Abandoned Kansai

A last glimpse at the dying industry of dyeing yarn – far from being a yawn!

I don’t know much about the Japanese textile industry, despite having been to two or three silk manufacturers and yarn factories at local history museums and open-air museums. It’s pretty safe to say though that overall it’s more of an artisan craft these days, not a mass-market industry – for proud nationals, fashionistas, and tourists on the hunt for a sweat rag not from a sweatshop or a unique bag as a souvenir.

The Ishikawa Yarn Factory was a… yarn factory… on the coast of Ishikawa prefecture… and that’s pretty much all I know about the place. It was a surprise visit with friends, about an hour on location, so I was basically taking as many pictures as I could without being able to explore the whole place or look for company signs, let alone documents. Not only that, it also was the second location of the day on the way back home to Osaka from a long weekend trip with almost a dozen explorations in total, so everybody was hungry and tired.
The factory consisted of several buildings, some empty, and some massive metal cylinders outside. I remember walking past them (“I’ll take photos later!” – never happened…) and through some storage facility with countless cardboard boxes to the large dyeing building where I found half a dozen 2-storey containers for the dyeing process – right next to the building where they were yarning raw material to twine. That building was in really bad condition, so my lack of time was a good justification for not even trying to get to the upper floor on a rusty staircase that looked like it could collapse by me staring at it.

And then it was over! Moving on, lunch time… I won’t complain though, an hour at a location I didn’t even know existed is much better than not spending any time there at all – so it was a really nice indoor exploration that felt like an outdoor exploration, out of sight and earshot. Not nearly as stressful as the *Japanese Garment Factory* and far more modern than the *Mountain Textile Factory*, both of which were original finds by yours truly (and still haven’t been found by other people, it seems).

(*Like Abandoned Kansai on Facebook* or *follow us on Twitter* if you don’t want to miss the latest articles and exclusive content – and subscribe to the *video channel on Youtube* to receive a message right after a new video is online…)