Weaving capital, Kiryu

Kiryu, a weaving capital with 1300 years of history

 

Kiryu City, Gunma Prefecture, has had a thriving silk industry since the Nara period, and has been known as ``Nishijin of the West, Kiryu of the East'' and has been considered the center of Japan's textile industry.

 

Kiryu textiles were considered to bring good luck, as they were used to raise the flag when Yoshisada Nitta overthrew the Kamakura shogunate.

 

Kiryu was a town that Tokugawa Ieyasu ordered to be founded at the same time as Edo Castle.

The flag that Ieyasu used to win the Battle of Sekigahara was created by craftsmen from Kiryu, who weaved 2,410 hiki in one day and presented it to him.

 

Nippon Textile Co., Ltd. was established in 1891, and was a national-scale textile factory equipped with the most advanced equipment in Japan at the time.

Nippon Textile was founded with 100% private capital at a time when government-run factories were common.

The site is a vast land of approximately 63,000 square meters.

 

The generators that power the factory were purchased by Nippon Textile in the United States, and one of the two units purchased was installed in Kiryu and the other in Kyoto.

The power generation method was hydroelectric power generation using the Watarase River, and power was used for 400 buildings, including factories and dormitories.

Some of the generators from that time still remain in Kiryu City.

The means of distribution that supported the development of Nippon Textile Co., Ltd. and Kiryu was the railway.

Because the town of Manchester in England had developed as an industrial area despite its distance from the port, a railway was built to the town of Kiryu to follow suit.

 

As a city of craftsmen and commerce, the technology of Kiryu was greatly developed by this corporation, one of the largest silk textile factories in Japan, and became the foundation that supported Japan.