A Government Model Mill in Volcanic Stone
Antares Sports Club, formerly the Ashikaga Model Silk-Throwing Mill (アンタレススポーツクラブ（旧足利模範撚糸工場）), is a single-storey stone factory building at 906-13 Tanaka-cho, Ashikaga City, Tochigi Prefecture, completed in 1903 and registered as a Tangible Cultural Property on 18 November 1999.
The Meiji government wanted silk cloth it could sell abroad, and Japanese thread was not yet consistent enough to weave it. Throwing, the process of adding twist to raw silk filaments before they reach the loom, determines how the finished fabric handles and drapes. To demonstrate improved practice, the state backed model throwing mills at six locations: Kiryū, Yonezawa, Fukui, Kyoto, Toyama and Ashikaga. Ashikaga's was built by a partnership company, the Ashikaga Model Silk-Throwing Company. It is the only one of the six whose building still stands.
The walls are laid in Ōya stone, the pale grey volcanic tuff quarried north of here at Utsunomiya, soft enough to saw and pocked with the darker inclusions that give it a mottled surface. Buttresses step out at intervals along the elevation. Between them run tall narrow windows capped with semicircular arches, a rhythm that reads as Romanesque and gives the building its European bearing.
Above sits a sawtooth roof of two ranges. The north-facing pitch of each carries a large window, a standard nineteenth-century device for flooding a workshop floor with steady daylight while keeping direct sun off the work. The mill covers 530 square metres.
One detail rewards a slow look. The rainwater downpipes were channelled through the buttresses and the cornice rather than run down the face of the wall, so that nothing interrupts the stonework. From the street you cannot see where the water goes.
From Factory Floor to Gym Floor
The company later changed its name to Ryōya Kōgyō Co., Ltd., and the building kept working as a mill until 1976. In 1985 it reopened as Antares Sports Club, with the exposed stone walls and the high timber roof structure left in place around the training floor and studio.
Conversions of this kind are ordinary now. They were not in 1985, and Ashikaga's experience since has borne out the reasoning. A building kept in its original form generates no employment; a building given a new function acquires people who work in it and people who come to it, and that traffic is what carries a structure into the next generation. Antares is generally credited as the first such reuse of an industrial heritage building in Ashikaga.
Registration followed in 1999, under the criterion of contributing to the historic landscape of the country. It was the first Registered Tangible Cultural Property in Ashikaga, which is not a city short of designated heritage. In 2007 the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry added it to the Heritage of Industrial Modernization, within a grouping that covers the silk-weaving industry of the Ryōmō region straddling southern Tochigi and eastern Gunma.
Ashikaga and neighbouring Kiryū both received model mills, which says something about where the government thought the export trade would be won. Kiryū's building is gone. Ashikaga's survives because a manufacturing company kept it in service for seventy-three years and then found it something else to do.
Seeing the Mill
The building operates as a commercial gym, and the interior is open to members and paying users rather than to sightseers. Casual interior visits are not available, and the city's own guidance is that the inside cannot be toured. Ashikaga's tourism association lists the site on cycling and walking routes as an exterior stop, allowing about five minutes.
Viewing and photographing the outside from the public road is free and unrestricted.
Give the elevation more than a glance. The arch heads over the windows are worth checking one by one; the stone is cut in voussoirs and the joints have weathered unevenly, so the arches no longer match each other exactly. The buttresses look structural, and they are, but they are also carrying the drainage. Step back far enough to get both sawtooth ranges in view and the roof profile resolves into the double sawtooth that gives the building its silhouette from the west.
Ōya stone changes appearance with the weather. It goes warm and slightly golden in late sun and turns flat grey under cloud, and after rain the surface darkens and the inclusions stand out. Overcast days are not the best ones here.
