Fifty-Five Metres of Stone in a Hemp Town
The Kanuma City Cultural Activities Exchange Center Stone Storehouse (鹿沼市文化活動交流館石蔵), also recorded as the Former Teikoku Sen'i Stone Storehouse (旧帝国繊維石蔵, Kyū Teikoku Sen'i Ishigura), is a single-storey stone warehouse built in the early Taishō era between 1912 and 1918 at Mutsumi-chō in Kanuma City, Tochigi Prefecture, and it was added to Japan's register of Tangible Cultural Properties on 7 October 2014.
Length is the first thing you register. The building runs 55 metres from end to end on a north-south axis, under a single gabled roof of sheet steel, with a floor area of 495 square metres. Nothing about it is tall. It reads as a long grey wall laid down beside a plaza, and the eye takes several seconds to reach the far end.
The walls are built in two stones, and the change is visible if you look for it. The lower courses use Fukaiwa stone, a volcanic tuff quarried within Kanuma itself, cut into blocks of roughly 30 centimetres square, a dimension known locally as shakkaku. The upper part switches to Ōya stone, the softer, paler tuff from the Utsunomiya area that Frank Lloyd Wright used at the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo. Two quarries, two tones, one wall.
Inside there are no columns. A king post truss carries the roof across the full width, which is what a factory storehouse needs: an uninterrupted floor for stacking raw fibre and finished goods. The interior divides into three rooms by way of two cross walls, and a buttress standing between them does double duty, stiffening the long side walls against outward thrust. It is a straightforward piece of engineering, and it has held for over a century.
One detail rewards the walk to the far end. On the south gable, which marked the southern boundary of the old factory site, the character 麻 (asa, meaning hemp or flax) is carved in relief inside a circle. It is the company mark, cut into the stone rather than painted on a sign.
The Company Behind the Wall
Kanuma made hemp. The plain along the Kurokawa river grew it, and by the late nineteenth century the town had become a processing centre, which is why a spinning mill was founded here in 1888 under the name Shimotsuke Asa Bōshoku, later Shimotsuke Seima.
That mill was absorbed into a larger firm in 1903, and in 1907 a still larger consolidation produced Teikoku Seima, the Imperial Hemp Company. The founder was Yasuda Zenjirō, one of the great Meiji industrialists, with Shibusawa Eiichi and Ōkura Kihachirō among the backers. At its formation the new company had capital of 6.4 million yen, about 4,600 employees, and manufacturing plants at Nikko, Kanuma, Ōtsu, Osaka and Sapporo, plus sixteen raw-material works.
The logic of the arrangement is worth spelling out. Flax grew in Hokkaido; the labour-intensive spinning and weaving happened closer to Tokyo, where workers were easier to recruit. Kanuma spun the yarn. Much of it went into fire hoses, a product line the company had begun in 1903 and which it still manufactures in Kanuma today. The firm changed its name to Teikoku Sen'i in 1941, and the storehouse carries that later name rather than the one in use when it was built.
The building formed part of the West Plant group at Kanuma. It survives close to its original condition, sitting on ground enclosed by the Kurokawa and the Kijima irrigation channel. The company gave it to Kanuma City in 1996, the city carried out a renovation in 2002 and built the Cultural Activities Exchange Center alongside it, and twelve years later the storehouse was registered under the criterion covering structures that contribute to the historic landscape of Japan. Its registration number is 09-0215, approved in the 78th round of listings.
A note on the figures. The Agency for Cultural Affairs gives the floor area as 495 square metres and the length as 55 metres. Kanuma City publishes 497 square metres and 54.5 metres, and Tochigi Prefecture's heritage site describes the span as about thirty ken, or 54.4 metres. The differences are small and probably reflect different measuring conventions, but the agency's figures are the ones on the register.
Visiting: A Storehouse You Can Sit Down In
Most registered industrial buildings in Japan are viewed from outside a fence. This one has been given a second life, and you can go in.
Since October 2023 the interior has housed Kanumarché Shikanokura, a reservation-only café serving afternoon tea in the stone hall. The operator, Aris Co., holds the building under a Kanuma City scheme that invites private proposals for public facilities. Bookings close a few days in advance and the room takes a limited number of parties per sitting, so this is not somewhere to turn up hoping for a table. Concerts are also staged in the space, roughly twice a month, and the acoustics of a long stone box turn out to suit chamber music. A bakery called Wanokura, run by a local bread maker, opened in another part of the same building in early 2025 with a weekday lunch service.
