PRISM, the Tokushima-based patisserie led by chef Yusaku Shibata, is opening PRISMIC, a new sweets gift shop and salon, in Tokyo's Aoyama area on Saturday, August 8, 2026.
PRISM is the patisserie brand led by Yusaku Shibata, who guided Japan's national team to its first overall victory in 16 years at the Coupe du Monde de la Pâtisserie 2023, the world championship of confectionery. Two and a half years after the February 2024 opening of the brand's main store, PRISM LAB, in Tokushima, PRISMIC carries forward the ideas and creativity Shibata built while living in Tokushima into a new, Tokyo-exclusive sweets experience. PRISMIC combines two concepts: a "boutique" selling original sweets that reinterpret ideas and products born at the Tokushima main store for a Tokyo-only audience, and a "showroom salon" where guests can experience PRISM's techniques and culture at the crossroads of Tokyo's diverse values.
In the Aoyama area, known for producing things that reflect the times, PRISMIC welcomes guests with a calm space and sweets that nod to a classical design lineage while still feeling new.
The PRISMIC Concept
"PRISMIC" is a coined word, built from words like "artistic" and "authentic" to express the concept of being "PRISM-like" — capturing the team's activities and spirit.
The name reflects a wish to take rich ingredients and give them story and color, transforming them into confections that offer surprise and emotion — like a prism refracting light into seven colors, PRISMIC is meant to be a place where encounters, change and synergy are born.
Boutique and Showroom Salon
PRISMIC consists of two services: a sweets gift shop where guests can purchase confections in person, and a "showroom salon" where guests can experience PRISM's desserts.
The boutique offers PRISMIC-exclusive and popular items entirely different from those at the Tokushima main store. The showroom salon is a space for experiencing, in the heart of Tokyo's crossroads of diverse values, the ideas, products, techniques and culture built at the Tokushima main store PRISM LAB, along with the story behind chef Shibata's journey — his move to Tokushima, his world championship win, and his encounter with Kito yuzu.
Boutique Products
Rendezvous
Rendezvous is French for "meeting" or "a promised encounter." As pastry chefs, PRISM hopes to use confectionery to connect people, ingredients and land, culture and knowledge, technique and individuality — encounters that can feel like chance in the moment but, in hindsight, feel inevitable.
The hope is that Rendezvous becomes the start of a conversation or a moment to think of someone dear — a "rendezvous" that draws people together and sparks new encounters, with PRISMIC's confections becoming the trigger for what feels like fate disguised as chance in each person's life.
The centerpiece combines smooth chocolate cream, vanilla-scented caramel, walnuts and a fragrant sablé base, balancing the aroma of cacao, the lingering note of caramel and the texture of walnuts. It draws inspiration from mooncakes, considered an auspicious confection in China: the center features eight windows reminiscent of church stained glass, surrounded by PRISMIC's "P" arranged like petals. In a nod to the brand's birth on August 8, an auspicious number, the packaging also incorporates an octagonal motif — making this an iconic caramel confection exclusive to PRISMIC.
PRISM Awa Canele
This is the Tokyo-exclusive version of "Canele Idéal," chef Shibata's pursuit of the ideal canele and a popular item at the Tokushima main store, PRISM. It uses plenty of vanilla beans, milk infused with the aroma of Awa bancha tea, kokuto syrup made from Tokushima-grown wasanbon sugar, and salt from Naruto — packing in the ingredients and connections Shibata found only by moving to Tokushima.
A distinctive recipe, deliberate size and precise baking create a contrast between a fragrant, browned surface and a smooth interior. Baked fresh, this "Awa Canele" can only be tasted at PRISMIC, connecting Tokushima to Tokyo and, from there, to the world.
Kito Yuzu Baum
Kito yuzu stands out even among other yuzu varieties for its notably deep aroma and long-lingering finish. Encountering this ingredient, its rich natural surroundings and its calm producers is what first led chef Shibata to move from Tokyo to Tokushima. This baumkuchen, made only with rice flour rather than wheat flour, expresses the scenery of Kito — its high elevation and its close-feeling clouds and sky, so different from the Tokyo where Shibata grew up — along with the gentle, lingering aroma of yuzu.
