Former Kakihara Shoten

What Is the Former Kakihara Shoten?

The Former Kakihara Shoten (旧柿原商店, Kyū Kakihara Shōten) is the premises of a meisen silk wholesaler in Honmachi, Chichibu City, Saitama Prefecture, where a store and main house, 3 storehouses and a stone wall, all built in 1930, were registered together as Registered Tangible Cultural Properties on August 21, 2002. The site now belongs to Chichibu City.

Locally the complex goes by another name: Chichibu Furusatokan. According to the city's tourism site, it is a visitor hub with shops selling regional products out of the old storehouses, a hand-made soba restaurant and a bar that opens in the evening. That means most of the Former Kakihara Shoten buildings can be entered while the businesses are open.

Keep both names in mind. Signs and maps in town will point you to Chichibu Furusatokan, while the heritage listings use the Kakihara name.

A Meisen Wholesaler's House

The Chichibu City Board of Education describes Kakihara Shoten as a meisen wholesaler that prospered on this spot from the Taishō era onward. A wholesaler of this kind bought finished bolts of cloth from the weaving workshops of the district and shipped them to kimono dealers elsewhere in Japan. The layout of the Former Kakihara Shoten follows that trade closely: goods were handled at the street-front shop, and stock was kept in the storehouses behind it.

Chichibu meisen is a plain-woven silk whose patterns are stencil-printed onto the warp threads before weaving, a technique called hogushi nassen. The Chichibu Meisen Museum notes that in the Taishō era the town had some 500 to 600 weaving mills, and that about 70 percent of residents are said to have worked in the textile trade. That all 5 registered structures at the Former Kakihara Shoten date from 1930 suggests the premises were built in one campaign, at the height of that business.

How the Premises Are Laid Out

The Former Kakihara Shoten occupies a corner lot in the town center. Reading the Agency for Cultural Affairs descriptions together gives this plan:

• Store and Main House: on the east side of the lot, facing east. A 2-storey timber building with a building area of 601 m².
• Storehouse A: behind the main house on the west side of the lot. The smallest of the three, at 23 m².
• Storehouse B: also on the west side, standing alongside Storehouse A. 33 m².
• Storehouse C: southwest of the main house, set at a right angle on the east side of Storehouse B. 41 m².
• Stone Wall: a dressed-stone wall about 30 m long marking the northern edge of the lot.

A large shop on the main street, a cluster of three storehouses behind it and a stone wall along the side street: the full set of elements that made up a merchant's premises survives here.

The five structures carry consecutive registration numbers, 11-0041 to 11-0045, and were registered on the same day in 2002 under two different criteria. The store and main house and the stone wall were recognized for contributing to the historic landscape of the country, and the three storehouses for serving as models of design and craftsmanship. In other words, the street frontage was valued for the townscape it creates and the storehouses for the care taken in building them.

Visiting and Getting There

The Former Kakihara Shoten operates as Chichibu Furusatokan. The city lists its hours as 10:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m., closed on Wednesdays and over the New Year holidays. Each business inside keeps its own hours, though, so some close in the late afternoon and others open only at night. If your aim is to see the buildings, go during the day when most shops are open. No admission fee is listed; you walk in as you would to any shop or restaurant.

The exteriors can be seen from the street at any time. The east-side road gives the front of the store and main house, and the north side shows the run of the stone wall. The storehouses sit behind the main house, so seeing them up close means entering the premises during opening hours. There is no official notice on photography; inside the shops, it is polite to ask the staff first.

The nearest station is Chichibu Station on the Chichibu Railway, about a 5-minute walk away. Seibu-Chichibu Station on the Seibu line is about 15 minutes on foot. There is parking for 7 cars. Phone Chichibu Furusatokan at 0494-23-7300 for enquiries. Chichibu Shrine is close by, so the Former Kakihara Shoten fits easily into a visit to the shrine.