Even as the Japanese fashion industry edges toward recovery, the damage wrought by the pandemic is gradually becoming clear.
You don’t tend to notice shop closures in fashion hubs like Harajuku because the spaces are instantly seized with a generic Instagrammable sweets shop or the like, but what you do notice is there is just a little less fashion to get excited about.
Statistics from the Japan Council of Shopping Centers makes the reality far more tangible. While 2021 marked a slight 3.8% improvement in total sales over 2020 across all malls and retail spaces, it is still a 19.2% drop compared to pre-pandemic shopping in 2019. That is for overall retail — when you break it down by tenants, the alarming drop is that before COVID-19, 18% of tenants were fashion or apparel related, whereas 2021 saw that figure drop to 12.9%.