The rules change. The turn-lock doesn't.
A short letter in two parts — one about a rule, and one about a bag.
Part I · What changes on 1 November
If a trip to Japan is in your plans, something is about to change at the till. Until the end of October, visitors can shop tax-free and simply pay less in the store. For purchases from 1 November 2026, Japan switches to what it calls a refund method.
1. In the shop, you pay the full price, consumption tax included. The tax-free counter does not disappear, but it no longer takes the tax off your bill. It records your purchase against your passport instead.
2. When you leave Japan, you show your passport at a tax-free kiosk in the airport or seaport. This has to happen within 90 days of buying, and before you check your bags, because customs may ask to see the goods. Everything on a given receipt has to be with you.
3. Once customs confirms the goods are leaving, the shop — or a refund company working for it — returns the tax. By bank transfer, card, app, or cash at the port, depending on the shop. There is no single rule for how, so it is worth asking at the counter.
The threshold is unchanged: ¥5,000 before tax, in one shop on one day. But there is one new edge to be careful of. If a single item from a receipt is missing at the kiosk, nothing on that receipt is refunded. So the small things — keeping the receipt, keeping the items together, leaving time at the airport — matter more than they used to.
Source: Japan Tourism Agency and National Tax Agency, October 2026.
For orders from hannari, nothing changes. We have no tax-free counter in Japan; every piece is sent to you by DHL, just as before.
Part II · What doesn't
Tax rules seem to be moving everywhere at once. America ended its duty-free allowance for small parcels last year; now Japan is changing how its visitors shop. It is a busy season to be a rule.
So we looked at a bag on our shelf instead. A Mini Square in black lambskin, made between 1986 and 1988. Does its turn-lock shine a little brighter at one tax rate and dull at another?
It does not. And it has had every chance to.
This bag is older than Japan's consumption tax. When it left the workshop, there was no such tax at all; it arrived in April 1989, at three percent. The bag was carried through that. It was carried through five percent in 1997, eight in 2014, ten in 2019 — and now through a rule that changes not the rate but the ritual, from the counter to the kiosk. Four price lists, one new procedure, and the lock still closes with the same small turn it made the first time.
That is the part of a vintage bag no rule reaches. Not its price — its having been there all along. A new bag is bought into the rules of the day. An old one has already outlived several of them, and will outlive this one too.
Which is why, to us, it has always been a little more than a bag.
Two pieces from the same years are on the shelf this week — the Mini Square above, and a Half Moon in quilted lambskin, also 1986–1988. One of each, as always. See the vintage bags →
Rules change with the season. A good bag keeps its own time.