Details of opening hours, menus and booking arrangements change, so check the operator's current information before travelling. What does not change is the fabric of the room: the exposed Fukaiwa blocks, the truss overhead, the depth of the window reveals in a wall built to hold a roof rather than a view.
Next door, the Kanuma City Cultural Activities Exchange Center itself is free to enter and runs changing exhibitions. Completed in 2002 to a design by the Kumakura Keiji architectural office, it faces the storehouse across a plaza, and the pairing of a new timber-and-stone building with a century-old warehouse is more comfortable than the description suggests. There are around 30 parking spaces and public toilets on site.
Getting there is easy. JR Kanuma Station is roughly a 14-minute walk away, or about five minutes by taxi, and a bus stop named for the Exchange Center sits at the door. The site belongs to what the city calls its cultural zone, a cluster that also takes in the municipal library and the Kawakami Sumio Museum of Art. Anyone interested in the stone itself can follow the trail further: Fukaiwa stone appears throughout Kanuma in storehouses, walls, gateposts and torii, and Tochigi Prefecture maintains an online guide to the buildings that use it.
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Q&A
- Can visitors go inside the Kanuma City Cultural Activities Exchange Center Stone Storehouse?
- Yes. Since October 2023 the interior has operated as Kanumarché Shikanokura, a reservation-only café, and it also hosts occasional concerts. Booking ahead is required, and the exterior can be seen at any time from the plaza it shares with the Exchange Center.
- What stone was used to build the Kanuma City Cultural Activities Exchange Center Stone Storehouse?
- Two tuffs. The lower walls use Fukaiwa stone quarried in Kanuma, cut into blocks of about 30 centimetres square, and the upper portion uses Ōya stone from the Utsunomiya area. The change in colour between them is visible from the plaza.
- How do I reach the Kanuma City Cultural Activities Exchange Center Stone Storehouse, and is there parking?
- The address is 1956-2 Mutsumi-chō, Kanuma City. It is about a 14-minute walk from JR Kanuma Station or five minutes by taxi, with a bus stop directly outside. Around 30 parking spaces and public toilets are available on site.
- Why is the Kanuma City Cultural Activities Exchange Center Stone Storehouse called the Former Teikoku Sen'i Stone Storehouse?
- It was built as part of the West Plant of the hemp firm founded in 1907 as Teikoku Seima, which renamed itself Teikoku Sen'i in 1941. The company donated the building to Kanuma City in 1996, and the later corporate name stuck to it.
- What should I look for on the outside of the Kanuma City Cultural Activities Exchange Center Stone Storehouse?
- Walk to the south end. The gable wall there carries a carved relief of the character 麻, meaning hemp, set inside a circle, which was the company mark. The wall marked the southern edge of the old factory grounds.
Basic Information
| Name | Kanuma City Cultural Activities Exchange Center Stone Storehouse (Former Teikoku Sen'i Stone Storehouse) |
|---|---|
| Location | 1956-2 Mutsumi-chō, Kanuma City, Tochigi Prefecture |
| Designation | Registered Tangible Cultural Property (Structure), registration no. 09-0215 |
| Year Designated | 2014 (registered and gazetted 7 October) |
| Quantity | 1 building |
| Dimensions | Floor area 495 m²; length approx. 55 m; single storey in stone, sheet-steel roof |
| Owner | Kanuma City (operated by Aris Co. under the city's private-proposal scheme for public facilities) |
| Public Access | Exterior freely viewable; interior open as a reservation-only café and concert venue. Parking and toilets on site. |
References
- National Cultural Properties Database, Agency for Cultural Affairs — Kanuma City Cultural Activities Exchange Center Stone Storehouse
- https://kunishitei.bunka.go.jp/heritage/detail/101/00010097
- Cultural Heritage Online — Kanuma City Cultural Activities Exchange Center Stone Storehouse
- https://online.bunka.go.jp/heritages/detail/281670
- Kanuma City official website — Cultural Properties
- https://www.city.kanuma.tochigi.jp/0298/info-0000001813-0.html
- Tochigi Inishie no Kairō — Stone and the Cultural Properties of Tochigi
- https://www.inishie.tochigi.jp/special_stone_detail.html?id=35
- Teikoku Sen-i Co., Ltd. — Company History
- https://www.teisen.co.jp/company/history.html
Last verified: 2026.08.24