It is a new expression of Kito yuzu, built from the experiences and sensibility Shibata gained in Tokushima.
Phantom Kito Yuzu Peel Chocolate (limited-time item)
A popular PRISM item made using the peel of the local specialty Kito yuzu. When PRISM took part in Isetan Shinjuku's Salon du Chocolat 2025 in January 2025, it sold out on the spot in store, and a full year's worth of online stock sold out in 30 minutes in 2026. The thick, richly fragrant peel is candied and left to air-dry, a process that takes a month to complete — so even at the main store, PRISM, it has only ever been available on specific days each month since opening, making it a truly "phantom" item.
Showroom Salon Experience Menu (guidance to begin from late September)
At the showroom salon, guests can enjoy desserts crafted by Yusaku Shibata — who led Japan's national team to its first overall victory in 16 years at the Coupe du Monde de la Pâtisserie 2023 and handled the ice cream category — together with PRISMIC head pastry chef Miho Iizuka, who has trained alongside him for years, all within a comfortable, special space.
Among the desserts, guests can experience reimagined, evolved versions of the "Kito Yuzu Lollipop," served as Japan's entry at that competition, and the ice cream cake that earned the highest score among all participating countries — an experience available only at PRISMIC, anywhere in the world. The tableside presentation, unfolding right in front of guests, echoes the drama of a world championship stage, offering a sweets experience that feels more like tasting art.
Kito Yuzu Frozen Lollipop (dessert menu preview)
Born from the competition's "climate change" theme, this dessert reimagines the concept of "wind." A thin, delicate shell of chocolate wraps a Kito yuzu parfait, gelée and cream along with hazelnut praline, melting on the tongue in a frozen lollipop unlike anything found outside PRISMIC.
At the competition, the top of this confection featured a candy decoration shaped like an actual rotating propeller; because of the extreme difficulty involved, that piece can never be recreated, so PRISMIC instead uses a candy decoration shaped like a bird's wing, which flutters as if the bird were taking flight at the slightest vibration.
BRISE (Frozen Dessert)
Also themed around the natural energy of wind, which was central to the team's competition piece, the swirling motion born from that concept became a spiral, expressed in a design named "BRISE," meaning "breeze." The ice cream cake keeps the coconut ice cream and pineapple sorbet from the original world championship piece, while everything else has been rebuilt from scratch. A tableside presentation adds freshly made ice creams with contrasting textures — a refinement made possible by two further years of evolution since the competition, unique to PRISMIC.
About PRISM
PRISM founder Yusaku Shibata is an accomplished pastry chef who led Japan's national team to its first overall victory in 16 years at the Coupe du Monde de la Pâtisserie 2023, often called the Olympics of pastry chefs. In February 2024, he opened his first store, PRISM LAB, in the Bandaicho area of Tokushima City. Kitchens and other production spaces take up more than 60% of the store — roughly 140 square meters — functioning as a "laboratory" that creates confections using ingredients from Tokushima and Shikoku. Its limited-seating seasonal-fruit tasting course, "Chef's Table," has sold out within one to two hours of reservations opening, drawing pastry fans from across Japan.
In January 2025, PRISM took part in Salon du Chocolat 2025, where its Kito Yuzu Peel Chocolate — made using the peel of Tokushima's signature Kito yuzu — sold out a full year's worth of stock almost immediately, both in store and online, further raising the brand's profile.
As a next step, PRISM opened PRISM AIR in August 2025 inside Tokushima Awaodori Airport, the prefecture's gateway by air. Positioned as a souvenir destination for travelers and tourists, it offers PRISM's staple chocolates and baked goods and includes an eat-in space, broadening access to Tokushima's signature sweets.
Profiles
Yusaku Shibata, Representative Director, PRISM Co., Ltd.
