Iijima Shoten

About Iijima Shoten

Iijima Shoten (飯島商店) is a confectionery maker's set of buildings in Chuo, Ueda City, Nagano Prefecture, steps from Ueda Station: two former cocoon warehouses built around 1894 and a Western-style head office of 1924, each registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property (structure) on October 2, 2007 (Agency for Cultural Affairs).

The three were entered together in the 56th round of registrations under consecutive numbers: 20-0317 for the Store Building, 20-0318 for the Office Building and 20-0319 for the Workshop Building. The store was listed as a model of architectural form, the two warehouses for their contribution to the historic landscape. Each was registered as a Registered Tangible Cultural Property in 2007, and Ueda City's list of protected properties records the three together under Iijima Shoten Co., Ltd.

The company is best known for Misuzu-ame, small fruit jellies made with Shinshu fruit. All three buildings are still in daily use as its shop, offices and production space.

From a Grain Dealer to the Station Front

The firm traces itself to a grain dealer that traded under the house name Aburaya on Yanagimachi, a street on the old Hokkoku Kaido highway. A town plan of 1816 held by the Ueda Municipal Library shows an Aburaya property there, and the company counts that year as its founding.

When the Shin'etsu Line reached Ueda in 1888, the head of the family moved the business to the new station front that same year. Starch-syrup production began in 1900. Late in the Meiji period the firm added Shinshu fruit to okina-ame, a dried jelly of syrup and agar, and the result became Misuzu-ame. Incorporation followed in 1919.

According to the company, the first shop on the station site was a traditional townhouse of the omoteya-zukuri type, with the shop at the front. Its replacement, a Western-style head office finished in 1924, is today's Store Building.

Warehouses of a Silk Town

The Office Building and the Workshop Building were not built for Iijima Shoten at all. The Agency for Cultural Affairs describes both as cocoon warehouses put up when the Ueda Soko warehouse company was founded; the company dates them to 1894 and says they gathered cocoons for shipment by rail. Ueda was then one of Japan's great centres of silkworm-egg production, and the Agency's notes tie the pair to the prosperity of what it calls the silk town of Ueda.

In 1910 Ueda Soko was absorbed by Suwa Soko, which went on using the buildings for cocoons. After the war the silk trade collapsed and the warehouses around the station came down one after another. In 1970 the company's second president bought the two that still stood beside its factory.

The company points to a chimney on the roof, a remnant of the heating once used to dry cocoons, and to the many small windows in the walls, which let air through to dry them naturally. It also identifies the tall white-walled warehouses in Shimazaki Toson's novel The Broken Commandment (Hakai) with the row of cocoon stores that lined the station front at the time.

Three Buildings in a Row

The three stand along the street that leads from Ueda Station. The Store Building faces east onto it; west of the store the Workshop Building runs east to west, and on the corner lot beyond, the Office Building runs north to south (Agency for Cultural Affairs).

The store is a three-storey timber building made to look like stone, its mortar rendering scored with false joints. The two warehouses are three-storey timber buildings finished in lime plaster under gabled roofs of pantiles, and the company calls them earthen storehouses. A Taisho-era office block next to Meiji-era silk warehouses on a single plot is the reason to look closely here; each building has its own page.

Visiting

The company puts the store a 2-minute walk from Ueda Station, which is served by the Hokuriku Shinkansen, the Shinano Railway and the Ueda Electric Railway Bessho Line, and about 10 minutes on foot from Ueda Castle Park. By car it is about 10 minutes from the Ueda-Sugadaira interchange of the Joshin'etsu Expressway, and there is parking for 21 cars.

Only the Store Building can be entered, as the company's Ueda Main Store. It opens from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. and closes only on the afternoon of December 31 and on January 1 (company information as of October 2026). The Office Building and Workshop Building hold the firm's offices and production, and no visitor programme is announced, so plan to see them from outside. We found no official guidance on photography.