I decided to explore silk because it offers so many points of interlinkage --historical, economic, aesthetic, agronomic, ecological...
Pound for pound, the domestication of Bombyx mori is surely about the strangest episode in human history... or at least in the running for that title. It comes complete with the Mythic (in Wintersilks version of the Chinese Legend, Huang Ti's Wife Hsi-Ling-Shi drops a cocoon into her tea...)
But we'll begin with an ending:
Era of silk spinning ends (Daily Yomiuri)A lot encoded in that little story. Two more fragments:The Japanese silk-spinning industry, which led the domestic economy at the zenith of its prosperity, disappeared quietly last month. The industry utilized waste products from silk processing and leftover cocoons to make new silk threads. Shinano Kenshi Corp. shut down its last factory in the nation in Marukomachi, Nagano Prefecture, after failing to overcome a decrease in demand and compete with a wave of cheap imports. The 85-year-old factory was finally forced to close.
...According to the company's archive, the nation's silk-spinning industry started with the establishment of a state-owned factory in Shinmachi, Gunma Prefecture, in 1877. At its peak, the industry comprised more than 20 factories operating nationwide, and the country produced 60 percent of the world's spun silk. The industry dominated the nation's export sector at that time...
Although the company will continue to operate a silk-spinning factory in Thailand, it has shifted its domestic focus to its electronic section, a company official said.
(http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/lens/lens084.htm)
Gunma, the center of Japan's silk industry, has tradition and global values
Gunma Prefecture played a leading role in the development of Japan's silk industry. Yohei Tajima established the first silk egg company and directly exported the eggs to Italy, the silk industry capital of Europe. As a raw silk trader, Jubei Nakaiya became a billionaire in the early period of modern Japan. Both were Gunma natives... Since it is typically labor-intensive, the silk industries of developing countries are those with abundant labor forces, such as China, India, and Brazil. These countries put an end to Japan's glory days in the early 1960s, as post-war Japan grew in more various ways. Since then, the Japanese silk industry has been in dramatic decline. Today, the production cost for silk eggs per kg is higher than the market price, though Japan maintains excellent productivity with state-of-the-art technology and is still the second largest consumer of silk in the world today.
Traditionally the largest silk consumer, Japan in the 1960s relied entirely on local silk production, mostly for kimonos. Between the 1970s and today, local silk production dropped from over 20,000 tons to less than 2000. The country now depends on imported silk goods, particularly from China. Kimonos still absorb about 50% of the total raw silk consumption in Japan, down from 90% in the 1970s. Silk is little used in interior decoration. The decline of the Japanese silk processing industry is having a serious effect on Brazilian sericulture, which caters largely to Japan.
And here's another, a vignette from 130 years ago:
(handout from Tsurumi Factory Girls)
The article on sericulture from Cultural Entomology has an interesting digression on Trouvelot and the gypsy moth
because confederate cotton was unavailable during and shortly after the Civil War, the Union States were forced to seek a new source of fiber. Thus in 1869, Professor L. Trouvelot, an American naturalist, brought eggs of the gypsy moth, Lymantria dispar (L.), from France to Massachusetts. Trouvelot had hoped to produce a commercial source of silk by developing a hardy race of silk-producing insects, crossing the gypsy moth with the silkworm moth, in order to control wilt disease (or flancheria) then causing severe problems in some silkworm industries. However, during the course of his experiments, some of the eggs were lost and some of the caterpillars escaped from his home. Although this accident was made public at the time it did not receive much attention even though the gypsy moth was immediately recognized as a pest. Since its introduction into the Boston area over a century ago, the gypsy moth has greatly expanded its range and become one of North America's most serious forest pests, defoliating large areas of canopy every year.
...and a factoid about 18th century globalization:
...triangular trade between China, the Philippines, and Spanish America from the mid-sixteenth through the eighteenth century. Chinese raw silk, mostly from Chekiang, but sometimes from Kwangtung and even Szechuan, as well as all varieties of silk fabrics and apparel, were shipped by Chinese merchants from Canton or Chang-chou to Manila, where the Spanish had installed themselves in 1571. From Manila, an average of one to four Spanish galleons would sail to Acapulco each year, carrying Chinese silks as their major cargo to an eager Spanish American market. A weaving industry employing 14,000 person grew up in Mexico simply to handle the raw silk sector of this trade. It was said that Chinese silks could be found on the backs of even ordinary persons and on the altars of churches all over Spanish America... According to one source, two to three million pesos' worth of Chinese silks were imported to Mexico each year... In exchange for these silks, a vast quantity of Mexican and Peruvian silver bullion was shipped back to Manila and eventually found itself in Chinese hands. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when China's own silver mines were depleted, this influx of silver had a profound effect on its domestic economy --on the one hand accelerating the trend toward monetization, and on the other, contributing to the steady rise in price levels during the eighteenth century.
