Kiryu Motojuku Water Purification Plant

About the Motojuku Water Purification Plant

The Kiryu Motojuku Water Purification Plant (桐生市元宿浄水場) is a water treatment works founded in 1932 in Motojuku-cho, Kiryu City, Gunma Prefecture, whose former office (now the Waterworks Museum), pump room, rapid filtration house, regulating reservoir and junction well were registered as five Registered Tangible Cultural Property structures on November 5, 1997. They are five of the twelve registered waterworks facilities of Kiryu (Kiryu City).

According to Kiryu City, the water supply was planned in 1922 for hygiene, firefighting and industry, postponed by the Great Kanto Earthquake, begun in September 1930 and completed in April 1932. Groundwater from the left bank of the Watarase River is filtered at Motojuku, pumped up to the high and low reservoirs on Suidoyama hill, and flows down by gravity to the city.

Five Structures

The former office (Waterworks Museum) and the pump room are similar single-storey concrete buildings with scratch-tile walls and tall windows and pilasters stressing the vertical. The rapid filtration house, Art Deco in style with a washed artificial-stone finish, still runs its original Candy filters from Britain, maintained over the years (Kiryu City, Agency for Cultural Affairs).

The regulating reservoir, east of the pump room, is a concrete tank with evenly spaced vents on top. The junction well collects raw water from buried collection pipes and doubles as the intake for the low-lift pumps. All five were registered as contributing to the historic landscape of the country (Kiryu City).

Visiting and Location

According to Kiryu City, the Motojuku Water Purification Plant is normally closed to the public, so visitors cannot enter the site; view the buildings from outside. The address is 14-37 Motojuku-cho, Kiryu City; enquiries go to the Kiryu City Board of Education cultural properties section (0277-46-6467).