The Tomioka Silk Mill and Related Industrial Heritage
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How it came to be
To adopt mass-production methods for raw silk quickly, the Meiji government brought in French machinery and engineers and built a state-run silk mill in Gunma Prefecture. In 1870 it signed a contract with Paul Brunat, a Frenchman working as a raw silk inspector in Yokohama, and construction of the buildings began in March 1871. The first director was Odaka Atsutada, whose daughter Yu became the first woman worker.
The mill began operating on 4 November 1872 with 300 reeling machines. It started with about 210 women workers, rising to 556 by April 1873, many of them daughters of former samurai families. It was sold to Mitsui in 1893 for 121,460 yen, passed to the Hara company in 1902 and came under Katakura management in 1939.
The mill stopped production on 26 February 1987. The property has four components, the Tomioka mill, the former house of Tajima Yahei, the Takayama-sha school site and the Arafune cold storage, which together show the stages from silkworm eggs to rearing and reeling. By the late 19th century Japan had become the world's largest exporter of raw silk, and the site was inscribed on 21 June 2014.
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