(from Lillian Li China's Silk Trade pp 64-65 [HD9926 .C62 L4])
Invoke two other terms to suggest the long-running importance of this topic: The Silk Road (a powerful image/trope to this day: Silk Road Timeline) and Seres (from Dictionary of Botanical Epithets ...from the Greek 'Serikos' --where silk comes from)
Contemporary Roman society, like Han China, also had its wealthy leisure class inclined toward luxury, excessiveness, and conspicuous consumption. No wonder therefore, that in those days Chinese silk exports to the Western world became such a lucrative business causing the price for one pound of silk to equal the value of one pound of gold. It is said, that during this time silk was imported into the Roman Empire on so large a scale that the economy was hurt by the resulting eastward drain of gold and silver.
(Maryta Laumann, pg 110)
Another wonderful find: Sericum ( Article by James Yates, M.A., F.R.S., on pp1028?1029 of William Smith, D.C.L., LL.D.: A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, John Murray, London, 1875)
Ties and Scarves in terracotta
Textiles have been at the very heart of commerce and industry for a very long time, so we really need to know something about the technology and its history and implications.
Hard to say when the first weaving was done, and early histories are pretty much lost in the mists. Some of what we know about the earliest Chinese silk fabrics is because of patterns left in the patina of Shang bronzes --the silk cloth in which they were wrapped long since rotted to nothing, but the ghost of the weave left on the bronze... spooky. ("According to Professor Cheng Te K'um in Archeology of China, embroidery was used to carry out these designs on clothing and textiles. One of the earliest examples of embroidery is from a Shang Dynasty (1500-1050 B.C.) fragment of embroidered silk encrusted on the patina of a bronze burial vessel..." [http://www.ksu.edu/humec/atid/historic/chinese.html])
Strip Weaving Basics (African example, but good on basic loom techhnology) and Wikipedia on looms
Chinese loom, some kid controlling something with a card
Jacquard loom from Deutsches Museum, and Wikipedia article
The key to understanding the great mystery and magic of silk, and China's domination of its production and promotion, lies with one species: the blind, flightless moth, Bombyx mori. It lays 500 or more eggs in four to six days and dies soon after. The eggs are like pinpoints – one hundred of them weigh only one gram. From one ounce of eggs come about 30,000 worms which eat a ton of mulberry leaves and produce twelve pounds of raw silk.
Secrets of Silk (Karen Selk)
To make a sari 44 inches wide and 5 yards long you need: 8,000 silkworm eggs, which will yield 1,200 cocoons (because of high mortality rate). These silkworms will eat the leaves of between 12 and 14 trees, each approximately 12 feet tall. It will take over 112 hours (14 eight hour days) to prepare the 14 ounces of yarn necessary to weave the lightweight sari... One silk shirt uses cocoons from 1,000 silkworms, which eat 22 kg (48 lb) of mulberry leaves.
Wikipedia entry 'silk' and 'silkworm'
Northampton Silk Project from Smith College
The Silk Industry In Japan In The 1800s (Genevieve Chin & Sindhu Mommaneni)
Silk in Japan: Present and Future (Mikihiko Miura)
Technology, Institutions and Growth: Japanese and Chinese Reeled Silk Industries 1860-1905 (Debin Ma --draft)
Between 1850 and 1930. raw silk easily became [China's and Japan's] leading export item, accounting for 20-40% of Japan's total exports and 20-30% of China's for this period...
A curiosity, from PMJS listserv ("an interdisciplinary forum for those doing research into earlier periods of Japanese art, culture, history, religion and literature"): Heian tears (Archive of messages exchanged on the pmjs mailing list from 6 February, 2001. The subject line changed repeatedly: Heian tears" - "Silk and aristocratic tears" - "tear-drops" - "Heian tears: lit or fig?" - "soggy silk" - "rivers of blood" - "Hemp" - "Paper" - "Blood and guts" - "silk stains"). The same listserv has a thread on Rashomon that I wish I'd known about... and another on Confucianism in ancient Japan
Mulberry Germplasm and Cultivation in Brazil (J. E. de Almeida and Tamara Canto Fonseca)
Astonishing: Digital Archive of Documents Related to Silk
Encyc Brit 11th edition article
(n.b. Rea's Far Eastern Manual, with lengthy coverage of 1920s silk filatures in China and Japan)
...and Honda, Iwajiro. Silk Industry of Japan, The Imperial Tokyo Sericultural Institute, 1909, 221 pages in 2 pdfs
DIFFUSION AND REFLECTION Comparison of Mechanically Patterned textiles between the West and China ZHAO FENG
Silk Weaving in Ancient China (Dieter Kuhn, pdf)
The secret of excellence in ancient Chinese silks (Maryta Laumann --originally http://www.upf.edu/materials/huma/central/abast/laumann.pdf)
