Competition among department stores in the Japanese commercial city of Osaka has recently intensified prior to the "grand opening" of western Japan's biggest department store, scheduled for next week.

The large-scale shopping facility, called the "Hankyu Umeda Flagship Store", covers a total floor area of 80,000 square meters and adjoins Hankyu Umeda Station. The Umeda business district, also known as "Kita", is Osaka's central rail transport hub, which a total of 2.3 million people use per day. It now boasts four department stores in addition to the world's largest underground shopping mall complex that connects to other shopping complexes, cinemas, hotels and rail and subway stations.

After a seven-year reconstruction period, the mega department store, which employs more than 10,000 staff, has "preliminarily" opened most of its shopping zones and some 30 upscale and casual restaurants. Some spaces remain unopened, such as an event hall with some 200 seats and galleries that have yet to be furnished, according to H2O Retailing Corporation. The company invested 60 billion yen (about $750 million) in the project to renew the store, which originally opened as the world's first " railway terminal department store" in 1929.

The 13-storey building, plus two basement floors, includes floors providing the largest selection of overseas luxury brands in western Japan. The new store also has several cultural facilities such as a 2,000-square-meter indoor arena with four floors on the higher levels. The space, open to the public for taking a break, will host exhibitions and art events. One event will be a virtual orchestra concert in which anyone wanting to be an improvisational conductor can wield a baton to set the music's tempo and give precise directions to musicians on a large screen.

The retailing company, which operates several department stores and supermarkets in Osaka and the surrounding Kansai area, is now expecting 50 million customers to come to the new store, producing gross sales that will reach 213 billion yen (about $2.66 billion) in the first year.

Over the past 400 years, Osaka has preserved its reputation as a well-known commercial center. But this has largely stemmed instead from the south part of the city center, called "Minami" ( meaning "South"), which developed along the south edge of Osaka Castle, a local landmark. Major department stores have also considered the Minami district as their first choice for doing business in Osaka.

But this city tradition changed last year after West Japan Railway Company (JR West) opened a modern commercial facility in its renovated Osaka Station City complex. It includes a shopping mall featuring nearly 200 fashion brands and other retailers, and on the other side of the station is JR Osaka Mitsukoshi Isetan Department Store, the fourth department store operating in Umeda. All of this is adjacent to the station's ticket gates.

The opening, therefore, pressured the area's conventional retailers to drastically change their business strategies. According to local media, Daimaru's Umeda branch on the station's south side, for example, had to widen its sales area -- before JR West's complex opened -- by 60 percent to 64,000 square meters, thus increasing the number of stores for clothes, with a particular focus on younger shoppers.

Local media reported that the four department stores now have a total sales space reaching some 250,000 square meters, about 50 percent larger than that prior to Osaka Station City's opening.

The reports said the total sales of department stores located in Osaka rose by 0.6 percent in 2011 over the previous year due to openings and expansions. They added that competition is expected to heat up further after next April, when another commercial facility, with a 44,000-square-meter floor space, will complete construction on the north side of the Umeda district.

But considering that total sales of department stores in Japan declined to 6,152 billion yen (about $76.82 billion) in 2011 from 9,710 billion yen (about $120.9 billion) in 1991, the reports cited some economists as saying that such a recent building and renovation rush among major Umeda department stores is a sign of overestimated demand, and that stagnant population and per capita consumption growth will make competition too intense for them.

However, Makiko Taguchi, an H2O Retailing Corporation spokeswoman, told Xinhua that the renewed Hankyu store is in fact anticipating potential demand as a result of combined sales that feed off the other Umeda department stores, thus bringing more shoppers to the area. She did admit, though, that the competition between the area's stores will become tougher.

"After the full opening, the Hankyu store will be reborn as a cultural spot, rather than a shopping complex, attracting people not only from western or central Japan but also from Asian countries, including China. We are creating a 'theatre-orientated store'; a building from where the latest information about human life is always emanating, and people therefore can come and spend the day here," she stressed.

With big new stores opening in Umeda, the question of whether they can attract more customers from a wider area may depend on how they differentiate themselves from the commercial area as a whole.

Meanwhile, shopkeepers have already made a fuss because fiercer competition is expected in Osaka next summer. That is when Japan's biggest department store, with a floor area of 100,000 square meters, will open inside the country's tallest skyscraper, a building still under construction in the city's traditional Minami district.