Hirosawa-cho, Kiryu City, Gunma Prefecture. At the foot of Mount Teusu, there is a residence surrounded by a moat and earthworks. This is the Hikobe Residence, a nationally designated important cultural property. The Hikobe family, who have an approximately 1,300-year-old family history, have continuously lived on this land since the Warring States period.
Right next to it is the workshop of Hikobe Science. The roots of our craftsmanship, creating lights by winding thread, are connected to this house and the history of textiles in this region.
House of a Thousand Years
The Hikobe family traces its origins to Prince Takechi, the eldest son of Emperor Tenmu. During the Muromachi period, the family served the Ashikaga Shogunate. In 1561, Nobukatsu Hikobe established his residence in Kiryu-Hirozawa, where the family has lived for over 460 years since.
The main house, nagaya-mon (long-gatehouse), fuyuzumi (winter residence), bunkogura (archive storehouse), and kokusogura (grain storehouse), along with the surrounding earthwork and moat, form a complex of buildings that still convey the atmosphere of a medieval samurai estate. These structures were designated National Important Cultural Properties in 1992.
The Age of Textiles
Kiryu has long been known as a silk weaving town. At the Hikobe family, there is a "Nittayama Tsumugi Order Form," a document for a textile order that arrived from Kyoto in the mid-16th century. This document, addressed to the Hikobe family from a lady-in-waiting to Shogun Ashikaga Yoshiteru, indicates that Kiryu textiles were already in demand in the capital at that time.
Even after leaving their samurai status in the Edo period, the Hikobe family continued to engage in sericulture and dyeing and weaving, living with silk threads. In the Meiji era, Komao Hikobe served as the head of the Kiryu Textile Manufacturers' Association, dedicating his efforts to modernizing the textile town and establishing industrial schools to train the next generation.
The Age of Invention
In 1956, Hikobe Science was founded in Hirosawa, not far from the Hikobe family residence. Its founder was a "town inventor." He addressed the challenges of daily life and industry in this textile town, continually creating tools that harnessed the potential of yarn, such as cleaning tools that utilized crimped yarn.
Among his inventions, one in particular defined the future of Hikobe Science. It was a machine that rewound yarn back into the shape of a cocoon, essentially reversing the motion of the "zaguri," a silk reeling device long used in Kiryu to extract silk from cocoons. This machine, the origin of the yarn-wound shade, was born from the memories of a textile town.
The Age of Lights
The second generation, Kyoichi Hikobe, developed his predecessor's invention into a product. The lamp's cocoon-like texture, created by light spilling through gaps in the threads, spread to spaces both domestically and internationally through OEM supply to major lighting manufacturers, and it also won international design awards.
hico, to the world
And now, under the third-generation Hayato Hikobe, the brand "hico" is taking off, delivering the techniques refined through years of craftsmanship under their own name. They've exhibited at international trade fairs in Paris and held pop-ups in North America. The 1300-year memory of threads is now set to illuminate spaces around the world.
