Former Sericultural Experiment Station Shinjo Branch

What the Former Sericultural Experiment Station Shinjo Branch Is

The Former Sericultural Experiment Station Shinjo Branch (旧農林省蚕糸試験場新庄支場) is a government silkworm research complex in Tokamachi, Shinjo City, Yamagata Prefecture, opened in 1934, whose ten surviving structures were entered on the national register as Registered Tangible Cultural Properties on 29 March 2013.

The grounds cover roughly ten hectares. Pass through the concrete gate at the southern boundary and the office building faces you, its entrance porch set on the centre line. A pair of low buildings flanks it: the egg inspection and incubation rooms to the west, the egg cold storage and preservation rooms to the east. Behind the office, four two-storey timber rearing houses run north in a line, each linked to the next by a walled corridor. Gate to northernmost rearing house is about 150 metres.

Mulberry, zelkova and cherry trees grow between the buildings. Many descend from the station's own mulberry plantations, and in January 2014 the city designated the largest mulberry, known as the great mulberry of Gensan-no-Mori, a municipal natural monument.

Shinjo City owns the site today and runs it as the Shinjo City Ecology Garden, Gensan-no-Mori. In January 2025 it was registered as a michi-no-eki, one of Japan's roadside rest stations, and it reopened in that role in November of the same year. A roadside station housed in ten registered cultural properties has almost no parallel in the country.

A Silkworm Station in Snow Country

Sericulture carried Japan's export economy from the 1870s onward, and raw silk paid for much of the country's early industrialisation. The state ran a network of experiment stations to keep the industry supplied with healthy stock, and Shinjo was one of them. What made this branch unusual was its climate. Snow lies deep in the Mogami basin, and mulberry, the sole food of the silkworm, is hard to grow where winters bury the bushes.

The station opened in December 1934 as the Shinjo Sub-office of the Fukushima Branch of the Sericulture Experiment Station. Construction continued for two more years; operations began in 1936. In February 1937 the name changed again, and in May of that year the site was promoted to full branch status as the Sericultural Experiment Station Shinjo Branch.

From 1958 the branch concentrated on genshu, the parent silkworm lines from which the eggs distributed to farming households are bred. It was renamed accordingly, becoming the Shinjo Parent Silkworm Egg Testing Station in April 1968. Maintaining those parent lines through a snow country winter, and testing mulberry varieties that survive under snow, were the branch's two main tasks. Older residents of Shinjo still call the place gensanshu, after that period.

Administrative reform reduced the branch to a research laboratory in 1983. Further reorganisations followed, and the site closed in March 2000. The national government transferred it to Shinjo City in February 2002, trees included, and the city opened it to the public that September. Because the transfer covered the planting as well as the buildings, the setting survived intact.

How the Ten Buildings Were Registered

Shinjo City began preparing the nomination in the 2010 fiscal year and filed its documents with the Agency for Cultural Affairs on 22 February 2012. The Council for Cultural Affairs took up the case that July, and its recommendation followed on 21 September. Registration took effect on 29 March 2013 in the seventy-fourth round, with numbers running consecutively from 06-0135 for the office building to 06-0144 for the gate and fence.

Four of the ten handled administration and silkworm eggs: the main office, the egg inspection and incubation rooms, the egg cold storage and preservation rooms, and the night duty and caretaker's rooms. Four more are rearing houses, numbered one, two, four and five. The remaining two are the connecting corridors with their lavatory, and the front gate with its fence.

All ten were registered under the first of the three criteria, which covers structures that contribute to the historic character of the landscape. No single building here is an architectural showpiece. What earned the registration is the survival of an entire founding-period station, layout and planting included. Of the ten national sericulture experiment stations that once operated across Japan, this is said to be the only site where the buildings and their setting remain together.

Walking the Grounds

Enter from the south gate. Look at the scratch tile on the gate piers before you go further, then continue north to the office building, whose free exhibition room holds silkworm specimens, rearing tools and material on Hiratsuka Eikichi, a Shinjo-born agricultural scientist and honorary citizen of the city.

West of the office stand the egg inspection and incubation rooms, east of it the egg cold storage and preservation rooms. Both echo the office in roof shape and wall finish, which is what makes the southern frontage read as a single composition rather than three separate buildings.

Behind the office come the night duty and caretaker's rooms, then the four rearing houses. Each carries a ventilation tower on its ridge and each covers about 300 square metres, so from a distance they look identical. The differences are in whether the house was heated, where its underground mulberry store sits, and how the ground-floor wall is finished.

The corridors linking all of this are enclosed by outer walls rather than left open. Staff could move between buildings without stepping into the snow, and no other part of the site states its northern location so plainly.

Visiting

The grounds open from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Admission and parking are both free. The site closes on Tuesdays and from 29 December to 3 January. The roadside station's rest and information building and its toilets stay open around the clock. Parking holds 145 standard vehicles, reduced to 102 in winter, plus eleven large vehicles.

By car it is about seven minutes from JR Shinjo Station, or ten minutes from the Shinjo-kita interchange on the Obanazawa-Shinjo road. Rental bicycles are available at the station. The walk is long enough that a car or bicycle is the sensible choice.

You may walk the grounds freely and see all ten structures from close range. Interior access varies. The exhibition room in the main office is open without charge. Rearing houses one, four and five hold rentable rooms and tenant businesses, so their interiors can be entered during opening hours. The egg inspection and incubation rooms and the night duty and caretaker's rooms are bookable spaces closed to anyone not using them. The egg cold storage and preservation rooms and the connecting corridors are not normally open.

Room hire runs by the hour: 110 yen for the training room in the night duty and caretaker's rooms, 270 yen for the hall on the ground floor of rearing house one, 340 yen for the cultural exchange space on its upper floor, and 250 yen for the food processing room in the egg inspection and incubation rooms. Booking in advance is required; enquiries go to 0233-29-2122.

Photography outdoors is unrestricted. Inside the rented rooms and shops, ask the occupants first. Hours and charges change from time to time, so check the Shinjo City or facility website before travelling.