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*''Japanese'': 絹 ''(kinu)''
Silk was one of the most prominent materials both produced in Japan and imported from China and elsewhere, and an expensive, luxurious, but very widely used material throughout Japanese culture, being used not only in [[clothing|garments]], but in [[bookbinding]], as ground for paintings and calligraphy, as well as for curtains and a wide variety of other objects.
Silk production is one of the classic examples of cottage industries and by-employments that constituted Edo period proto-industrialization, while the great Japanese demand for the import of silk, largely in exchange for the export of [[silver]] and [[copper]], and later of marine products, was a major driving force in foreign trade concerns and policies. By the 19th century, Japan had become a major producer of silk, and the European and American demand for Japanese silk became a major element of foreign trade considerations.
==Importation of Silk==
Silk was a major Chinese export going back many centuries, to the [[Tang Dynasty]] if not much earlier, and being so prized and so prominent among trade goods throughout the region that the network of trade routes linking China with central and western Asia had come to be known as the "[[Silk Road]]." By the 11th century, [[porcelain]] replaced silk as China's chief export,<ref>Bonnie Smith, et al. ''Crossroads and Cultures'', vol. B, Bedford St. Martins (2012), 393.</ref> but the volume of silk exported nevertheless remained quite considerable. Throughout the 19th century, [[tea]] and silk constituted the vast majority of China's exports, the two goods combined accounting for as much as 92-93.5% of Chinese exports in the 1840s-1860s, though this figure dropped to 64.5% in [[1890]]. As late as the 1920s, roughly 50-70% of the silk produced in China was produced for export.<ref>Joseph Esherick, "Harvard on China: The Apologetics of Imperialism." ''Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars'' 4:4 (1972), 10.</ref>
Though a great simplification of the great many types of goods that were exchanged throughout the region, it has been argued that the East/Southeast Asian trade routes, dominated by the Chinese, into which the Europeans inserted themselves in the 16th-17th centuries, was predominantly a system of bringing Japanese and New World silver into China, and Chinese silk into Japan.<ref name=jansen>[[Marius Jansen]], ''China in the Tokugawa World'', Harvard University Press (1992), 24.</ref> In the [[Azuchi-Momoyama period]], as the archipelago began to see some degree of peace and stability, and as some ''daimyô'' and merchants grew particularly powerful & wealthy, demand for high-end silks, including brocades and embroideries, flourished. ''Daimyô'' demanded high-quality silks for their own [[clothing|garments]], and those of their retainers, embroidered with the [[kamon|family crest]], as well as lavish garments for the ladies associated with their courts.<ref name=jansen/> [[Toyotomi Hideyoshi|Toyotomi Hideyoshi's]] gold-covered tea room stands as an example of the incredible levels of opulence which typified the uppermost layers of Japanese society at this time; the expensive architecture and interior decor of the likes of [[Azuchi castle|Azuchi]] and [[Fushimi castle|Momoyama castles]] were accompanied by similar opulence in textiles, [[lacquerware]], and the like.
