Morihide Textiles

What is Morihide Textiles?

Morihide Textiles (森秀織物, Morihide Orimono) is an omeshi silk-weaving mill and its owners' family home, the Morishima Family Residence, in Higashi 4-chome, Kiryu City, Gunma Prefecture, where 15 buildings dating mainly from around 1924 were registered as Registered Tangible Cultural Properties on August 3, 2006.

Ten of the fifteen are working buildings of the mill: weaving sheds, a warping hall, yarn-twisting rooms, a dye house and dormitories for the weavers. The other five make up the Morishima Family Residence, a main house that doubled as the company office, two storehouses, a gate and an inner wall. Morihide Textiles Co., Ltd. still weaves on the site, and the northern half of the mill now houses its museum, the Orimono Sankokan Yukari (織物参考館“紫”), a textile reference museum set inside the old sheds.

What makes Morihide Textiles worth a visit is that home and factory were never separated. The family did its bookkeeping and received buyers in the house, spread finished bolts across the tatami for inspection, and ran the looms under sawtooth roofs a few steps across a shared lane, all on one long, narrow plot. In Kiryū, a city that built its fortune on silk, few places show that arrangement as completely.

A short history of Morihide Textiles

Kiryu City's historic townscape plan describes Morihide Textiles as a long-established weaver founded in 1877 and now run by the fifth generation counted from its founder, Morishima Hide. The city's cultural property page adds that Morishima Hide set up the present mill in 1924 after branching off from the Morishima Toshiatsu household (Moritoshi Textiles). A note in a Kiryu textile history recording his election as an officer of the weavers' trade association in November 1926 suggests the mill was in full operation by about 1924.

The company specialized in omeshi, a crisp, pre-dyed silk crepe that was Kiryu's premium product. During the Second World War the Ministry of Commerce and Industry designated it a firm whose techniques were to be preserved, so it escaped wartime consolidation and was not required to surrender its looms for scrap. That let it restart production soon after the war, and the business reached its peak from the Showa 30s onward, during the postwar boom. According to people who worked there, Morihide Textiles employed 137 people in 1962, about 100 of them women at the looms. Each weaver minded one loom until automation around 1972 allowed one person to run two.

Today the firm uses its omeshi expertise to weave costumes for Bunraku puppets and Kabuki, and works to revive and pass on traditional Kiryu weaving techniques.

The 15 registered buildings and when they were built

The 15 buildings of Morihide Textiles were added together in the 51st round of registrations as nos. 10-0172 to 10-0186, all under the criterion of contributing to the historic landscape of the nation. By the dates in the Agency for Cultural Affairs database they fall into three groups.

• Around 1924: the Morihide Textile Factory, the former site office (warp-warping room), the former shed (hatcho yarn-twisting room), former dormitories 1 and 2, the former twisting mill, the former storehouse, the former warping hall, the former dye house (kamaba), and the Morishima Family Residence main house, east storehouse, gate and inner wall
• 1946: the former factory, extended around 1952
• Around 1951: the Morishima Family Residence west storehouse

Thirteen of the fifteen date from around 1924, which shows that the mill and the family home were laid out at almost the same moment. Former dormitory 2 was cut from a larger dormitory on the far side of the municipal road and moved onto the site in 1981, when the Orimono Sankokan Yukari was being set up.

How the Morihide Textiles site is laid out

The Morihide Textiles plot measures roughly 130 meters from north to south but only about 30 meters across, with a lane running down the middle. At the southern end, facing the old road, stands the gate of the Morishima Family Residence, which was originally the front entrance to the whole mill. Inside it, the family garden and main house lie to the west and the factory buildings to the east.

On the east side of the lane, from south to north, come the three-bay sawtooth Morihide Textile Factory, the former site office, the former shed, former dormitory 1, the former twisting mill and former dormitory 2. On the west side, north of the house, the former dye house, the former warping hall and the four-bay sawtooth former factory run in a line, with the former storehouse in the northwest corner. Kiryu City notes that a mill with both a three-bay and a four-bay Sawtooth roof shed on the same site stands out in the city for its scale.

The north end of the site is now the museum car park, and visitors enter through what used to be the back gate, so the house seems to sit at the far end of the factory. Walk the lane from south to north, however, and the original sequence reappears: gate, garden, office, then the sheds. Each building is covered on its own page.

Visiting Morihide Textiles

Six Morihide Textiles buildings (the former dye house, former warping hall, former factory, former storehouse, former dormitory 2 and former twisting mill) serve the Orimono Sankokan Yukari as its workshop, exhibition hall, galleries, storehouse gallery, reception and study room, and their interiors can be seen with a museum ticket. The collection runs to more than 1,200 textiles and tools, and there are dyeing and hand-weaving classes. Group visits and workshops require a reservation.

According to Kiryu City, the museum is open from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. It closes on Mondays, and on both Mondays and Wednesdays in summer and winter. Admission is 800 yen for adults, 700 yen for university and vocational students, 600 yen for high school and junior high school students and 400 yen for elementary school children, with 50 yen off per person for groups of 20 or more (checked September 2026). Parking is free and has room for coaches. The telephone number is 0277-45-3111.

The Morishima Family Residence is a private home and is not open to the public. Its gate and fence face the old road on the south side of the site, so their exterior can be seen from the street.

The nearest station is Kiryu on the JR Ryomo Line, a walk of 15 to 20 minutes. By car, the Ota-Kiryu interchange on the Kita-Kanto Expressway is about 25 minutes away.

Morihide Textiles in Japan Heritage and Kiryu's historic townscape

In April 2015 the Orimono Sankokan Yukari at Morihide Textiles became one of the components of the Japan Heritage story "Kakaa Denka: The Story of Gunma Silk" (かかあ天下－ぐんまの絹物語－), recognized by the Agency for Cultural Affairs.

In February 2023 Kiryu City listed the Morishima Family Residence and Morihide Textile Factory together as its Historic Scenery Building no. 14 under the national law on historic townscape preservation. The city regards the house as a rare example of the home of a large weaving firm that has operated since the boom years of the late Taisho era, and sees in the combination of house-office, sheds and dormitories the standing of a leading Kiryu weaver.