Japanese silk

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Silk Production in Japan - Weighing Raw Silk Silk Production in Japan - Weighing Raw Silk.jpg
Silk Production in Japan - Weighing Raw Silk

Japanese silk is silk harvested in Japan. Archaeological evidence indicates that sericulture has been practiced since the Yayoi period. The silk industry was dominant from the 1930s to 1950s, but is less common now. [1]

Contents

History

Silk from East Asia had declined in importance after silkworms were smuggled from China to the Byzantine Empire. However, in 1845, an epidemic of flacherie among European silkworms devastated the silk industry there. [2] This led to a demand for silk from China and Japan, where as late as the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Japanese exports competed directly with Chinese exports in the international market in low value-added, labor-intensive products such as raw silk.

Between 1850 and 1930, raw silk ranked as the leading export for both countries, accounting for 20%–40% of Japan’s total exports and 20%–30% of China’s. [3] The Japanese silk export market was hit hard by the Great Depression. [4] Between the 1890s and the 1930s, Japanese silk exports quadrupled, making Japan the largest silk exporter in the world. This increase in exports was mostly due to the economic reforms during the Meiji period and the decline of the Qing dynasty in China, which led to rapid industrialization of Japan whilst the Chinese industries stagnated. [3]

During World War II, embargoes against Japan led to adoption of synthetic materials such as nylon, [5] which then led to the decline of the Japanese silk industry and its position as the lead silk exporter of the world. [6] Today, China exports the largest volume of raw silk in the world. [7]

See also

References

  1. "Japanese Silk". JapanTackle.
  2. http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k3024c/f443.table Gallica
  3. 1 2 "Why Japan, Not China, Was the First to Develop in East Asia: Lessons from Sericulture, 1850–1937" (PDF). Debin Ma. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2022-12-08. Retrieved 2020-08-30.
  4. Lockwood, William W. (1936). "Japanese Silk and the American Market". Far Eastern Survey. 5 (4): 31–36. doi:10.2307/3021472. ISSN   0362-8949.
  5. "Wallace Carothers and the Development of Nylon - Landmark".
  6. Stewart, John R. (1948). "The Position of Silk in Japanese Exports". Pacific Affairs. 21 (1): 46–51. ISSN   0030-851X.
  7. Anthony H. Gaddum, "Silk", Business and Industry Review, (2006). In Encyclopædia Britannica