Closure of Long-Established Fish Shop, Departure of Key Carp Players, and LABI’s Shutdown — What Remains When ‘Signboards’ Disappear from Hiroshima?

One by one, ‘signboards’ are being taken down in the city of Hiroshima.

The closure of a long-established fish shop run by an 87-year-old signboard girl. The persistent whispers of free agency departures surrounding key players of the Hiroshima Toyo Carp. And the shutdown of LABI Hiroshima, a large electronics store that has been a fixture in the Naka Ward for 14 years.

The genres are varied: fish, baseball, and electronics. However, when these three events are lined up, a question with the same outline emerges. When entities that have supported the community quietly exit, what remains in their place?

Rather than viewing these as individual farewells, we read them as a structural issue. We pursued what becomes visible in this context.

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‘The Same Fish Over and Over’ — The Capillaries Supporting the Setouchi Dining Table

“The same fish over and over… it’s just about reached its limit.” The 87-year-old signboard girl of a long-established fish shop beloved in Hiroshima City expressed this sentiment, leading to her decision to close the store.

This statement refers not only to her personal physical limits. The volume of seafood handled at the Hiroshima Central Wholesale Market has shrunk to less than one-third of its peak. The bias in fish species caught in the Seto Inland Sea and the decrease in catch volume — environmental factors such as rising sea temperatures and the reduction of seagrass beds have narrowed the options for sourcing.

The closure of a fish shop is not merely the disappearance of one establishment. Here, we want to pause and consider what it means for the local food distribution when a ‘fish shop disappears.’

The seafood section of supermarkets displays fish that are part of a nationwide chain’s logistics network. It’s efficient. However, the distribution that involves the judgment of individuals — sourcing fish caught that morning from local fishing ports and preparing it according to regular customers’ preferences — is a system that only individual fish shops can maintain. The capillary-like connections between the market and consumers are getting clogged one by one.

In Hiroshima City, the number of individually operated fish shops has significantly decreased over the past decade. Nationwide, the number of seafood retail establishments has halved since the 1990s, and Hiroshima is no exception. Many of the remaining shop owners are in their 70s or older, with few successors available.

As the fish available for sourcing decreases, the number of customers coming to buy diminishes, and there are no successors. When these three ‘reductions’ occur simultaneously, closure becomes less a personal decision and more a consequence of structural issues. The words of the 87-year-old signboard girl were a record of the moment when that structure reached its limit.

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Departure of Key Carp Players — Is ‘Nurturing and Sending Off’ a System or Destiny?

The Hiroshima Toyo Carp has a recurring cycle. They acquire promising young talent through the draft, develop them within their training system, and then players who acquire free agency rights seek to move to other teams for higher salaries and a chance at championships.

This offseason, the free agency departures of key players, including Shogo Sakakura, have been a hot topic. Reports indicate that teams like the Giants, Swallows, and DeNA are pursuing these players, creating an atmosphere of resignation among Hiroshima fans, akin to “here we go again.”

It is necessary to separate fact from speculation here. The exercise of free agency rights is fundamentally a personal right of the players, and no formal transfers have been decided at this point. However, looking back at past instances — such as Yoshihiro Maru (to the Giants in 2018) and Seiya Suzuki (to MLB in the 2021 offseason) — it is undeniable that Hiroshima has functioned as a ‘developmental team,’ passing its achievements on to other teams.

At the core of the issue is the revenue structure of the team. The annual revenue scale of the Hiroshima Toyo Carp is significantly smaller compared to teams like the Giants and SoftBank. Due to its nature as a citizen team without a parent company, there are limits to broadcasting rights fees and sponsorship income. While Mazda Stadium has maintained strong attendance, it is challenging to continue offering salaries on par with other teams based solely on that.

In other words, the players ‘leaving’ is both a personal choice and an inevitability created by the structural economic scale of the team. The sense of loss felt by fans is not merely the sadness of losing a favorite player. It is the feeling that what was nurtured in their city is being absorbed into a larger economic sphere — a sentiment that resonates with the closure of fish shops and the withdrawal of LABI.

