Why the name of the building is “Komatsu Store”: Origin of the name “Komatsu Store”

Do you know where the Komatsu Store name comes from? The name of the company founder is Takeo Kosaka, so it would have been perfectly understandable if the business had been named “Kosaka Store.” So why is it called “Komatsu” instead of “Kosaka?” The name, Komatsu Store, as it turns out, has its origins in a restaurant called Matsumotoro, with the “ro” at the end of the name indicating that it was a restaurant. So wouldn’t “Matsumoto Store” have been a good name?

So why isn’t it called Matsumoto Store? Well, taking “Matsumoto” directly from Matsumotoro to create the name Matsumoto Store would not have made for a very novel start. New beginnings require a new name. So a new twist was added. We wanted to show our gratitude to the many customers who had given us their patronage at Matsumotoro, to carry on part of the name so as to leave a trace of the former business. So “matsu” (pine tree) was taken from Matsumotoro. Then, to bestow a sense of the founder’s personal responsibility and individuality as well as infuse the name with the founder’s essence, “ko” (small) was taken from Kosaka, the founder’s family name.

Thus, the new name Komatsu was born by combining “ko” from Kosaka with “matsu” from Matsumotoro. As unorthodox as its origins may seem, the name is true to the essence of today’s Komatsu Store, which values the present as well as cherishing tradition and continuing to show gratitude for past patronage.

At the time that Matsumotoro transformed into Komatsu Store, Ginza was booming in step with postwar reconstruction. Komatsu Store timed its business opening to coincide with the Ginza Reconstruction Festival, giving palpable expression to our love for the neighborhood and to the fact that Komatsu Store owes its existence to Ginza. Komatsu Store has always considered what’s good for Ginza, as well as what’s good for the store. That philosophy had already taken root at the time of the company’s foundation.

Today, Ginza is famous for its “pedestrian paradise” when the roads are closed to vehicles on weekends. The main street of modern-day Ginza is Ginza-dori, but the Ginza-dori of that time was lined by standalone stores and had a slightly different ambience from today. Matsumotoro considered Suzuran-dori to be the main street and set up facing that street. In the same way that Ginza as a whole was transformed with the change in the times, the images of the individual streets have been transformed.

Despite those changes, many people still saw Suzuran-dori as a special street. We would like to regain the benefits of how things were done when people valued Suzuran-dori. Now is a good time to re-evaluate what kind of customers we really want to serve, and to look again at what we have valued most. Taking such sentiments to heart, we have decided to re-establish Suzuran-dori as our main street. When construction is complete, the store will re-open facing Suzuran-dori.

Komatsu Store wants to return to its roots, and yet at the same time show you what it’s capable of today. We plan to sincerely address the question of what Komatsu’s core qualities are, and bring out the essence of Komatsu Store.