This prop­er­ty is a his­toric ser­i­cul­ture and silk mill com­plex estab­lished in the late 19th and ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry in the Gun­ma pre­fec­ture, north-west of Tokyo. It con­sists of four sites that cor­re­spond to the dif­fer­ent stages in the pro­duc­tion of raw silk: a large raw silk reel­ing plant whose machin­ery and indus­tri­al exper­tise were import­ed from France, an exper­i­men­tal farm for pro­duc­tion of cocoons a school for the dis­sem­i­na­tion of ser­i­cul­ture knowl­edge and a cold-stor­age facil­i­ty for silk­worm eggs. The site illus­trates Japan‘s desire to rapid­ly access the best mass pro­duc­tion tech­niques, and became a deci­sive ele­ment in the renew­al of ser­i­cul­ture and the Japan­ese silk indus­try in the last quar­ter of the 19th cen­tu­ry. Tomio­ka Silk Mill and its relat­ed sites became the cen­tre of inno­va­tion for the pro­duc­tion of raw silk and marked Japan‘s entry into the mod­ern, indus­tri­al­ized era, mak­ing it the world‘s lead­ing exporter of raw silk, notably to Europe and the Unit­ed States.