Chichibu Meisenkan (Former Saitama Prefectural Textile Industry Testing Station Chichibu Branch)

Chichibu Meisenkan

Chichibu Meisenkan (ちちぶ銘仙館), the former Chichibu Branch of the Saitama Prefectural Textile Industry Testing Station in Kumaki-cho, Chichibu City, Saitama Prefecture, keeps three timber buildings put up between 1930 and 1934, all registered as Registered Tangible Cultural Properties on October 12, 2001 (Agency for Cultural Affairs). Chichibu City owns all three.

The site now runs as a city museum devoted to meisen, the boldly patterned silk that made Chichibu's name, and is managed on the city's behalf by the Chichibu Meisen Cooperative (Chichibu City). A prefectural landscape survey sheet records that the main building went up in 1930 as the Chichibu Industrial Testing Station, the branch's earlier name.

Three Buildings, One Working Site

The main building faces the street. It held the station's offices and meeting rooms, and its single storey sits on a skirting wall of Ōya stone beneath a run of tall, narrow windows, fronted by an entrance porch far larger than the building behind it; the building area is 373 square metres (Agency for Cultural Affairs).

Behind it to the east stands the factory building of 1934, 515 square metres in all. A sawtooth-roofed twisting shed with ridges running north to south meets a gabled dyeing shed running east to west, the two forming an L (Agency for Cultural Affairs). The warehouse, 194 square metres, adjoins the factory on its south side, wrapped on three sides by the open covered corridor that runs from the main building.

Linked by those corridors, the buildings still read as a single sequence: office, workshop, store. Each one is described on its own page.

Exhibits and Workshops

Inside there is a corner where visitors can try weaving on a hand loom, and a stencil-dyeing workshop that takes about 30 minutes, depending on the number of colours (Chichibu City).

On the 2nd Saturday of each month, staff demonstrate the stages that take silk from cocoon to finished meisen, though the city notes that the demonstration is sometimes cancelled.

Visiting

Chichibu Meisenkan is open from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., with workshop bookings taken until 3 p.m. It closes only for the New Year break, December 29 to January 3 (Chichibu City).

Admission is 210 yen for adults and 100 yen for elementary and junior high school students, with a 50 yen discount for groups of 25 or more. Holders of disability certificates and one companion enter free.

From Ikebukuro, the Seibu Railway limited express reaches Seibu-Chichibu Station in about 80 minutes; from Kumagaya, the Chichibu Railway takes about 65 minutes to Ohanabatake Station. The museum is about 5 minutes on foot from either station (Chichibu City). By car it is about 35 minutes from the Hanazono interchange of the Kan-Etsu Expressway via the Minano-Yorii bypass. The postal address given by the city is 28-1 Kumaki-cho, while the national register lists the lots as 500-1 Kumaki-cho and others.

For enquiries, call Chichibu Meisenkan on 0494-21-2112. No official information on photography inside was found.