Antares Sports Club is roughly five minutes on foot west of Ashikagashi Station on the Tōbu Isesaki Line, which puts it a little over an hour and a half from Asakusa in Tokyo by limited express and local train. Ashikaga Gakkō, the school site usually described as Japan's oldest, and Bannaji temple with its National Treasure main hall are both within a walk of about twenty minutes across the Watarase River, so the mill fits naturally into a half day that also covers the medieval town.
- 📍 Plan Your Visit to Tochigi
- Find tours, activities & transport passes near Antares Sports Club (Former Ashikaga Model Silk-Throwing Mill)
- [ Nikko Toshogu Shrine & Kegon Falls Day Trip ]
Q&A
- Can visitors go inside Antares Sports Club, the former Ashikaga Model Silk-Throwing Mill?
- The building is a working sports club, and the interior is not open for sightseeing. Ashikaga City's guidance states that the inside cannot be toured. Viewing and photographing the exterior from the public road is free and unrestricted.
- Why is the former Ashikaga Model Silk-Throwing Mill important?
- It is the only surviving building of six model silk-throwing mills built under Meiji government policy to promote silk textile exports, the others having been at Kiryū, Yonezawa, Fukui, Kyoto and Toyama. It was Ashikaga's first Registered Tangible Cultural Property and was recognised as Heritage of Industrial Modernization in 2007.
- When was the former Ashikaga Model Silk-Throwing Mill built and when did it become a sports club?
- It was built in 1903 for the Ashikaga Model Silk-Throwing Company, operated as a factory under the later name Ryōya Kōgyō until 1976, and reopened as Antares Sports Club in 1985. Registration as a Tangible Cultural Property followed on 18 November 1999, gazetted on 2 December that year.
- What are the architectural features to look for at the former Ashikaga Model Silk-Throwing Mill?
- Walls of Ōya volcanic tuff with projecting buttresses, tall narrow windows under semicircular arches, and a double sawtooth roof with large clerestory windows on the north pitches. The rainwater downpipes are concealed inside the buttresses and cornice so that they do not appear on the wall face.
- How do I get to Antares Sports Club, and what else is nearby?
- It is about five minutes on foot west of Ashikagashi Station on the Tōbu Isesaki Line, reachable from Asakusa in Tokyo in a little over ninety minutes. Ashikaga Gakkō and Bannaji temple, whose main hall is a National Treasure, lie roughly twenty minutes' walk away across the Watarase River.
Basic Information
| Name | Antares Sports Club (former Ashikaga Model Silk-Throwing Mill) |
|---|---|
| Location | 906-13 Tanaka-cho, Ashikaga City, Tochigi Prefecture |
| Designation | Registered Tangible Cultural Property (Structure); registration number 09-0020; criterion of contributing to the historic landscape of the country. Heritage of Industrial Modernization, 2007 |
| Year Designated | Registered 18 November 1999; gazetted 2 December 1999 |
| Quantity | 1 building |
| Dimensions | Stone construction, single storey, tiled roof; building area 530 square metres |
| Owner | Ryōya Kōgyō Co., Ltd. |
| Public Access | Exterior viewing from the public road; interior in use as a sports club and not open for sightseeing |
References
- Agency for Cultural Affairs, National Cultural Properties Database — Antares Sports Club (former Ashikaga Model Silk-Throwing Mill)
- https://kunishitei.bunka.go.jp/heritage/detail/101/00001405
- Cultural Heritage Online — Antares Sports Club (former Ashikaga Model Silk-Throwing Mill)
- https://online.bunka.go.jp/heritages/detail/148015
- Ashikaga City — Antares Sports Club (former Ashikaga Model Silk-Throwing Mill)
- https://www.city.ashikaga.tochigi.jp/education/000029/000169/000627/p000943.html
- Ashikaga City — Registered Tangible Cultural Properties (Structures)
- https://www.city.ashikaga.tochigi.jp/education/000029/000169/000627/p001307.html
- Ashikaga City Tourism Association — Suggested cycling route including the mill
- https://www.ashikaga-kankou.jp/recom/detail/id=864
Last verified: 2026.08.24