Kiryu Onsen Gunma

Kiryu, in eastern Gunma Prefecture bordering Tochigi, is historically Japan's most important silk weaving city — the traditional centre of Kiryu ori silk textile production whose elaborate figured fabrics were prized alongside Nishijin silk in Kyoto as the finest woven goods in Edo-period Japan — a heritage preserved in the Kiryu Textile Museum and the traditional weaving workshops still operating in the old silk merchant townscape. Kiryu Onsen Gunma draws on sodium and bicarbonate thermal waters from the geological resources of the Kiryu basin, offering restorative baths in a city whose centuries of textile expertise and the beautiful Kiryu River valley create an attractively textured spa destination combining industrial heritage with natural scenery. The Kiryu Textile Museum's comprehensive documentation of silk weaving technology, the Kiryu Tenshin Sai festival celebrating the weaving tradition, and the traditional machiya townscape of the old silk merchant district along the Kiryu River make this one of Japan's most important industrial heritage spa destinations in the eastern Kanto mountains.