Tajima Urushiten Former Factory

The Refinery Behind Kuroe Lacquerware

The Tajima Urushiten Former Factory (田島漆店旧工場, Tajima Urushiten Kyū-kōjō) is a former lacquer refinery in Funao, Kainan City, Wakayama Prefecture, where five buildings dating from 1922 to 1953 became Registered Tangible Cultural Properties on December 5, 2019. Locally it also goes by Kyu-Tajima Urushi Kojo, the old Tajima lacquer works, and the site combined a factory with the owning family's home.

Funao adjoins Kuroe, the town behind Kishu lacquerware. Kainan City traces Kuroe's craft to the Muromachi period and describes it growing under domain patronage in the Edo period. Kuroe's workshops coated bowls and trays. Tajima Urushiten, whose name translates roughly as "the Tajima lacquer shop," supplied the coating itself: raw Urushi, the sap of the lacquer tree, refined and blended to suit each use. Wakayama Prefecture's heritage portal says the firm had the largest lacquer output in the prefecture in the early Showa era and that lacquer from this yard kept Kuroe's production going.

The prefecture's account starts with Yasuke Tajima, who is said to have begun making lacquerware in nearby Hikata around 1872 and switched to producing the raw material in the mid-Meiji years. His successor, the second Yasuke, put the business on a firm footing, bought the Funao plot in 1913 and moved the factory there. By the early Showa era the works had taken roughly the shape seen today.

Tajima Urushiten still trades as a lacquer supplier, and its own website gives its founding as around 1895. The company says that in the 1930s it ran branches in Shanghai, Wuhan and Hanoi to buy Chinese lacquer, which it refined at its factory in Japan. The prefecture and the company count from different starting points, so no single founding year can be given.

Five Registered Buildings and How the Site Fits Together

The registered buildings at the Tajima Urushiten Former Factory are the Product Storehouse (1922), the Filling Hall (framed in 1927 and rebuilt in 1958), the New Storehouse (1934), the Dining Hall (early Showa era) and the Entrance Building (1953). Their registration numbers run consecutively from 30-0267 to 30-0271, and all five were registered for contributing to the historic landscape. Brick, clay-walled storehouse construction and timber framing share one compound, spanning the late Taisho to mid-Showa eras.

The west side of the compound meets the street. The Entrance Building faces west near the southern end of that frontage, with the brick Product Storehouse just to its south in the southwest corner. The two-story New Storehouse occupies the northwest corner. The Dining Hall adjoins the Entrance Building on its east side, and an earth-floored passage along the Dining Hall's south side leads to the Filling Hall in the southeast corner.

Walk in from the street, pass the kitchen and dining rooms, and you reach the work floor. The plan follows the movement of people and goods. Even the lot numbers differ: the New Storehouse is at 166 Funao, the Entrance Building, Dining Hall and Product Storehouse at 167, and the Filling Hall at 170.

The family's main house, built in 1934, still stands on the site and helps form the street frontage with the Product Storehouse and Entrance Building. It is not among the five registered buildings.

From Shutdown to a Place People Gather

Demand for lacquer fell away after the war, and production at the Tajima Urushiten Former Factory ended in 2002. The buildings sat closed for some years. From 2013 local volunteers began holding concerts and exhibitions there, and from 2019 part of the site has also operated as a café. The five buildings were registered in December of that same year.

Kainan City lists a preservation project for the former factory among its community-building events. According to the city's reports, the 2018 program, which included a contemporary art show, pottery workshops and a study session on the history of Tajima Urushiten and the Kuroe district, drew about 800 participants. In 2021 an invited-artist exhibition and a performance were joined by 3 repair workshops teaching techniques for keeping old buildings in use.

The approach is to keep the buildings working rather than lock them away, repairing them as they are used.

Visiting and Getting There

The Tajima Urushiten Former Factory is privately owned and has no scheduled opening as a heritage site. Visitors can usually get onto the grounds during the hours of Sohgendo, the café that operates on the site, or during events. The café's website lists hours of 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., with lunch from 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. and last orders at 4:30 p.m., and closes on Sundays, Mondays and Tuesdays (checked September 16, 2026).

Opening days can shift around events, and which buildings you can enter depends on how they are being used at the time, so check the café's or organizers' announcements before you go. No official photography policy is published. Photographing the exteriors from the street should be fine, but ask before taking pictures inside the café, in exhibitions or in working studios.

By rail, the nearest station is Kainan on the JR Kinokuni Line, about a 20-minute walk away. The site lies at the end of narrow lanes that lead into Kuroe's old streets, and the approach by car is tight. There is some parking on site, but spaces are few. The easier option is the Kuroe tourist parking lot (about 10 cars) south of Kainan Kuroe Post Office, a walk of roughly 5 minutes.