Sales of gems, precious metals and artwork at Japan’s department stores rose 19 percent to 330 billion yen, about two billion dollars, in the first half of 2026, the highest figure since records began in 2008, according to the Japan Department Stores Association. Duty-free sales rose only 3.2 percent, which places the surge with Japanese households converting savings into gold and stones as the yen fell toward 164 per dollar.
One dollar costs 164 yen this summer, more than at any point since the early 1980s, and Japanese households have begun answering the exchange rate at the jewellery counter. Sales of gems, precious metals and artwork across the country’s department stores rose 19 percent in the first half of 2026, reaching 330 billion yen, about two billion dollars, the highest first-half figure the Japan Department Stores Association has recorded since it began counting in 2008. Overall department store sales grew 3.2 percent in the same period. One category outran the whole building by a factor of six.
Duty-Free Sales Rose 3.2 Percent: The Buyers Are Japanese
The first instinct is to read this as another chapter of Japan’s tourist boom, and the data closes that door quickly. Duty-free sales rose 3.2 percent, precisely in line with the general market. The jewellery record was set by Japanese customers spending Japanese money, and their motive is completed by a second number from the same summer: core consumer prices rose 1.6 percent in June. A household watching its currency thin and its costs climb begins to ask what a savings account actually preserves. Increasingly, the answer weighs something.
The World Gold Council Counts Less Jewellery, More Money
The global backdrop makes the Japanese pattern sharper still. The World Gold Council’s figures for the first quarter of 2026 show gold jewellery demand falling 23 percent by volume worldwide while spending on it rose 31 percent, against a quarterly average gold price of 4,873 dollars an ounce, a record, after a January peak of 5,405 dollars. Bar and coin purchases jumped 42 percent, led by Asian investors. The world, in other words, is buying less jewellery and paying more for what it buys, treating the category as a store of value first and an adornment second. Japan’s department stores are simply where this global repricing becomes visible at street level, between the food hall and the silk floor.
Richemont’s Japan Sales Grew 36 Percent in One Quarter
The houses supplying those counters confirm the direction from their side of the ledger. Richemont, whose maisons include Cartier and Van Cleef & Arpels, reported group sales up 20 percent for the quarter ended June 30, with its Jewellery Maisons growing 24 percent, their seventh consecutive quarter of double-digit expansion. The region that led the entire group was Japan, up 36 percent, ahead of the Americas, ahead of Asia Pacific, ahead of Europe. The same months, the same country, the same behaviour, recorded once by a retail association and once by the world’s second-largest luxury group.
The Plaza Accord Sent Money Out, the Weak Yen Keeps It Home
There is a historical symmetry in this worth holding for a moment. The last time the yen occupied comparable territory, in the years before the Plaza Accord sent it soaring, Japan’s relationship with hard value ran in the opposite direction: a strengthening currency later carried Japanese buyers out into the world, famously to the auction rooms where the country’s insurers and industrialists collected Impressionists. Four decades on, a weakening yen keeps the money home and converts it into gold and stones across domestic counters. The direction has reversed. The instinct has survived intact.
Further Reading
- The Value Left the Ground: Forever Was the Easy Part
Two companies sold the same mineral in the same quarter and closed their books on opposite results. Cartier, Van Cleef & Arpels, Buccellati and Vhernier grew 24 percent to 4.7 billion euros, while De Beers posted an underlying EBITDA loss of 511 million dollars and paused Venetia, its largest mine, for two years. Anglo American wrote the diamond house down from 9.2 to 2.3 billion dollars in three years. The value now sits with the houses that cut and set the stone, and it has left the ground it came from.
- One Country, Two Economies: AI Wealth and the End of an American Illusion
The American AI boom has created wealth at a speed the middle of the country never touches. Capital gathers at the top, the ground beneath it thins, and consumption follows the same split, moving toward durable value at one end and toward the price fight at the other.
