There's a new tenant on Ginza's shopping street, a new jewel.

Or, to be more precise, a whole treasure trove of them -- diamonds, rubies, emeralds, sapphires -- all sparkling, dazzling and demanding attention.

And not just a few, either. Lots of them. A whole salon full of rare and expensive pieces for you or that special person in your life.

The name is Harry Winston, famed American jeweler, with salons at some of the ritziest locations around the world: Beverly Hills, Paris, Geneva and now boasting its own store on the Ginza.

Harry Winston is not a new name in Japan, as the first salon opened at an exclusive Ginza hotel back in 1988. It was followed by another salon at an equally upscale address in Osaka.

The Winston story goes back a hundred years or more, when sometime jeweler Jacob Winston, father of Harry and grandfather of the present chairman, Ronald, began a small business in Los Angeles.

A little over two decades later, Harry ended up in New York and set up his own company, Premiere Diamond Co., on Fifth Avenue. This was the start of a career which was to eventually take him to the pinnacle of the rare jewel world.

Buying entire jewelry collections from the estates of wealthy women or cash-strapped husbands, the young Harry started building up a business and, at the same time, a reputation which survives to this day.

Some well-known stones which passed through his hands (and which later became known as "The Court of the Jewels") include the Hope and Star of Sierra Leone diamonds, the Indore Pears, Catherine the Great's sapphire and the heart-shaped Eugenie Blue, reportedly owned by Louis Napoleon's wife, Empress Eugenie.

Great pieces come and go in this business, but sometimes they linger a while, such as the huge heart-shaped diamond displayed at the Ginza salon's opening, which weighed in at a cool 101 carats.

And if the stars of the business were not enough, the list of clients is equally impressive: the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, the Shah of Iran, Greek shipping tycoon Aristotle Onassis and dozens of other wealthy, megarich movers and shakers.

Ronald, Harry's son and current chairman, in Tokyo for the opening of the new Ginza store, said that since his company first entered the Japanese market in 1988, "business has increased by 1,000 percent."

Not long after the company started in Japan, an interesting trend began to assert itself, Winston said.

"In Japan, there is a phenomenon of young people buying engagement rings. It has developed into something very powerful, but this is something which doesn't happen in the States."

The rings do not come cheap. Typically, they are valued at between 1 million yen and 3 million yen.

The Tokyo salon has been designed with a showroom at street level selling exclusive necklaces, earrings and bracelets, all designed and imported from New York, and the R&W (rings and watches) salon above, reached by means of a curving marble staircase with wrought-iron banister and golden fittings.

The R&W salon, with its padded gray fabric walls and soft, relaxing atmosphere, is where much of the business is done: young customers, in the 20-35-year-old age range, come to purchase their engagement rings or to buy exclusive watches to mark special occasions like a graduation or promotion.

"We are style, not a trend. We are committed to Japan," says Golbarg Parstabar, Harry Winston Japan's vice president and managing director.

She should know. Parstabar has been working with the company in Japan for almost a decade, and before that she was in the Beverly Hills salon.

"Twelve years ago Harry Winston made a commitment to Japan, and we promise to fulfill your expectations and those of our late chairman," she added.

The commitment is easy to see: give the customers the best. Nothing more, nothing less.

If a customer wants a chic diamond engagement ring then Harry Winston has it. Or if not at the Ginza salon, one will be ordered from the atelier in New York and couriered to Japan.

If a woman wants a dazzling necklace dripping in diamonds and red rubies, then Harry Winston has it somewhere, and the lady will get it.

Harry Winston's Japan operations are the first in Asia and, for the time being, there are no plans to enlarge on them or to get a foot in the door in other countries.

"China is a difficult country to work in, and we are not quite ready" to enter the market there, Winston said.

However, Taiwan and Singapore are candidates "because of their [economic] growth and [political] stability," he added. Winston does have a presence in Hong Kong, but only in the watch market, an operation seen as testing the waters before any future investment.

Winston is upbeat about the future here, saying that of the company's total sales in recent years, Japanese customers make up 20 percent of the total.

"But, because of our formula for sales and because of our designs, we hope to double this in the next couple of years," he said.