A 1927 House Behind a Kiryu Silk Mill
The Main Building of the Former Hori Family Residence (旧堀家住宅主屋, Kyū Hori-ke Jūtaku Shuoku) is a single-storey timber house at Tomoe-chō 1-chōme in Kiryū City, Gunma Prefecture, completed in 1927 and listed as a national Registered Tangible Cultural Property on 4 August 2015. It was built inside the grounds of the Hori-yū Weaving Mill, and it worked as two things at once: the company office and the home of the mill's owner, Hori Yūhei.
The building covers 278 square metres under a tiled roof. At the centre of the west elevation an irimoya porch, the hipped-and-gabled roof form used for the more formal buildings in Japan, marks the entrance. Walk in and the plan splits in two directions. To the south sits a Western room finished in mortar on the outside, its walls and window details carrying the geometric decoration fashionable in the late 1920s. The rooms along the south face are matted in tatami and look onto the garden. To the north stands a small reinforced concrete storehouse, registered at the same time under its own listing.
Kiryū is said to have been weaving silk since the eighth century, and by the Meiji and Taishō eras it was one of Japan's export centres for cloth. Houses like this one are what the money looked like when it came home.
Hori Yuhei and the Ribbon That Paid for It
Hori Yūhei (堀祐平, 1877–1955) came from Inoue village in Kamitakai District, Nagano Prefecture, in what is now the city of Suzaka. He arrived in Kiryū in 1896 and spent his first years there working on textile patterns and design rather than on the looms.
In 1905 he set up the Hori-yū Weaving Mill. Two years later came the product that made him. He wove a hair-ribbon fabric with real silk in the warp and artificial silk, what we now call rayon, in the weft, and he had looms built specifically to handle it. Rayon was still an unfamiliar material in Japanese weaving at the time, and Hori is counted among the first in Kiryū to use it in commercial cloth.
Domestic buyers were slow. Southeast Asian buyers were not, and the export trade carried the mill through to its peak in the early Shōwa years, when more than 150 people worked on the site. The compound then held a gable-roofed weaving shed, a triple sawtooth-roofed shed, a Western-style office block topped with a spire, a canteen, dormitories and a water tower. The house you can visit today was one building among many.
The end came from Tokyo. Under wartime enterprise consolidation measures issued in 1943, weaving companies had to surrender their looms and convert their premises, which in practice closed them down. In October 1944 the Hori family gave up the factory buildings, the offices and the family houses on the site. The business was revived in December 1950 by the husband of Hori's eldest daughter, about 800 metres west in Motojuku-chō, under the name Hori Orimono Co., Ltd. It stopped weaving in 2005, a hundred years after the original founding.
The land here was divided and sold, the sheds were pulled down, and almost nothing above ground now shows that a large mill stood on this block. The house is the exception.
What to Look at Inside
The Agency for Cultural Affairs registered the main building under the criterion of contributing to the historic landscape of the country. Its interest lies less in any single spectacular feature than in how confidently it puts two building traditions side by side without letting either one win.
The Western room is the part people photograph. Reliefs are worked into the surfaces, and the panel beneath the bay window carries Art Deco ornament of the kind that reached provincial Japan in the years around 1930: stepped forms, hard-edged geometry, nothing floral. A textile man would have seen the same vocabulary in the pattern books crossing his desk.
Then step back into the tatami rooms on the garden side and the temperature of the architecture changes completely. Low sight lines, paper and timber, the garden framed by the opening. The two halves are separated by only a few metres of corridor.
Look also at the entrance. A single-storey house of this size with a formal irimoya porch was making a statement about the standing of the family inside, and it was doing so on a street where every neighbour understood exactly what a mill owner's front door was supposed to say.
Visiting: Book a Table
Since a 2008 conversion the main building has operated as a restaurant, Chocolat Noix (ショコラ・ノア), serving French and European dishes. Kiryū City states plainly that the building is open to dining customers and that requests to look around without eating are not normally accommodated. If you want to see the interior, reserve a table.
