What is the Morishima Family Residence Main House?
The Morishima Family Residence Main House (森島家住宅主屋, Morishima-ke Jūtaku Shuoku) is the home of a silk-weaving family in Higashi 4-chome, Kiryu City, Gunma Prefecture, built around 1924 and registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on August 3, 2006. It is a single-story timber house roofed in Sangawara-buki tiles, with a building area of 502 square meters.
Morishima Hide, founder of the omeshi weaving firm Morihide Textiles, built it as both his family's home and the company office. It stands in the southwest corner of the mill site with a garden to the south. Under one roof the Morishima Main House holds the family's living rooms, the counting room, a Western-style parlor for visitors and a long run of tatami rooms where bolts of cloth were unrolled, and that combination is the key to reading the building.
An office front on a Japanese house
The entrance projects from the south face of the Morishima Family Residence Main House. The board-floored room to its east was the chōba, the counting room where the accounts were kept, and serves today as the office. To the west is a reception room that was Western in style from the start. The Agency for Cultural Affairs notes that the parlor beside the entrance, together with a bathhouse built as a separate block, gives the house a varied exterior.
Old photographs show that the entrance was first a Japanese porch with a gabled tile roof. It was later refaced in mortar, given a flat Parapet across the front and reroofed in sheet metal, turning it into a Western-looking office front. Part of the wall is clad in Scratch tile, a ribbed facing tile popular in the early Showa era, and tiles also edge the entrance floor. The effect is a modern commercial facade fixed to the front of a traditional house.
Rooms that opened into a 28-mat hall
The body of the Morishima Main House measures 16.9 by 9.5 meters, with rooms in two rows. A corridor 1.05 meters wide runs along the garden side. From the east, a 6-mat room and an 8-mat room face this corridor, and the same pair sits behind them. With the sliding fusuma panels lifted out, the four rooms became a single hall of 28 tatami mats. Kiryu City explains that the family slept here, but also gathered guests here and used the space to check finished bolts of silk and spread them out for wholesale buyers. The Agency for Cultural Affairs likewise describes the eastern rooms as doubling as a workspace.
Beyond a bank of closets to the west are the inner rooms where the head of the household and his wife lived. The southern 8-mat room has a Tokonoma alcove and staggered display shelves, while the northern 6-mat room opens onto the kuramae, the working space in front of the east storehouse. The inner room also served for entertaining wholesalers who placed large orders. Its roof rises a step above the front rooms behind a raised south wall and has a gentler pitch. The ceiling was once higher too, but is said to have been lowered later to match the front rooms.
At the end of the south corridor stands a detached 6-mat room built as a retirement room, later used by the children. In the northeast corner is a hipped-roof bathhouse 3.76 meters square, with a toilet between it and the east storehouse.
The sources differ on the roof form. The Agency for Cultural Affairs database gives it as gabled and hip-and-gable (kirizuma and irimoya), while Kiryu City describes a gable at the west end and a hip at the east end. Both descriptions are given here.
Why the Morishima Main House was registered
The Morishima Family Residence Main House was registered as a building that contributes to the historic landscape of the nation. Kiryu City values the Morishima Family Residence, which still forms a single complex with Morihide Textiles, as a rare surviving example of the home of a large weaving company that has operated since the late Taisho era, when Kiryu's silk trade was entering a boom.
In a weaver's household where work and home shared a site, the best rooms of the house were also the inspection floor and the showroom. With its counting room and parlor at the door and its tatami rooms ready to become a hall for unrolling cloth, the Morishima Main House shows exactly how that way of life was organized.
Seeing the Morishima Family Residence Main House
The Morishima Family Residence Main House is a private home and its interior is not open to the public (checked September 2026). It sits behind the garden, screened by the gate, fence and inner wall on the south, so little of it can be seen from outside the site. There is no official guidance on photography, so please keep the family's daily life out of any pictures. Directions to the site and opening details for the Orimono Sankokan Yukari museum next door are on the Morihide Textiles page.
- 📍 Plan Your Visit to Gunma
- Find tours, activities & transport passes near Morishima Family Residence Main House
- [ Kusatsu Onsen & Tomioka Silk Mill Heritage Tours ]
Q&A
- When was the Morishima Family Residence Main House built, and by whom?
- Around 1924, by Morishima Hide, founder of the omeshi silk weaver Morihide Textiles, as his family home and company office.
- What is special about the layout of the Morishima Family Residence Main House?
- Four tatami rooms of 6 and 8 mats open into a single 28-mat hall, which was used to inspect finished silk and show it to buyers. To the west are the inner rooms with a tokonoma alcove and display shelves.
- Why does the entrance of the Morishima Family Residence Main House look Western?
- The original Japanese tiled porch was later refaced in mortar with a parapet and a sheet-metal roof. The reception room to the west was Western in style from the beginning.
- When did the Morishima Family Residence Main House become a Registered Tangible Cultural Property?
- On August 3, 2006, on the same day as 14 other buildings of Morihide Textiles and the Morishima Family Residence.
- Can visitors go inside the Morishima Family Residence Main House?
- No. It is a private home and is closed to the public (checked September 2026). The Orimono Sankokan Yukari museum on the same site can be visited.
Basic Information
| Name | Morishima Family Residence Main House |
|---|---|
| Location | 4-2-24 Higashi, Kiryu City, Gunma Prefecture |
| Designation | Registered Tangible Cultural Property (Building) |
| Year Designated | 2006 (registered) |
| Quantity | 1 building |
| Dimensions | Building area 502 m², 16.9 m × 9.5 m (single-story timber) |
| Owner | Not disclosed (private residence) |
| Public Access | Not open to the public |
References
- Cultural Properties Database (Agency for Cultural Affairs): Morishima Family Residence Main House
- https://kunishitei.bunka.go.jp/bsys/maindetails/101/00005576
- Cultural Heritage Online: Morishima Family Residence Main House
- https://online.bunka.go.jp/heritages/detail/118454
- Kiryu City: Morishima Family Residence (Japanese)
- https://www.city.kiryu.lg.jp/kankou/bunkazai/1010700/kunitouroku/1002001.html
- Kiryu City: Historic Scenery Building no. 14, Morishima Family Residence and Morihide Textile Factory (PDF, Japanese)
- https://www.city.kiryu.lg.jp/_res/projects/default_project/_page_/001/018/437/14gou.pdf
Last verified: 2026.09.29
