Goto Textile Mill

A Kiryu Weaving House Founded in 1870

Goto Textile Mill (後藤織物, Gotō Orimono) is a family weaving business in Higashi 1-chome, Kiryu City, Gunma Prefecture, founded in 1870, whose house, sawtooth-roofed factory, storehouses and water tower were entered together on the national register as 11 Registered Tangible Cultural Property listings on March 27, 2006. Their registration numbers run consecutively from 10-0159 to 10-0169.

By the Meiji era, Kiryu's hataya, or weaving houses, were small integrated works: the owner bought yarn, had it dyed and woven on site, and shipped finished cloth. The Goto compound keeps every piece of that arrangement behind one fence. There is the owner's house and a reception wing for buyers, a well and water tower feeding the dye works, a kettle house for boiling yarn, the weaving shed itself, and a string of stores for silk thread, jacquard pattern cards and household goods.

The founder, Gotō Sadakichi, was born in 1848 and is said to have set up here in 1870, in what was then Imaizumi village. Kiryu City credits him with an early push to bring Western dyeing methods to the town. In 1878, with permission from the prefectural governor, he and the weaver Moriyama Yoshihei attended chemistry lectures on synthetic dyes at the Gunma Prefectural Medical School in Maebashi; his certificate of completion survives.

He also left his mark on the cloth itself. In 1877 he produced a crinkled silk-and-cotton crepe, and in 1879 he devised a satin to compete with imported Nanjing satin from China. In 1892 he patented a machine for winding weft bobbins.

The family papers include a travel diary from a 45-day pilgrimage to Ise Shrine in 1883. Along the way Sadakichi stopped at the Osaka Mint to buy sulfuric acid and iron nitrate and to learn how they were made, then toured an exposition in Kyoto and the weaving workshops of Nishijin. Sulfuric acid neutralised raw silk after it had been boiled in alkali; iron nitrate was a dye chemical. The pilgrimage doubled as a research trip.

The Goto family wove mainly obi sashes from the Meiji era onward. In 2021 the founding family handed the mill to a private company that now preserves and opens it to show how a Kiryu weaving house worked. In 2015 it became one of the component sites of the Japan Heritage story "Kakaa Denka: Gunma's Silk Story".

How the Eleven Buildings Fit Together

The listed structures span eight decades, from the early Meiji main house to the Former Kettle House rebuilt in 1949. Kiryu City's assessment is that, taken together, they still lay out the full production chain of dyeing, twisting and weaving. What matters is less any single building than the fact that none of the functions is missing.

Grouped by what they did:

• Living and receiving: the Main House (early Meiji, enlarged around 1925) and the Inner Room reception wing (around 1925)
• Water and heat: the Well House and Water Tower (both around 1933) and the Former Kettle House (1949)
• Weaving: the Factory (1948, extended 1949 and 1950)
• Storage: the Warehouse (silk thread), West Storehouse (jacquard cards), East Storehouse (household goods and bedding) and Storage Shed (staff provisions, firewood and charcoal)
• Frontage: the Front Gate and Wooden Fence (around 1925)

The year 1925 keeps coming up. The main house holds two kasōzu, geomantic house plans, dated 1900 and 1925. The 1925 plan already shows the warehouse, kettle house, storage shed, storehouse, factory lavatory and well where they stand today, so the layout was essentially fixed by then. The 1900 plan shows two long parallel buildings that Kiryu City reads as the first sawtooth-roofed weaving sheds.

The war broke the chain. Documents record that in 1944, under wartime industrial controls, the factory, kettle house and dormitory were transferred to Nippon Kikai Co., down to the lavatory. The present factory and kettle house are postwar rebuilds. The Agency for Cultural Affairs dates the factory to 1948 with extensions in 1949 and 1950, and Kiryu City notes a surviving 1949 specification for the factory extension.

The water system tells its own story. Kiryu opened its public waterworks in 1932 and mains reached this district, yet dyeing takes so much water that around 1933 the mill built a tower to store well water. The pump was reportedly driven by belt and pulley from the factory motor.

Finding Your Way Around the Compound

The mill sits on the north side of the road running east from the Honcho 4-chome crossing, in Kiryu's old commercial centre, toward the Watarase River. This was a textile district from the Meiji era; the Morihide weaving factory lies just to the south and the former Moriyama Yoshihei factory to the east.

A bamboo fence lines the street, with the Front Gate set back a little from the road. Step through and the Main House faces you, turned to the south. The silk Warehouse stands to the right as you enter, and the Former Kettle House sits east of the Main House, also facing south.

The Inner Room reception wing joins the Main House on its west side. North of that, between house and factory, is the Well House, and further northwest the Water Tower stands against the southwest corner of the factory. Well water was lifted into the tank on top of the tower.

North of the house and reception wing, the sawtooth-roofed Factory stretches east to west. Beyond it the West and East Storehouses stand side by side. Along the eastern boundary the Storage Shed runs north to south with a dog-leg bend. Walk from the gate at the south to the storehouses at the north and you move from home to workshop to stores, the depth of the business laid out as distance.

Visiting and Getting There

Goto Textile Mill is not open on a walk-in basis; visits are by advance reservation. According to the owner, Texte Kiryu, tours run on weekdays from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. and cost 500 yen, with bookings by phone on 0277-46-8636 (checked September 24, 2026).

Kiryu City's listing, last updated in December 2024, gives viewing hours as 1 p.m. to 4 p.m., Monday to Friday, with weekends by arrangement. Both sources agree on the 500 yen fee, but because the hours differ, confirm the time when you book.

Parking is very limited: the owner lists 5 spaces and the city simply says a few, asking visitors to check when reserving. From JR Kiryu Station on the Ryomo Line it is about a 20-minute walk or a 10-minute drive; from the Ota-Kiryu interchange on the Kita-Kanto Expressway allow about 25 minutes by car (per Gunma Prefecture's Japan Heritage page). The street address is 1-11-35 Higashi, Kiryu; the Agency for Cultural Affairs lists the site under its land-parcel number, 730 Higashi 1-chome, among others.

We could not find any published rule on photography or on which interiors are shown. If you plan to take pictures, ask when you make your booking.