Few retail forms are as ubiquitous—and as culturally distinctive—as the Japanese convenience store. With more than 55,000 outlets nationwide, konbini have become a dense infrastructural mesh woven into the rhythms of everyday life. How did these stores become so entrenched in Japanese life, and what are the social and environmental costs of the convenience they provide? Beginning with the spread of refrigeration and the first supermarket boom in the 1960s, the talk shows how small family retailers fought back by lobbying for legislation to block the spread of large retail outlets. And by tracing the mounting pressures of the early 21st century— rising costs, ageing drivers, and a shrinking labour pool—it suggests that the konbini’s much vaunted efficiency masks an underlying fragility.