Since its inception in 1969 with the opening of Ikebukuro PARCO, the retail and entertainment giant has positioned itself as a cultural provocateur. Its founder, Masuda Tsuji, turned PARCO into a creative park where unheard voices, experimental artists, and visual rebels could collide with everyday life.

From its earliest days, PARCO refused the predictable rhythms of department-store advertising. Instead, it embraced a model of incubation, cutting out the middle man by working directly with talents and weaving subcultural threads into its identity.

Through the ‘70s and ‘80s, PARCO’s early campaigns became episodes in a larger cultural narrative. Today, across five decades, the brand’s in-house campaigns shaped the creative identity of urban Japan. Its ad campaigns were territory that merged surrealism, sexuality, international icons, and graphic boldness, all fashioned in-house with creators rather than agencies.

We curated 13 of PARCO’s standout campaigns, drawing from different eras of the brand’s history. Each visual is a snapshot of Japan’s evolving visual language, revealing how PARCO stayed at the forefront of creative expression.

13. Shibuya PARCO Opening

Year - 1973
Art Director - Eiko Ishioka
Photographer - Noriaki Yokosuka

This debut campaign created in light of Shibuya Parco’s opening set the tone for everything PARCO would become. Under Eiko Ishioka’s direction, it was bold and visually uncompromising, pushing Japanese advertising into the realm of high-concept art and visual provocation.

12. Matsumoto Store Closure

Year - 2024
Art Director - Takaharu Shimizu
Photographer - Isobe Akiko
Featuring - Aoi Yamada

For Matsumoto PARCO’s farewell, the campaign brought together local creatives and was shot on-site in the soon-to-close store. It became a love letter to the community: personal and rooted in the idea that retail spaces can hold emotional value as well.

parco matsumoto closure japan aoi yamada

11. Rockin’ Rollin’

Year - 1981
Art Director - Tsuguya Inoue
Photographer - Shinpei Asai
Featuring - Chuck Berry

Inoue’s early-80s campaigns used clarity and movement to channel the energy of global pop culture. Featuring Chuck Berry in mid-performance, the ad traded surrealism for kinetic authenticity. It captured PARCO’s feverish international ambitions.

10. P’PARCO OPEN

Year - 1994
Art Director - Kazuhiro Saito
Photographer - Kenji Miura
Featuring - Scha Dara Parr &Kenji Ozawa

PARCO opened its Ikebukuro location with Tokyo’s hip-hop spirit. Scha Dara Parr and Kenji Ozawa’s presence turned an ad into a streetwise manifesto, mirroring 1990s youth culture and PARCO’s embrace of music-driven subculture.

9. AKIRA Art of Wall Exhibition

Year - 2019
Art Directors - Katsuhiro Otomo & Kosuke Kawamura

This visual marked the grand relaunch of Shibuya PARCO, transforming the construction facade into a cult street art myth. The reopening exhibition transplanted that street phenomenon into PARCO’s galleries, pairing it with rare Otomo artwork and large-scale installations. It was both a celebration of the city’s visual memory and a reminder of how manga and urban space can merge into living cultural icons.

8. Faye Dunaway Dress Campaign

Year - 1975
Art Director - Eiko Ishioka
Photographer - Kazumi Kurigami
Featuring - Faye Dunaway & Eiko Ishioka’s nieces

Perhaps PARCO’s most internationally famous visual, this campaign captured actress Faye Dunaway seated in a flowing dress, flanked by Ishioka’s own nieces. Shot by Kazumi Kurigami, it merged celebrity glamour with a subversive intimacy that was rare in Japanese advertising at the time. Dunaway’s cool detachment, contrasted with the innocence of the children, created a tension between Hollywood spectacle and personal narrative, an Eiko Ishioka hallmark. The image became a landmark in Japan’s advertising history, solidifying PARCO’s reputation for merging high art and pop culture.

7. Blythe Christmas Campaign

Year - 2000
Art Director - Kashiwa Sato

Blythe, a 1970s American doll revived in Japan in the late 90s, carried an uncanny, dreamlike charm. PARCO’s Christmas campaign embraced her surreal beauty, turning seasonal advertising into a whimsical, slightly eerie pop-culture moment that stood apart from traditional holiday sentimentality.

6. I Can’t Stop Loving You

Year - 1986
Art Director - Tsuguya Inoue
Photographer - Minsei Tominaga
Featuring - Ray Charles

PARCO’s shift toward joyful globalism in the mid-80s may be summed up in this close-up of Ray Charles. The emotional heft of that gaze, paired with PARCO’s willingness to ally itself with global music icons, reads like a declaration of creative openness.

5. Go!! PARCO

Year - 1996
Photographer - Sofia Coppola
Art Director - Tycoon Graphics

In the mid-90s, PARCO leaned into youthful indie realism. This campaign, and its lo-fi aesthetic, revealed PARCO’s embrace of emerging Western sensibilities, filtered through Shibuya’s subcultural pulse and Sofia Coppola’s lens.

4. Swim Dress Campaign

Year - 2009
Art Director - Asami Kiyokawa
Photographer - Pak Ok Sun
Featuring - Nozomi Sasaki

In the late 2000s, Japanese retail embraced hyper-saturated, editorial-style campaigns that flirted with J-pop music video fantasy. Nozomi Sasaki’s presence captured that blend of kawaii charm and glamorous spectacle, perfectly timed to an era obsessed with visual excess.

3. Winter PARCO Grand Bazaar”

Year - 2024
Creative & Art Directors - Atsushi Otaki & Gen Tanaka
Designer - Naomi Okamura
Featuring - Ken Matsudaira

A riot of color, kitsch, and showbiz sparkle, this New Year’s campaign used Matsuken’s cult status to embody the joyful chaos of the Grand Bazaar. It was equal parts retro variety show and high-energy retail spectacle.

2. PARCO SAYS

Year - 2005
Art Director - Michihiko Yanai
Photography - Toyotaro Shigemori
Featuring - Kaela Kimura

Instead of selling products, “PARCO SAYS” sold a mood of confidence and individuality. Kaela Kimura, then a symbol of Harajuku-meets-mainstream style, became the campaign’s voice, positioning PARCO as a cultural ally rather than just a retailer.

1. HAPPY BIRTHDAY P’PARCO

Year - 1996
Art Director - Mitsuo Shido
Photographer - Gen Inaba
Featuring - Pizzicato Five’s Maki Nomiya

The campaign that rode the Shibuya-kei’s wave of stylish cosmopolitan nostalgia through the lens of chic Japanese pop culture. Maki Nomiya’s image embodied an era where fashion, music, and design merged seamlessly in Tokyo’s trend capitals.

From its earliest days to its most recent campaigns, PARCO has treated advertising not as an obligation, but as an art form. The visuals of PARCO have become snapshots of shifting eras and cultural crossovers that have kept PARCO in step with, and often ahead of, the times to this day.

What unites a 1973 Shibuya opening poster, a lo-fi Sofia Coppola shoot in the mid-90s, and a 2019 AKIRA exhibition is its intent: each PARCO campaign works as a cultural statement, tuned to the mood of its moment yet ambitious enough to outlive it.

PARCO’s collaborations with visionary art directors, photographers, musicians, and designers have continually blurred the lines between commerce and art. Over half a century of boundary-breaking visual work might be enough proof that a department store can become a lasting part of a city’s creative memory.

Follow PARCO and Shibuya PARCO to stay up-to-date on their visual journey.

Text by Gill Princen