The term commodification of culture is used descriptively and often critically to denote shift of cultural products from the realms of ritual and relationships to the market place. Department stores have provided the foundations for debates in a variety of historical areas, including comparative economics, gender, and architecture. From the wealth of studies on consumer society in early modern Europe it would be easy to imagine that the flourishing material and commercial culture that gave rise to the industrial revolution was unparalleled in the world, and of course it had its distinctive aspects. The agency of department stores in the commodification of the creative arts was to some degree shaped by the same national, and occasionally nationalist, circumstances that gave rise to national products campaigns. The multi-story renaissance-style buildings built to house the department stores in Japan were not untypical of global styles, monumental expression of commercial prestige in the word of Henry-Russell Hitchcock.