About

Hinomoto Shoten brings Japanese pieces from the Showa and Heisei eras to Europe, with the heart of the collection in Showa.

Showa (1926 to 1989) is the era that built modern Japan. Out of the quiet of postwar rebuilding came the Tokyo Olympics of 1964, the Osaka Expo of 1970, the golden decades of graphic design, the kissaten coffee shops thick with cigarette smoke and city pop, the explosion of manga and anime that travelled outward and shaped a generation. Below all of that, the everyday: the lamps in living rooms, the aprons hanging in kitchens, the alarm clocks beside the futon, the magazines stacked on the kotatsu.

Meiji opened Japan to the world. Showa made it modern. Heisei watched both become memory.

Hinomoto carries pieces from those years. Posters by the designers who built a national visual language. Print culture from the 60s and 70s when Japanese graphic design held the world's attention. Domestic objects from homes that no longer exist. The pop culture that defined an era, from Reiji Matsumoto to Tadanori Yokoo, from Sailor Moon to bosozoku magazines.

Each piece is chosen one at a time, in Japan. Nothing is reproduced. Most are one of a kind, and once they find their next home, that's where they stay.

The shop is led by an owner born in Heisei and raised in Japan until 21, with the residue of Showa still in the air. Operated from France, Hinomoto reaches across Europe the rest.

日の本 (Hinomoto) is an ancient name for Japan, and an old form of the country itself. It means the place where the sun rises.

Every object we carry has lived a life before it found us. We look for the wear, the craft, the strangeness of a world that no longer exists the same way.

A hand-painted apron from a soy sauce factory. A clock from a household that ran on it for thirty years. A poster that hung in a station, faded by sunlight. These are not artefacts behind glass. They are objects that still belong in a home.