Fukuya Hatchōbori department store

photo by Taisyo · CC BY 3.0

photo by Taisyo · CC BY 3.0

The 1938 ‘White Palace’ was rubble in '45: its tiles have been on display since 2019.

At the east entrance on the ground floor, behind a glass case, the original tiles of the 1938 façade are on display: they are the ones that withstood the heat of the bomb. Every hour, on the hour, the store still plays ‘Lala Fukuya’, written in 1969 for the fortieth anniversary and sung by Moriyama Ryōko. Outside, the building with its rounded corner and tower is still the landmark of the Hatchōbori junction.

Fukuya was founded in August 1929 and opened its store on 1 October of the same year, the first department store in Hiroshima Prefecture. The current building, with eight floors above ground and two below, dates from 1938 and was called ‘the Palace of White Marble’ (‘白亜の殿堂’). On 6 August 1945 the store was reduced to a ruin by the atomic bomb (‘原子爆弾の投下により店舗は廃虚と化す’, official company source); reconstruction began in February 1946 with the reopening of the ground floor alone and was completed in December 1954. Today it is one of the few 被爆建造物 still standing and in use as an active commercial building, not as a preserved ruin: in 2019, at the east entrance on the ground floor, the 1945 façade tiles that survived the bomb were put on display. The main Hatchōbori store today has 28,620 m² of sales floor.

ℹ️ ⚠️ Opening hours not verified on an official source in this session (the fukuya-dept.co.jp site has no hours page that could be reached with the tool available): from third-party sources, 10:00–19:30 on weekdays, until 20:00 on Fridays and Saturdays. No ticket: it is a working department store and you can walk in freely. Near the Hatchōbori tram stop.

🚉 Hatchobori · 1 min walk

Sources: fukuya-dept.co.jp · ja.wikipedia.org · 4travel.jp · commons.wikimedia.org

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