Japanese demand for silk was such that in the brief period of roughly 1590-1640, when Japanese overseas activity was at its peak, Japanese purchases of silk in the Vietnamese port of [[Hoi An]] were of such a great volume that they caused dramatic cyclical swings in market prices, frustrating the [[VOC|Dutch]], who were left with less volume available for purchase, and at much higher prices.<ref>Tana Li, ''Nguyễn Cochinchina: Southern Vietnam in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries'', Cornell University Press (1998), 63.; Robert L. Innes, "The Door Ajar: Japan's Foreign Trade in the Seventeenth Century," PhD dissertation, University of Michigan (1980), 187-188.</ref>
In the 17th century, the [[Tokugawa shogunate]] tested out a variety of policies in efforts to stem the tide of silver exports. The [[1655]] abolition of the ''[[itowappu]]'' silk monopoly, established in [[1604]], was one such effort, but it backfired; the free competition that emerged after the dissolution of the monopoly caused silk prices to rise, which only served to increase the amount of silver leaving the country for the same amount of imported silk.<ref>Robert Hellyer, ''Defining Engagement'', Harvard University Press (2009), 52.</ref>
==Domestic Production==
Over the course of the Edo period, textile merchants based in the [[Nishijin]] district of [[Kyoto]] extended their control over the silk industry, at least in central Japan, establishing vertical organizations in which a given Nishijin merchant claimed within his operation silkworm farms, spinners, weavers, and dyers, as well as transportation, marketing, and wholesale and retail operations. Many of these families, or the firms they established, continue to hold prominent places in producing the highest-quality silks and [[kimono]] today. It is estimated that at its height in the Edo period, Nishijin's textile industry may have employed as many as 100,000 people, including weavers, spinners, dyers, and others. There were at this time roughly 7,000 ''takabata'' "high looms," which were used to produce the highest quality textiles, and which required two operators at a time; most textiles were produced using the single-operator ''hirahata'', or "flat looms."<ref>Moriya Katsuhisa. "Urban Networks and Information Networks." in Chie Nakane and Shinzaburô Ôishi (eds.) ''Tokugawa Japan: The Social and Economic Antecedents of Modern Japan''. University of Tokyo Press, 1990. p98.</ref> By the 1720s, roughly 90% of silk processing in the archipelago was done in and around Kyoto.<ref>Kaplan, Edward The Cultures of East Asia: Political-Material Aspects. Chap. 16 & 18. 25 June 2003 <http://www.ac.wwu.edu/~kaplan/>.</ref>
Being associated with wealth and luxury, silk was regularly prohibited by the shogunate from being worn by [[chonin|commoners]], as part of repeated issuances of [[sumptuary regulations]]. ''Chônin'' generally skirted these regulations, however, covering up their silks under rougher garments in public, and/or wearing more lavish garments only in private. Many garments were also made of lesser materials, but with lavish inner linings.
By the 1760s, Japanese domestic production of silk had grown to such a point that the realm was able to actually begin ''exporting'' silk, and importing gold and silver, reversing the flows which had so concerned the shogunate a century earlier.<ref>Hellyer, 73-78.</ref>
Japanese silk production first appears in Western records in [[1859]]. In that year, Italy is said to have been producing five times as much raw silk as Japan, and China ten times as much. Japan's production expanded quickly, however, growing five-fold by [[1862]], just as French and Italian silkworm cultivation was ravaged by disease. Fifty years later, in [[1912]], Japan was the top exporter of silk in the world, and by 1938, roughly four-fifths of world silk production was controlled by Japan. In total, roughly half of Japanese exports in the [[Meiji period]] were textiles or textile-related products.<ref name=conant74>Conant, Ellen. "Cut from Kyoto Cloth: Takeuchi Seihô and his Artistic Milieu." ''Impressions'' 33 (2012). p74.</ref> Where Edo period silk production is often lauded as an example of Japanese proto-industrialization, contributing to great improvements in livelihoods for those who engaged in such activities, Meiji period industrial factory production of silk is often pointed to as representative of the grueling and oppressive conditions under which factory workers (in the case of silk mills, often chiefly young women) were forced to work, very long hours, for little pay. The [[Tomioka silk mill]] laborers strike of [[1898]] is a particularly famous example of numerous such incidents; the 1979 film ''Aa, Nomugi toge'' ("Ah! Nomugi Pass") presents a fictionalized account of the experiences of such silk mill workers circa 1900-1905.
==References==
<references/>
[[Category:Economics]]
Silk was one of the most prominent materials both produced in Japan and imported from China and elsewhere, and an expensive, luxurious, but very widely used material throughout Japanese culture, being used not only in [[clothing|garments]], but in [[bookbinding]], as ground for paintings and calligraphy, as well as for curtains and a wide variety of other objects.
Silk production is one of the classic examples of cottage industries and by-employments that constituted Edo period proto-industrialization, while the great Japanese demand for the import of silk, largely in exchange for the export of [[silver]] and [[copper]], and later of marine products, was a major driving force in foreign trade concerns and policies. By the 19th century, Japan had become a major producer of silk, and the European and American demand for Japanese silk became a major element of foreign trade considerations.
