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Eagerly awaited new world heritage sites were announced, and I’m glad to announce that one of our important cultural properties, Tomioka Silk Mill was added to the world heritage site!! So I would like to write about Tomioka Silk Mill today.

“yoppy” some rights reserved. flickr

This silk mill was established in 1872 by Japanese government in Meiji period. Silk was one of major export products of Japan back then, and the demand for silk was high internationally; however, some Japanese silk maker distributed poor quality products, and Japanese government decided to open nationally own silk mill to produce model raw silk using French technology. All equipment introduced in the mill was specially designed for the climate of the region, and the largest sill mill in the world back then.

“yoppy” some rights reserved. flickr

Unlike other silk mills whose hard life of female staff was found in their diaries, Tomioka Silk Mill provided good training with appropriate welfare offer as a national business, but it seems that is one of factors why the mill suffers from deficits.

Anyway, it was 26^th April when we first heard that the mill has good prospects to be registered as world heritage site, and 50.6k visitors came to the site over the golden week holiday season. It seems it can be really busy, and sometimes you have to wait for a long time. But it must be fun visiting the site and imagine how Meiji girls felt about working at such a modern building in Europeanised uniform?? If you are planning to come near this area of Japan, please add this place to your list, too!

What do you think about today’s article?

Please let me know what you think 😛  I’m looking forward to hearing from you!

Source: web R25

This is JAPAN Style!