is a Japanese

retail Retail is the sale of goods and services to consumers, in contrast to wholesaling, which is sale to business or institutional customers. A retailer purchases goods in large quantities from manufacturers, directly or through a wholesaler, and t ...

book store A book is a medium for recording information in the form of writing or images, typically composed of many pages (made of papyrus, parchment, vellum, or paper) bound together and protected by a cover. The technical term for this physical arra ...

chain A chain is a serial assembly of connected pieces, called links, typically made of metal, with an overall character similar to that of a rope in that it is flexible and curved in compression but linear, rigid, and load-bearing in tension. A c ...

founded in 1891 as Tōkyōdō, a book publishing company. After

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

, the company branched out into retail book sales and Tōkyōdō split into two companies: Tōkyōdō Shoten, which continued with the retail book sales part of the business, and Tōkyōdō Publishing, which continued the publishing side of the business. The main office of Tōkyōdō Shoten is located in the Kanda-Jinbōchō area of

Tokyo Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, with an estimated 37.468 ...

, sharing a building with one of its retail stores and an office of Tōkyōdō Publishing. Its main competitors are the Sanseidō Shoten and Shosen Grande stores.

History

Hakubunkan is a Japanese publisher, publishing company founded in 1887 amidst the wealth and military prosperity of the Meiji era. Hakubunkan entered the publishing arena by printing a nationalist magazine as well as expanding into printing, advertising, pa ...

established Tōkyōdō in 1891 as a retail book business. The company quickly moved into book publishing as well. In 1941, the company ceased using the . Tōkyōdō split into two companies in 1964: Tōkyōdō Shoten and Tōkyōdō Publishing. Retail companies based in Tokyo Retail companies established in 1891 Bookstores of Japan Japanese companies established in 1891 {{japan-company-stub