Lunch service runs from around 11:30, with last orders about 14:00, and dinner from 18:00 with last orders about 20:30. Closing days differ between the restaurant's own site, which lists Mondays and Tuesdays, and third-party listings, which mention Monday plus some Tuesdays, so telephone ahead (0277-44-5553) rather than trusting any one source. The restaurant takes bookings by phone and has parking on site.
Getting here is easy: about a six-minute walk from JR Kiryū Station on the Ryōmō Line, or roughly 600 metres from Nishi-Kiryū Station, the 1928 terminus of the Jōmō Electric Railway which is itself a registered cultural property worth a detour. Photographing the rooms is a matter of courtesy to other diners; ask the staff first.
Two other Hori buildings sit within a short walk. The former Hori-yū Weaving Mill, a low Ōya-stone shed with a triple sawtooth roof registered in 2006, now houses a hair salon. North of the station, the Kinzen Building of the late Taishō period and the preserved merchant streets of Kiryū Shinmachi fill out an afternoon.
- 📍 Plan Your Visit to Gunma
- Find tours, activities & transport passes near Former Hori Family Residence Main Building
- [ Kusatsu Onsen & Tomioka Silk Mill Heritage Tours ]
Q&A
- Can I go inside the Former Hori Family Residence Main Building?
- Yes, as a restaurant guest. The building operates as Chocolat Noix, and Kiryū City notes that sightseeing visits without a meal are not normally accepted. Reserve by telephone on 0277-44-5553.
- Who built the Former Hori Family Residence Main Building?
- Hori Yūhei (1877–1955), founder in 1905 of the Hori-yū Weaving Mill. He developed a silk-and-rayon ribbon fabric in 1907 that sold heavily into Southeast Asia, and the house went up in 1927 inside his factory grounds as both office and family home.
- What should I look for architecturally at the Former Hori Family Residence Main Building?
- The Western room on the south side, with reliefs and Art Deco ornament under the bay window, set against the tatami rooms facing the garden. The formal hipped-and-gabled entrance porch on the west face is the other set piece.
- How do I reach the Former Hori Family Residence Main Building from Kiryu Station?
- It is about a six-minute walk from JR Kiryū Station, at Tomoe-chō 1-1117-1. Nishi-Kiryū Station on the Jōmō Electric Railway is roughly 600 metres away. Parking is available for drivers.
- Is the Former Hori Family Residence Main Building the same site as the Former Hori-yu Weaving Mill?
- They are separate registrations. The mill building was registered in 2006 and is now a hair salon; the house and its storehouse were registered together in 2015. Both stood within the same Hori-yū compound in Tomoe-chō.
Basic Information
| Name | Former Hori Family Residence Main Building (旧堀家住宅主屋) |
|---|---|
| Location | 1117-1 Aza Kakinoki, Tomoe-chō 1-chōme, Kiryū City, Gunma Prefecture |
| Designation | Registered Tangible Cultural Property (Structures); registration no. 10-0323, 81st round of registrations |
| Year Designated | 4 August 2015 |
| Quantity | 1 building |
| Dimensions | Single storey, timber frame, tiled roof; building area 278 m² |
| Owner | Not published in the Agency for Cultural Affairs database |
| Public Access | In use as the restaurant Chocolat Noix since a 2008 conversion; open to dining customers, viewing-only visits not normally accepted |
References
- National Cultural Properties Database — Former Hori Family Residence Main Building
- https://kunishitei.bunka.go.jp/heritage/detail/101/00010561
- Kiryu City — Former Hori Family Residence
- https://www.city.kiryu.lg.jp/kankou/bunkazai/1010700/kunitouroku/1013391.html
- Kiryu City — Registered Tangible Cultural Properties
- https://www.city.kiryu.lg.jp/kankou/bunkazai/1010700/kunitouroku/index.html
- Restaurant Chocolat Noix official site
- https://chocolatnoix.wixsite.com/website
Last verified: 2026.08.08