It is possible to romanticize ‘nurturing and sending off.’ However, if the structure continues where nothing returns after sending off, it is not a system but a depletion. The Carp’s draft strategy and development capabilities are praised as among the best in the league, but the economic mechanisms to continue returning that power to the community have not kept pace. Here lies a structural challenge faced by local teams.

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LABI’s Shutdown — Has the City or Consumption Changed in 14 Years?

In 2010, Yamada Denki’s large store “LABI Hiroshima” opened in Naka Ward, Hiroshima City. Initially, it garnered significant attention and was seen as a transformative presence in the surrounding commercial landscape.

After 14 years of operation, LABI has closed its doors. The new store will relocate within the same Naka Ward commercial facility, “Paseera,” but the sales floor area will be significantly reduced. The future use of the site remains undecided.

Many changes have occurred over the span of 14 years. With the rise of e-commerce, the business model of electronics retailers is undergoing a transformation. According to a survey by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, the e-commerce rate for home appliances and AV equipment continues to rise annually, with consumer behavior characterized by ‘seeing’ in physical stores and ‘buying’ online — a phenomenon known as showrooming — becoming commonplace. The cost of maintaining large sales floor areas is no longer justified by the purchasing rates of visiting customers. The closure and downsizing of large flagship electronics stores is not a phenomenon unique to Hiroshima.

However, there is a context specific to Hiroshima. The area where LABI Hiroshima was located is the central commercial district of Kamiya-cho and Hatchobori. In recent years, multiple redevelopment plans have been underway in this area, accelerating the turnover of commercial facilities. The closure is both a ‘withdrawal’ and a ‘replacement’ that occurs in the process of changing the structure of the city.

However, what will come in the place of this replacement remains unclear. Will the site become a new commercial facility, an office building, or remain vacant? Who will fill the void left by the disappearance of a large establishment? This question applies equally to the shopping streets after the closure of fish shops and to the teams after key players have departed.

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The Underlying Structure of Three ‘Disappearances’

Fish shops, the Carp, and LABI — when these three phenomena are lined up, what becomes visible is a common structure: ‘entities rooted in the community can no longer be sustained by larger dynamics.’

Fish shops are affected by changes in marine environments and the wave of distribution efficiency. The Carp is impacted by the structural economic disparities in professional baseball. LABI faces the transformation of e-commerce and changes in consumer behavior. In each case, macro forces are at play that cannot be resisted by individual management efforts or personal determination.

Another commonality is that the absence of the ‘supporting structure’ becomes visible after the disappearance. Only after a fish shop closes do we realize how narrow the route was for local fish to reach the dining table. Only after key players transfer do we see how significant their roles were within the team. Only after a large store closes do we understand how that location influenced the flow of people in the city.

A ‘signboard’ is not just a marker. It creates the flow of people, maintains relationships, and supports the community’s self-awareness. When it is taken down, what is lost is not just the signboard itself but the intricate web of relationships that the signboard connected.

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Leaving Questions — ‘Who Does This Benefit?’

“Community revitalization,” “consumer consciousness reform,” and “new business models” — these phrases are repeatedly discussed as prescriptions. They are not incorrect. However, we want to pause for a moment.

It is easy to dismiss the closure of fish shops as a ‘sign of the times.’ One could say that the departure of Carp players is ‘inevitable given the existence of the free agency system.’ It is also possible to explain LABI’s closure as ‘a result of the e-commerce era.’ However, each of these carries the danger of erasing the time and effort of those who supported these entities with a mere phrase of ‘it can’t be helped.’

We cannot resist structural issues with personal sentiment. However, we can interpret the structure. Where is power concentrated, and where is it leaking away? Within that flow, who benefits, and who is left behind?

When the 87-year-old signboard girl said, “I’ve reached my limit,” her words were not only a personal retirement announcement but also a record of a system reaching its limits.

Signboards are disappearing from Hiroshima. In the face of this reality, what we can do is at least accurately remember what those signboards supported — for the sake of someone who will raise the next signboard.