Consumer History | Kao — The Sundries Shop on Bakurocho That Named a Soap
· 1887-6
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Consumer History | Kao — The Sundries Shop on Bakurocho That Named a Soap
kevin
People treat Kao as a Kayabacho tower that always made detergent.
The first rooms sold imported paper and soap.
On 19 June 1887 Tomiro Nagase, then twenty-four, opened Nagase Shoten in Nihonbashi Bakurocho as a dealer in Western sundries.
The official company history still dates the firm from that shop, not from the later factory.
Bakurocho sits on the north edge of Nihonbashi, a wholesale street of inns and dry goods. The exact wooden front is gone. The district name is the pin.
In 1890 Nagase put his own toilet soap on sale under the name Kao Sekken. The characters 花王 were chosen because face-washing soap was then called kao, face.
Kao's published product history records the 1890 launch as a domestic soap meant to stand against imported cakes without copying the cheapest local bars.
The firm later printed laboratory analyses in the paulownia box. Quality was treated as something a buyer could read, not only smell.
The standing headquarters is 1-14-10 Nihonbashi Kayabacho, a minute from Kayabacho station exits 4a and 7, still inside the same ward as the founding street.
Corporate names shifted around the war: Nagase Shoten, Kao Soap, Nihon Yuki in 1940, then Kao again. The listed company counts June 1887 as the start and May 1940 as the present incorporation.
The mechanism is a retailer who learned the price gap from the counter. Imported soap was dear. Domestic soap was crude. Nagase manufactured into the gap and kept the shop's name on the box.
Kayabacho is the public face. Bakurocho is the street that made the brand possible.
Photo: Nihonbashi district fabric, Wikimedia Commons.
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