Yasukuni Dori Shopping Area, Shinjuku

 
The Yomiuri Shimbun reported that on January 2nd, the day all major stores commenced their New Year sales, twenty thousand people were lined up outside Mitsukoshi in Nihonbashi just before their 10:00 AM opening. Who could blame a clerk or cashier, learning of such an impending onslaught, for quietly slipping out the back door, never to return?