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ReturnJapn:Getting serious about saving the silk industry
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admin
PublishDate：
2008-11-18 16:54:00
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Once one of Japan's key industries, earning foreign currency and contributing to modernization, the silk industry is now aiming to come back from the verge of collapse.
There were about 2.2 million households engaged in sericulture, or the raising and keeping of silkworms, across the nation in the second half of the 1920s. Last year the number was a mere 1,200, according to government statistics.
Annual production of raw silk amounted to more than 40,000 tons at its peak, while today it is estimated at slightly more than 100 tons.
People working in the silk industry in Nagano Prefecture are among those making efforts to revive the fabric business.
The prefecture accounted for around 30 percent of domestic raw silk production from the Meiji Era (1868-1912) to the second half of the 1920s.
Silk-reeling industrial companies in Okaya, Nagano Prefecture, joined together in 1875 and developed a silk-reeling machine capable of turning out soft thread based on technology from France and Italy, the nations at the forefront of such techniques at the time. The Okaya machine accounted for 65 percent of reeling machines in Japan in 1926.
Today, only two companies in the city and its vicinity are engaged in the process of harvesting silk from the cocoons of silkworms after low-priced Chinese silk swept the Japanese market in the postwar years.
Miyasaka Silk Reeling Co., led by Teruhiko Miyasaka, 69, still sticks to the old method of making raw silk from locally sourced cocoons, which Miyasaka and his employees boil in a pan.
Members of a local group have been hand-weaving the silk processed at Miyasaka to make articles like neckties and table mats for the last three years in an attempt to sell them to European countries.
Haruki Shimazaki of the Okaya Chamber of Commerce and Industry said the group has so far had only one contract, explaining that "there has been a difference in thinking between the group and Europeans with the latter looking for curtains and sheets."
The Nagano Chamber of Commerce and Industry and Shinshu University are trying to develop a new technique for "washable silk."
"We'd like to put some thought into developing washable silk by adding a spider's DNA to a silkworm to enable it to produce strong thread or by mixing in a corn-derived fiber," designer Masako Oka, 50, said.
The government compiled a ￥3.5 billion supplementary budget in February to accelerate a policy of cooperation among silkworm-raising, silk-making and textile industries.
Previously, it had restricted itself to covering losses suffered by silkworm raisers but launched the new policy in the belief that the domestic sericulture industry would die a "natural death" if the situation was left unchanged.
Ori Doraku Shiono-ya is a textile manufacturer with a history of more than 300 years in Kyoto, a city noted for Nishijin brocade, and has been ahead of the times in cooperating with sericulturists.
The manufacturer gets farm households in Kyoto Prefecture to raise special silkworms that turn out colored thread without recourse to artificial feed. It then purchases the cocoons at a high price and sends them to Miyasaka in Okaya to come up with excellent quality thread.
A similar idea is under way in Tomioka, Gunma Prefecture.
Source:Industry Website
There were about 2.2 million households engaged in sericulture, or the raising and keeping of silkworms, across the nation in the second half of the 1920s. Last year the number was a mere 1,200, according to government statistics.
Annual production of raw silk amounted to more than 40,000 tons at its peak, while today it is estimated at slightly more than 100 tons.
People working in the silk industry in Nagano Prefecture are among those making efforts to revive the fabric business.
The prefecture accounted for around 30 percent of domestic raw silk production from the Meiji Era (1868-1912) to the second half of the 1920s.
Silk-reeling industrial companies in Okaya, Nagano Prefecture, joined together in 1875 and developed a silk-reeling machine capable of turning out soft thread based on technology from France and Italy, the nations at the forefront of such techniques at the time. The Okaya machine accounted for 65 percent of reeling machines in Japan in 1926.
Today, only two companies in the city and its vicinity are engaged in the process of harvesting silk from the cocoons of silkworms after low-priced Chinese silk swept the Japanese market in the postwar years.
Miyasaka Silk Reeling Co., led by Teruhiko Miyasaka, 69, still sticks to the old method of making raw silk from locally sourced cocoons, which Miyasaka and his employees boil in a pan.
Members of a local group have been hand-weaving the silk processed at Miyasaka to make articles like neckties and table mats for the last three years in an attempt to sell them to European countries.
Haruki Shimazaki of the Okaya Chamber of Commerce and Industry said the group has so far had only one contract, explaining that "there has been a difference in thinking between the group and Europeans with the latter looking for curtains and sheets."
The Nagano Chamber of Commerce and Industry and Shinshu University are trying to develop a new technique for "washable silk."
"We'd like to put some thought into developing washable silk by adding a spider's DNA to a silkworm to enable it to produce strong thread or by mixing in a corn-derived fiber," designer Masako Oka, 50, said.
The government compiled a ￥3.5 billion supplementary budget in February to accelerate a policy of cooperation among silkworm-raising, silk-making and textile industries.
Previously, it had restricted itself to covering losses suffered by silkworm raisers but launched the new policy in the belief that the domestic sericulture industry would die a "natural death" if the situation was left unchanged.
Ori Doraku Shiono-ya is a textile manufacturer with a history of more than 300 years in Kyoto, a city noted for Nishijin brocade, and has been ahead of the times in cooperating with sericulturists.
The manufacturer gets farm households in Kyoto Prefecture to raise special silkworms that turn out colored thread without recourse to artificial feed. It then purchases the cocoons at a high price and sends them to Miyasaka in Okaya to come up with excellent quality thread.
A similar idea is under way in Tomioka, Gunma Prefecture.
Source:Industry Website
