Kinokuniya Sydney offers the experience of a true booklover’s haven in the city. Our spacious and tranquil environment, abundance of natural light and friendly informative staff make Kinokuniya a unique bookstore.

Kinokuniya Sydney offers the largest range of books in Sydney with over 300,000 titles in English, Japanese, Chinese, French and German.

Located in the heart of Sydney CBD, Kinokuniya also stocks an extensive collection of Manga, graphic novels, art and design books, cookbooks, travel books and children’s literature. Our Chinese books and magazines are sourced from both Taiwan and mainland China and we also offer Japanese magazine subscription service.

Kinokuniya also features an in-store Art Gallery which exhibits works from ambitious, creative, and talented artists to help them develop their careers. New exhibitions are shown every two weeks.

We also have a sales office located in the bookstore (within the art and design section) to service business and academic institutions.

Come and visit us today and discover that real bookstores do still exist. Voted ABIA Bookshop of the Year 2020.

History

The first Kinokuniya bookstore opened in January 1927 by former president Moichi Tanabe. It had 5 employees and was located in the Shinjuku district of Tokyo in a two-story wooden building with a floor space of 125m2 (1,349sq.ft.) and an art gallery on the second floor.

The store burnt down in May 1945 during an air raid, but later re-opened in December 1945 and was incorporated in 1946. Over the next few years sale offices opened around Japan, including Osaka, Kyoto and Sapporo.

In 1964, the bookstore’s headquarters was established in Shinjuku (the current Shinjuku Main Store Building), consisting of nine stories and had two underground floors. Kinokuniya continued to develop large-scale bookstores in major Japanese cities based on the corporate philosophy of providing customers with a wide variety of books and magazines.

Kinokuniya believes bookstores should function as centers for the promotion of culture and the arts and not merely as outlets for selling books so theatres and an art gallery are incorporated inside the bookstores where possible. The Shinjuku store boasts two theatres that aspire to promote the spirit of the dramatic arts, much like that of New York’s Broadway and the Kinokuniya Theatre Awards were established in 1966 to promote the development of the dramatic arts.

The first overseas bookstore opened in San Francisco in 1969 with the twin goals of providing Japanese living abroad with information from home as quickly as possible and introducing Japanese tradition and culture to the local community. Several other bookstores have since opened in the United States, including major stores in Los Angeles and New York.

Kinokuniya ventured into the Asia-Pacific market when it opened its first store in Singapore (Liang Court Store) in 1983. This would serve as a base for developing additional Asian outlets and store openings soon followed in Taiwan, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand.

In 1996, Kinokuniya launched its first bookstore in Australia, located in Sydney’s Neutral Bay suburb. This was later re-located to its present day location in The Galeries shopping centre on George Street.

Kinokuniya is the largest bookstore chain in Japan with over 80 stores worldwide.