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The story
Toyonaka-based bookstore chain “Tamura Shoten,” a long-established Osaka institution, has been placed into special liquidation by the Osaka District Court, with total debts as of its fiscal year ending May 2023 reaching ¥1.459 billion. The thread was full of laments over the shift to e-books and online retailers, but some commenters pointed out that the chain’s 8 main stores had actually been transferred to a different company back in November 2024 and are still operating — meaning the stores being liquidated now were just the unprofitable ones.
2026.8/20 07:58
Mid-sized Osaka bookstore chain founded in Showa 23 (1948) enters special liquidation, Tokyo Shoko Research reports
Credit research firm Tokyo Shoko Research (TSR)’s Kansai branch announced that “Tamura Shoten” (Toyonaka, Osaka Prefecture), which operates multiple bookstores across Osaka Prefecture, has been placed into special liquidation by the Osaka District Court. Total debts as of the fiscal year ending May 2023 stood at ¥1.459 billion, though the figure may change going forward.
Source: zakzak.co.jp / Original article here
What people said
If they're going bankrupt anyway, they should just sell to a Chinese company.
They'd actually buy it, you know.
What idiots.
All the info moved to YouTube — it wins hands down on immediacy, presentation, and how easy it is to bookmark stuff.
Word is the distributors got lazy and stopped properly getting books onto shelves.
Now if you want a specific book, all you can do is special-order it.
So ¥1.4 billion is just from store payroll alone?
Also, I only subscribe to Kindle Unlimited in summer and winter, and I save screenshots of
interesting-looking books and manga to read later in Perfect Viewer (a comic-reader app).
No wonder brick-and-mortar bookstores can't turn a profit.
Manga's basically built its own closed-off market by now ("mura," lit. "village" — an insular community/economy of its own).
Just recover it before the court-appointed administrator shows up and you're fine.
otherwise it's hopeless.
Which ones are run directly by the distributors?
And there aren't magazines worth flipping through in-store anymore, so I never end up browsing and grabbing something extra like I used to.
When you say Osaka, you think Tsutaya.
This one's just a local chain up in Hokusetsu.
All the stores in the city closed down recently, so I figured it had already gone under ages ago.
I remember there being one in Matsugaoka and at the Daiei in Settsu-Tonda.
Seinen manga magazines run over ¥500 now —
ten years ago, back when AKB48 gravure spreads dominated them, they were around ¥300.
POPEYE went monthly and it's almost ¥1,000 now.
Sure, the page size got bigger, but it's thin and pricey — times have really changed.
Around the Tamura Shoten area there's also places like Book 1st.
Thanks for everything over the years.
https://way-books.com/event_pickup/2026/08/20/111908/
↑ went and checked this out
************
Having seen the reported news about the special liquidation of "Tamura Shoten,"
some of you may be worried that the following stores will be closing too.
・Senri-Chuo store
・SENRITO store
・Ryokuchi store
・Minami-Senri store
・Suita Sun Qs store
・Tengachaya store
・Mukonoso-Kita store
・Kawanishi store
The 8 stores above had their business transferred to O Entertainment Co., Ltd. in November 2024,
and continue operating under the new management company.
They will keep operating as usual going forward, so please don't worry.
We look forward to your visit.
**************
That's apparently what it says. So maybe only the unprofitable stores got left behind.
Sounds like the stores that were actually profitable got picked up by this other company. Everything else is closing or downsizing, I'd guess.
The store near me is still open too. Though I never buy books anymore anyway.
Background and Key Points
Tamura Shoten was founded in Showa 23 (1948) and became a fixture of the Hokusetsu area north of Osaka city — the belt running through Toyonaka, Suita, and Takatsuki, distinct from the flashier Namba/Umeda bookstore scene readers might associate with “Osaka.” Japan’s bookstore count has been in freefall for two decades: the country has gone from roughly 20,000 shops in the early 2000s to under 10,000 today, squeezed by a fixed book-price system that prevents discounting, wholesaler-controlled distribution (the “取次” system posters allude to when blaming lazy restocking), and the now-familiar migration of readers to e-books, used-book chains like BOOKOFF, and Amazon. A debt figure of ¥1.459 billion sounds catastrophic, but as one poster noted, publishing-industry debt is mostly unsold consignment inventory that can be returned to the wholesaler rather than a cash hole — which is why others focused on whether payroll or fees were the real driver.
The thread’s actual fault line wasn’t “why did bookstores decline” — everyone agreed on that — but whether this liquidation is the death of Tamura Shoten at all. Several posters surfaced that the chain’s eight main stores (Senri-Chuo, Ryokuchi, Suita Sun Qs, etc.) were sold off to O Entertainment Co. back in November 2024 and are still trading under that name. What’s being liquidated now is the shell entity holding the stores nobody wanted.
What outside readers will likely miss: this is less a bookstore obituary than a routine corporate carve-out — the profitable assets already exited before the liquidation was ever filed, a common pattern in Japanese SME wind-downs that headlines rarely explain.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Business News+) thread「[Osaka] Debt Exceeds ¥1.4 Billion — Cries of Alarm Over Historic Osaka Bookstore ‘Tamura Shoten’s Bankruptcy — What About the Business Transfer?」.
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