Seibu Fukui

photo by 賀正 · CC BY-SA 3.0

photo by Rebirth10 · CC BY 3.0

Founded in 1928 by a man who, his fellow townspeople said, looked like a daruma.

The prefecture's only department store, and residents still call it ‘だるまや’ (Darumaya) although the official name has changed twice: the nickname comes from the looks of the founder, who according to his fellow townspeople resembled a daruma doll. The present building, the third on the same site, replaced what had been razed first by an air raid and then by an earthquake, three years apart.

Founded on 6 July 1928 by Tsubokawa Shin'ichi (1887–1962), an educator worried about the city's decline after the prefectural seat was moved. The original building was destroyed in the Fukui air raid of July 1945, and its rebuilt successor by the Fukui earthquake of June 1948; a new three-storey reinforced-concrete building with a lift was completed in 1953. In 1980 the name changed to ‘Darumaya Seibu’ after a capital agreement with the Seibu group, and in 2009 to the current ‘Seibu Fukui’.

ℹ️ Shops open 10:00–19:00 (until 19:30 on Fridays, Saturdays and public holidays); restaurants on the 8th floor 11:00–22:00. A 5-minute walk from JR Fukui Station.

🚉 Fukui · 4 min walk

Sources: fuku-iro.jp · sogo-seibu.jp · ja.wikipedia.org

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