Former Arai Silk Mill

A Silk Mill's Office and Two Storehouses

The Former Arai Silk Mill (旧新井製糸所, Kyū Arai Seishijo) is the site of a Meiji-era silk-reeling business in Nowata, Nogi Town, Tochigi Prefecture, where three surviving buildings, an office, a plaster storehouse and a brick storehouse, were registered as Registered Tangible Cultural Property on 25 July 2011.

The Tone River Upstream Office of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism, in its guide to one hundred sites around the Watarase Retarding Basin, describes the property as the site of the Arai family's silk mill, said to have been the finest in Tochigi during the fourth decade of the Meiji era (1897 to 1906). The same guide notes that Arai Motonosuke, eighteenth head of the family, served as an adviser to the Shimotsuke Renga Seizō Kaisha, the local brick company, and that the family still holds papers from the early years of its kiln.

What was registered is the administrative side of the business: a single-storey office and two storehouses. The reeling floor itself, where silk was drawn from the cocoons, is not among them. The Agency for Cultural Affairs dates the office and the plaster storehouse to the middle Meiji era and the brick storehouse to the late Meiji era.

Bricks from Down the Road

Nogi is a brick town as much as a silk one. According to Nogi Town's guide to its historic sites, the Shimotsuke brick company was founded in 1888 and built a circular Hoffmann kiln in 1890, the structure now known as the Nogi Town Brick Kiln.

The Agency's descriptions state that both storehouses at the Former Arai Silk Mill were laid with bricks made by that company. Read alongside the family's link to the firm, the two buildings show the meeting point of two Meiji industries in a single yard: silk reeling and brickmaking.

The river office's guide also mentions a brick-built sericulture building made with bricks from the Nogi kiln. No building of that name appears in the national register, and the guide does not say which of the structures it means.

How the Buildings Sit

Piecing together the Agency's notes on position, the office stands toward the north of the plot with its ridge running east to west. The plaster storehouse adjoins it on the west, and the brick storehouse continues to the south of that. Both storehouses run north to south and face east.

The result is roughly an L: the office along the north, the storehouses stepping south from its western end. With both store fronts turned east, there was presumably an open working yard in front of them, though no record of how the site was used has been found.

The Registration

All three buildings of the Former Arai Silk Mill were entered in the 70th round of registration on 25 July 2011, under consecutive numbers 09-0199 to 09-0201, each for contributing to the historic landscape of the country.

• Office (09-0199): middle Meiji era, wooden, single storey, tiled roof, building area 58 square metres; renovated 1991
• Plaster Storehouse (09-0200): middle Meiji era, brick and earthen-walled construction, 2 storeys, tiled roof, building area 42 square metres; renovated 1999
• Brick Storehouse (09-0201): late Meiji era, brick, 2 storeys, tiled roof, building area 69 square metres; renovated 1991 and 2002

All three have been repaired since the start of the Heisei era. The largest is the brick storehouse, which runs 15 metres from end to end.

Visiting and Getting There

The Former Arai Silk Mill is the Arai family's home. The river office's guide says that, as a private residence, it can be viewed from outside only, and describes the family as keeping the buildings and papers as a private museum, the Arai Family Hometown Memorial Hall (新井家ふるさと記念館), opened to the public on an irregular basis. The guide lists a telephone number for enquiries. As of October 2026 no published schedule of openings could be found, so anyone hoping to see inside should contact the family in advance.

If you simply want to look, stay off the property and keep to what can be seen from the road. Which buildings are visible from the street, and whether photography is welcome, has not been confirmed.

According to the same guide, the site is about 10 minutes by taxi from Nogi Station on the JR Utsunomiya Line, or about 30 minutes by car from the Sano-Fujioka interchange on the Tohoku Expressway. No visitor parking is mentioned.

About the Name

Kyū Arai Seishijo means, literally, the former Arai silk mill. The three buildings are registered as the Former Arai Silk Mill Office (旧新井製糸所事務室), the Former Arai Silk Mill Plaster Storehouse (旧新井製糸所漆喰蔵, Shikkui-gura) and the Former Arai Silk Mill Brick Storehouse (旧新井製糸所煉瓦蔵, Renga-gura).

The river office's guide writes the name slightly differently, as the former Arai family silk mill, and presents the whole site as the Arai Family Hometown Memorial Hall. The district name 野渡 is read Nowata; the Agency's database gives the address as 328-1, Aza Tsubonouchi, Ōaza Nowata.