Born in Tokyo and raised partly in Hawaii, Shibata trained as a pastry chef at renowned establishments including CRIOLLO and The Peninsula Tokyo, building a track record of wins and awards at competitions in Japan and abroad. While searching for ingredients for his entry at the Asia qualifier of the 2019 "Top of Patissier" competition, he encountered Kito yuzu, grown in the Kito area of Tokushima. A bonbon chocolat made with the richly fragrant yuzu won the Best Taste Award in the chocolate category at that competition, sparking his fascination with Kito yuzu and with Tokushima's history, landscape and ingredients, and leading him into work that connects confectionery with regional revitalization.
He moved to Tokushima with his family and staff in April 2022, and opened PRISM LAB in the Bandaicho area of Tokushima City in February 2024.
Awards
- 2010: Japan Cake Show — Winner, Taste & Technique Pièce Montée category
- 2017: Top of Patissier 2017 domestic qualifier — Runner-up
- 2019: Top of Patissier 2019 domestic qualifier — Winner; Top of Patissier in Asia 2019 — Overall runner-up / Best Taste Award
- 2021: The World Trophy of Pastry Ice Cream Chocolate 2021 (Milan, Italy) — Winner, Chocolate category / Overall team winner
- 2023: Coupe du Monde de la Pâtisserie 2023 (Lyon, France) — Overall winner, Japan national team
Miho Iizuka, Head Pastry Chef, PRISMIC
From the Kagurazaka area of Shinjuku, Tokyo, Iizuka began her career as a chocolatier at CRIOLLO in Tokyo after graduating from a confectionery school in the city. She went on to build her career primarily in restaurants, including ARMANI/RISTORANTE GINZA and ARMANI/RISTORANTE New York, developing expertise in plated desserts. She served as head pastry chef at a two-Michelin-star French restaurant in Tokyo before going independent to pursue her own style. She has been involved with PRISMIC — the flagship of the PRISM brand's overseas business, in Tokyo's Aoyama — since its founding, as chief director and head pastry chef.
Career
- 2007–: CRIOLLO (Sous-chef pâtissier)
- 2015–: ARMANI/RISTORANTE GINZA (Sous-chef pâtissier)
- 2018–: ARMANI/RISTORANTE New York
- 2023–: green bean to bar CHOCOLATE (Product Development)
- 2024–: HOMMAGE (Chef pâtissier)
- 2026–: PRISMIC Tokyo Aoyama (Chief Director / Chef pâtissier)
PRISMIC Design Concept
PRISMIC occupies the ground floor of a newly built building in Shibuya 1-chome, an area at the forefront of ideas that reflect the times. With a total floor area of only about 46 square meters and a seating-area ceiling height of 2.25 meters, the space is compact in every sense — a striking contrast to the roughly 265-square-meter Tokushima main store, PRISM LAB, which was converted from a large historic warehouse.
Inside the new building, the team built a salon around a classical pâtisserie kitchen, or "chef's kitchen," as its base. While keeping the materials and tones rooted in a classical design lineage, the compact space boldly features a roughly textured ginkgo-wood communal table four meters long.
Just as traditional confections can give rise to new sweets, the space itself was designed to express the "newness" that comes from contrast — aiming to give guests a sense of surprise the first time they experience the space, while that novelty and a sense of comfort coexist within its own distinct atmosphere.
Interior design: Yoshihiro Ogino, Representative Director, Miro Co., Ltd.
Store Information
PRISMIC (Tokyo)
- Store name: PRISMIC
- Opening date: Saturday, August 8, 2026 (salon opening scheduled for late September 2026)
- Address: 1-7-2 Shibuya, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo 150-0002 (VORT Shibuya East II, 1F)
- Hours: 11:00 AM to 7:00 PM (subject to change)
- Closed: Irregular holidays
- Products: Chocolates, baked goods and other limited items, plus desserts served in the salon
- Official website: PRISMIC TOKYO
PRISM LAB (main store)
- Address: 5-71-6 Bandaicho, Tokushima City, Tokushima
- Hours: 11:00 AM to 7:00 PM
- Closed: Mondays and Tuesdays
- Official website: https://prism-lab.jp/
PRISM AIR (airport store)
- Address: 1F Arrival Lobby, Tokushima Awaodori Airport
- Hours: 8:00 AM to 8:00 PM
- Closed: None
- Products: Chocolates, baked goods and other staple items
