Shirokiya's Bargain Day

Whatever their private opinions of Christianity, Japanese shopkeepers are ardently in favor of Christmas. Tokyo's great Shirokiya's stores--rebuilt in glass and concrete after the earthquake of 1923--held a special Christmas sale last week. Colored lights hung from the balconies. On the third floor there was a huge Christmas tree, loaded with celluloid ornaments. Price tags on every table called attention to Shirokiya's bargain day--the managers are proud of the fact that they were the first store in Japan to adopt the one price system, now employ 1,300 people. There was a short-circuit in the Christmas tree. Flames crackled among the celluloid ornaments, then jumped to a counter piled with celluloid toys, which exploded. The building was fireproof, but its rotunda made an excellent chimney. From the third floor to the roof roared a mushroom of flame and smoke.

A thousand people were in the building. All but a few hundred on the two lower floors were trapped by the flames. Screaming crowds rushed to the roof where the management had installed cages of live lions, monkeys, bears and a little shrine to Kwannon, Goddess of Mercy. Fortunately employes had had a weekly fire drill. There were no fire escapes in the building, but each department was provided with collapsible canvas chutes known as "lifesacks" down which people could slide to the streets. Quick-witted clerks on the fifth floor saved many lives by twisting a life-rope from an enormous bolt of cotton cloth. Miss Hisaya Yoshida, the president's agile secretary, crawled six floors down a drainpipe to safety, nearly fainted as another girl fell to her death from the fifth.

Outside the building every fire crew in Tokyo was at work but there was not a fire ladder in the city tall enough to reach the roof. Army planes swooped overhead trying to drop ropes to the milling crowds on the roof. A battalion of troops with fixed bayonets held back hysterical crowds that blocked traffic in the heart of Tokyo for three hours. Slowly, painfully most of those trapped in the building were lowered down ropes to the street. At nightfall police checked up: 14 dead, over 100 injured, property damage estimated at $4,000,000.

Said Ninzo Yamada, director of the store:

"We are proud of our clerks. Many of them will be honored by the company for their bravery."

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