The Imperial Raw Silk Conditioning House
Office: Kitanako-Dori, Yokohama. Director, Mr. G. Haga.
This house was established in 1896 and is situated in Honcho but was
removed to a new building in April, 1926.
The new building is equipped in the most up-to-date manner and is the
largest conditioning house in the world. A total of 5,000,000 Yen was ex-
pended in the construction of this building and annex warehouses. The area
of the entire floor space of all the buildings covers about ten acres.
Upon the request of people interested, this house receives raw silk in
bales and does conditioning work upon the samples. The principal operations
carried on here are to determine both absolute and conditioning weight and
the amount of boiling off, to test the re-reeling quality, size, knots, strength
and elasticity of the raw silk. Added to this, some laboratory work upon the
chemical properties of raw silk is also carried on.
This house 1s indispensable to the transaction of business in raw silk with
its fair tests.
According to the law of Raw Silk Transaction for conditioning weight,
passed by the Japanese Diet in 1926, this house becomes more important and
more practical to raw silk transactions.
The date of enforcement of this law is decided to start July 1st, 1927, by
Imperial Ordinance issued August 20th, 1926. Therefore, whole silk transacted
in Yokohama for export must be brought to this house to be measured and
its weight conditioned.
This House has a capacity for conditioning about 4000 bales per day.
Four large warehouses are established at national expense in the court of
Imperial Raw Silk Conditioning House. These warehouses were built espe-
cially for preserving raw silk and are of the most modern type and scientifically
investigated.
These warehouses are leased by the Government to the Teikaku-Sansi
Warehouse Co., Ltd., which was organized by prominent raw silk people.
The Kobe Municipal Conditioning House
Office: Sakae-cho, Kobe. Manager, Mr. N. Oki.
The Kobe Conditioning House was established in Kobe by the Govern-
ment at the same time the Yokohama Conditioning House was established
in 1896. However, this House was closed due to the centre of the raw silk
trade moving to Yokohama, but was re-established in 1923 by municipal
expense for two reasons. The first because of the remarkable development of
raw silk industry in Western Japan where this port (Kobe) is situated, and
the second reason because of the great earthquake disaster which took place
on Sept. 2nd, 1923 in the Kanto district, destroying the greater part of both
Tokyo and Yokohama.
The object and operation of this House are the same as the Yokohama
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