Shiohara Family Residence Silkworm Rearing House

About the Shiohara Family Residence Silkworm Rearing House

The Shiohara Family Residence Silkworm Rearing House (塩原家住宅蚕屋, Shiohara-ke Jūtaku San'ya) is a sericulture building of 1919 on the Shiohara homestead in Imai, Matsumoto City, Nagano Prefecture, and it became a Registered Tangible Cultural Property on March 2, 2004. It stands behind the main house and stretches ten bays, about 18 meters, across its front.

It is a two-story timber building with a Kirizuma-zukuri gabled roof of sheet iron, entered on its long side in the Hirairi manner, and it covers 131 square meters. It was the last of the four Shiohara buildings to go up, and the Agency for Cultural Affairs classifies it not as housing but as an agricultural building.

Why It Was Registered

The Shiohara Family Residence Silkworm Rearing House was registered for contributing to the historic landscape of the country. The Agency describes it as tall overall, with few openings and an unusual exterior, and says it preserves the look of a wealthy farmhouse that prospered on silk.

The Shioharas were already raising silkworms on the upper floor of their main house. Adding a dedicated building in 1919 shows how large a part sericulture played in the household at that time. With rearing rooms inside the family home and a separate silkworm house behind it, the homestead keeps both ways of working side by side, and the building makes the most sense when seen together with the main house.

A Tall, Long and Closed Exterior

The first thing to strike you about the Shiohara silkworm house is its length, ten bays running sideways under one roof. The main roof is sheet iron, while a Geya lean-to of Sangawara-buki pantiles runs the full length of the front, adding a lower band of tile beneath the metal.

For a two-story building it is tall, and its walls have few windows or doors. The Agency calls the result unusual. Silkworm buildings are often designed around ventilation, but the sources consulted do not say why this one has so few openings, or how temperature and humidity were managed inside.

Metal above and tile below, long walls with little cut into them: the combination gives the Shiohara Family Residence Silkworm Rearing House a character quite unlike the other three buildings. Set it beside the ridge ventilator on the main house and you see two very different answers, within one family, to the business of raising silkworms.

Visiting the Shiohara Family Residence Silkworm Rearing House

The Shiohara Family Residence Silkworm Rearing House stands within private residential grounds, and its interior is not open. You cannot approach it on the property, so please view it from outside only.

Because it sits behind the main house, the silkworm house is probably hidden from the front of the homestead, and it has not been confirmed which roads offer a view of it. Directions are on the Shiohara Family Residence page.