Manolo Morales at KHON-2 News called me this week to talk about Shirokiya. They’re interested in moving to the new Ewa wing of Ala Moana Center in the near future.

Shirokiya is the oldest company doing business in Hawaii. Its roots go all the way back to 1662 in the Nihonbashi district of Edo (now Tokyo) when Hikotaro Omura opened a notions and draper’s shop.

That makes Shirokiya more than 350 years old. Ten generations of Omuras operated the store.

Hawaii’s oldest home-grown company, C. Brewer, in contrast, did not get started until 164 years later, in 1826.

One of Shirokiya’s first projects was to provide lumber for the Emperor’s Palace. From this, the Omuras took the name Shirokiya, which means "white tree store," referring to white birch lumber.

Soon after Commodore Matthew Perry opened Japan to Western trade in 1854, Shirokiya was designated by the Japanese government as the store to trade with the West. In 1886, Shirokiya was the first store in Japan to sell Western clothing.

Shirokiya came to be owned by the Tokyu Group, which began as the Meguro-Kamata Railway Co. in 1922. It now spans 400 companies in transportation business, retailing, construction and leisure. It owns the Mauna Lani Bay Resort, on the site of the former home of Francis H. I’i Brown, whom I wrote about two weeks ago.

Phase One of Ala Moana Shopping Center opened on Aug. 13, 1959. Some think Shirokiya was an original tenant, but it opened two months later, on Oct. 29, 1959, in the Sears wing of the center. It occupied the wing Ewa of today’s Centerstage. Shirokiya was between Longs Drugs and Woolworth on the mauka side and occupied 23,000 square feet on two levels.

After Foodland moves out in December, the only two remaining original tenants will be Longs and Bank of Hawaii.

Three original tenants — Slipper House, Petland and Sears — closed fairly recently.

Other originals that closed a while ago included Woolworth, Hartfields and Hopaco.

On the day Shirokiya opened, Ala Moana held a second grand opening. Besides Shirokiya, other openings included Andrade, Sato Clothier, Pocketbook Man, Watumull’s, Fishland and Honolulu Book Shop.

Shirokiya was the first foreign-owned department store in Hawaii. The Ala Moana Center location was the first Shirokiya store outside of Japan. Today, it’s the only Shirokiya left.

It also represented the first major postwar investment by a Japanese company in Hawaii. More would soon follow.

Back in 1959, my older readers may recall, Japanese goods were looked down upon. "We want to show the world that Japan produces fine goods at prices most families can afford," Satoshi Konishi, the store manager in 1959, told the Honolulu Advertiser.

"Unfortunately, so much cheap made-in-Japan merchandise has been sold abroad that our nation has lost face as a quality market to most of the world."

Konishi said that Shirokiya hoped to correct this bad impression by offering high-quality Japanese goods, including kimonos, textiles, lacquerware, ceramics, jewelry and furniture. For myself, I’d say they have succeeded.

Much of the store’s interior was designed and prefabricated in Japan. It featured a ceremonial teahouse and traditional rock gardens at three entrances. Seventy-five tons of rocks were imported from Japan.

In 1966, Phase Two of Ala Moana Center opened, Diamond Head of the Centerstage, and Shirokiya moved to its present location, across from Liberty House, now Macy’s.

The Tokyu Group sold Shirokiya in 2001 to its Hawaii managers for $1. Branches in Pearlridge and Maui closed that same year.

One last interesting bit of trivia: A subsidiary of Shirokiya, Tokyo Telecommunications Research Institute, made the first electric rice cooker. It didn’t work too well, but the company survived and has thrived in the electronics business under a new name — Sony.

Sony went on to create Japan’s first transistor radio, Trinitron color televisions, Walkman personal stereos, the PlayStation and Blu-ray Disc recorders.

Stores need to change or they’ll go out of business. That is the challenge that Sears and JC Penney and many other companies have. They have struggled to figure out where to move in their retail dynamic to find the sweet spot of their market, satisfy their customers and keep them coming back. Shirokiya seems to be reinventing itself more successfully than most.

Bob Sigall can be reached at Sigall@yahoo.com. His fourth “Companies We Keep” book, featuring many articles from this column, will be arriving in time for the holidays.