Tochisen (Former Ashikaga Orimono)

Tochisen (Former Ashikaga Orimono)

Tochisen (Former Ashikaga Orimono) (トチセン（旧足利織物）) is a textile works in Fukui-cho, Ashikaga City, Tochigi Prefecture, whose red brick factory buildings of 1913 to 1919 include three Registered Tangible Cultural Properties: the textile printing factory and the saran factory, registered on November 18, 1999, and the boiler house, registered on March 7, 2008 (Agency for Cultural Affairs).

Ashikaga City says the plant was built by the Ashikaga Orimono company (the name means Ashikaga Textiles), founded at the start of the Taisho era to weave cotton cloth for export, and that it was the first modern industrial works in Ashikaga. The city also describes it as the only large group of red brick factory buildings still standing in the town. The present owner is Tochisen Co., Ltd. (Agency for Cultural Affairs).

The Three Registered Buildings

All three are single-storey brick buildings, and all three were registered for their contribution to the historic landscape (Agency for Cultural Affairs). Their registration numbers are 09-0021 for the textile printing factory, 09-0022 for the saran factory and 09-0170 for the boiler house.

• Red brick textile printing factory: 1,587 square metres, brick outer walls around a timber frame, under six bays of sawtooth roof; the largest of the three (Agency for Cultural Affairs)
• Red brick saran factory: 357 square metres, a long gabled shed running east to west, with closely spaced windows framed in large blocks of stone along its north side (Agency for Cultural Affairs)
• Boiler house: 239 square metres, in the south-west corner of the site behind the printing factory, extended in 1941; two Lancashire boilers are registered with the building (Agency for Cultural Affairs; Ashikaga City)

Textile printing is the stage at which dyes are pressed into cloth to make a pattern, and the boiler house is where the mill raised its steam. Ashikaga City calls the boiler house indispensable to a textile plant and, with the two factories registered earlier, a valuable architectural survival. Seen together, the three show production sheds alongside the plant that served them. Each building has its own page with the details of its structure.

Visiting

Ashikaga City lists all three buildings as normally closed to the public. The city's autumn opening of cultural properties on November 21 and 22, 2026 covers temples and shrines in the central and northern districts, and Tochisen is not among the sites.

The buildings stand inside the grounds of Tochisen Co., Ltd. The city asks visitors to cultural properties not to enter areas that are not open or private land, so check announcements from the Ashikaga City Board of Education's cultural affairs division for any opportunity to see them.

Name and Reading

The Agency registers each building under the prefix Tochisen (Former Ashikaga Orimono), read Tochisen (kyū Ashikaga Orimono). The bracketed name is the company that built the works, so the registered name pairs the current owner with the original firm.