrum Nihonbashi. (Photo by Ming-Tang Huang/CW)

Eslite Spectrum Nihonbashi is like Robert Wu’s first work that sets the tone for Eslite’s next stage: establishing connections to local cities and communities so that each store has its own unique identity.

Going against popular opinion, Mercy Wu subsequently clung to her father and Kris Yao’s original conception. “Eslite Spectrum Nihonbashi will surely be compared with Japan’s existing bookstores, including Tsutaya. The bookstore must be placed as a whole - from materials, to color tones, spatial arrangements, to product mix - in comparison with other Japanese bookstores, so you know immediately that it’s different.”

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A Bibliocentric World View

“Eslite has a very distinctive world view,” say both [黑田耕弘] and Kentaro Mastunobu.

[黑田耕弘] believes that Eslite’s distinctive worldview is that it still places books at the center, while cleverly incorporating assorted lifestyle goods and experiential creative shops.

Eslite differs from Tsutaya in that Eslite stores are owned and operated by the company, whilst the latter is run on a franchise model. However, the biggest difference is surely Eslite’s commitment to books.

Yet exporting Eslite’s core - the bookstore - is easier said than done.

Book selection and event curation has long been the vehicle through which Eslite has expressed its “attitude.” Eslite is accustomed to dealing directly with publishers, each side presenting their own proposals, and collaborating on curating exhibitions. According to the ground rules for Eslite’s selection of books, the publisher posts a manuscript two months in advance, to be determined by the book selection committee. This system has been in practice, unchanged, for years. However, after being sent to Japan this past April, senior managing director [Hsieh Yueh-kui] found that there is very little back and forth interaction between bookstores and publishers in Japan.

Eslite’s esthetic of sprawling on the floor with a book is revised here with window seats. (Photo by Ming-Tang Huang/CW)

Japanese bookstores rely heavily on huge inventory suppliers. Japan’s two largest suppliers, Nippon Shuppan Hanbai and Tohan Corporation, act as distributors that furnish all of the country’s bookstores with services ranging from pre-opening planning, in-store design and outfitting, and point-of-sales machine installation. Once a store begins operation, the supplier prepares a best-seller list to guide bookstore orders, and even base the selection of certain books on each bookstore’s local commercial sphere. And they even go so far as to place the books in categories and assign catalogue numbers, so that store clerks just have to follow the numbers when placing the books on the shelves according to the supplier’s display designs.

One advantage of Japan’s distribution system is that stores in remote areas or small bookstores can obtain the same books; the disadvantage is that all of the bookstores can obtain the same books. “Japanese bookstores are too accustomed to best-seller rankings, which makes it a collective book market,” observes [Hsieh Yueh-kui].

Kentaro Mastunobu offers that Yorindo is also involved in curation, ultimately to sell books. Unlike Japan, Taiwan does not have giant distributor houses, and bookstores must select books themselves. Eslite is exceptionally thorough in its book selection, treating it as a key component of brand building, where book selection can convey a certain attitude. Books feel warm and familiar to people, and can be tied together with apparel, merchandise and activities and events, making Eslite a cultural platform.

“Japanese bookstore displays are very pragmatic, based on the assumption that readers know in advance what they want to buy before going there. But Eslite is meant for browsing, inviting you to come look around and see what I recommend,” observes Hsieh, noting that Japanese bookstore shelves have a lot of index markers to facilitate book finding.

In order to export its characteristic book selection and curation, Eslite must find a niche amidst Japan’s “hyper-stable structure.”

Over the past five months, [Hsieh Yueh-kui] has accompanied Yorindo on visits to over 40 publishing houses. Some of them are willing to include manuscripts in book selection, and certain publishers that have never worked with Yorindo have committed to setting various titles aside for the big supply houses to handle distribution.

Once books are delivered to the bookstores, store clerks must be educated on how to display them. The Japanese custom is to make one big display chart for more than 100,000 books so that part-time clerks can easily follow standard procedure without erring. But Eslite has never worked that way, and it took considerable effort to convince locals to follow a narrow categorization method of display. And Eslite had to dispatch someone from Taiwan to oversee the rearrangement of the display shelves.

Going forward, Eslite Spectrum Nihonbashi’s books will be concentrated in four categories, namely Humanities, Art, Innovation, and Lifestyle. Immediately following the grand opening, the store will clear away six book cabinets to make way for the presentation of the “Letters From Asia” special exhibition. During the grand opening period, Eslite has arranged with publishers to present 50 events, including book launches and signings by Akutagawa Prize winner Shūichi Yoshida and Naoki Prize winner Kyoko Nakajima.

Eslite Spectrum Nihonbashi is Eslite’s first brand licensing arrangement. To ensure delivery of the best of Eslite, Eslite Spectrum operations manager Pan Hsing-er (middle), and senior managing director Hsieh Yueh-kui (right), in charge of book selection, are working alongside a Japanese store manager employed by Yorindo (left). (Photo by Ming-Tang Huang/CW)

Translated by David Toman

Edited by TC Lin, Sharon Tseng