==Importation of Silk==
Silk was a major Chinese export going back many centuries, to the [[Tang Dynasty]] if not much earlier, and being so prized and so prominent among trade goods throughout the region that the network of trade routes linking China with central and western Asia had come to be known as the "[[Silk Road]]." By the 11th century, [[porcelain]] replaced silk as China's chief export,<ref>Bonnie Smith, et al. ''Crossroads and Cultures'', vol. B, Bedford St. Martins (2012), 393.</ref> but the volume of silk exported nevertheless remained quite considerable. Throughout the 19th century, [[tea]] and silk constituted the vast majority of China's exports, the two goods combined accounting for as much as 92-93.5% of Chinese exports in the 1840s-1860s, though this figure dropped to 64.5% in [[1890]]. As late as the 1920s, roughly 50-70% of the silk produced in China was produced for export.<ref>Joseph Esherick, "Harvard on China: The Apologetics of Imperialism." ''Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars'' 4:4 (1972), 10.</ref>
Though a great simplification of the great many types of goods that were exchanged throughout the region, it has been argued that the East/Southeast Asian trade routes, dominated by the Chinese, into which the Europeans inserted themselves in the 16th-17th centuries, was predominantly a system of bringing Japanese and New World silver into China, and Chinese silk into Japan.<ref name=jansen>[[Marius Jansen]], ''China in the Tokugawa World'', Harvard University Press (1992), 24.</ref> In the [[Azuchi-Momoyama period]], as the archipelago began to see some degree of peace and stability, and as some ''daimyô'' and merchants grew particularly powerful & wealthy, demand for high-end silks, including brocades and embroideries, flourished. ''Daimyô'' demanded high-quality silks for their own [[clothing|garments]], and those of their retainers, embroidered with the [[kamon|family crest]], as well as lavish garments for the ladies associated with their courts.<ref name=jansen/> [[Toyotomi Hideyoshi|Toyotomi Hideyoshi's]] gold-covered tea room stands as an example of the incredible levels of opulence which typified the uppermost layers of Japanese society at this time; the expensive architecture and interior decor of the likes of [[Azuchi castle|Azuchi]] and [[Fushimi castle|Momoyama castles]] were accompanied by similar opulence in textiles, [[lacquerware]], and the like.
Japanese demand for silk was such that in the brief period of roughly 1590-1640, when Japanese overseas activity was at its peak, Japanese purchases of silk in the Vietnamese port of [[Hoi An]] were of such a great volume that they caused dramatic cyclical swings in market prices, frustrating the [[VOC|Dutch]], who were left with less volume available for purchase, and at much higher prices.<ref>Tana Li, ''Nguyễn Cochinchina: Southern Vietnam in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries'', Cornell University Press (1998), 63.; Robert L. Innes, "The Door Ajar: Japan's Foreign Trade in the Seventeenth Century," PhD dissertation, University of Michigan (1980), 187-188.</ref>
In the 17th century, the [[Tokugawa shogunate]] tested out a variety of policies in efforts to stem the tide of silver exports. The [[1655]] abolition of the ''[[itowappu]]'' silk monopoly, established in [[1604]], was one such effort, but it backfired; the free competition that emerged after the dissolution of the monopoly caused silk prices to rise, which only served to increase the amount of silver leaving the country for the same amount of imported silk.<ref>Robert Hellyer, ''Defining Engagement'', Harvard University Press (2009), 52.</ref>
==Domestic Production==
Over the course of the Edo period, textile merchants based in the [[Nishijin]] district of [[Kyoto]] extended their control over the silk industry, at least in central Japan, establishing vertical organizations in which a given Nishijin merchant claimed within his operation silkworm farms, spinners, weavers, and dyers, as well as transportation, marketing, and wholesale and retail operations. Many of these families, or the firms they established, continue to hold prominent places in producing the highest-quality silks and [[kimono]] today. It is estimated that at its height in the Edo period, Nishijin's textile industry may have employed as many as 100,000 people, including weavers, spinners, dyers, and others. There were at this time roughly 7,000 ''takabata'' "high looms," which were used to produce the highest quality textiles, and which required two operators at a time; most textiles were produced using the single-operator ''hirahata'', or "flat looms."<ref>Moriya Katsuhisa. "Urban Networks and Information Networks." in Chie Nakane and Shinzaburô Ôishi (eds.) ''Tokugawa Japan: The Social and Economic Antecedents of Modern Japan''. University of Tokyo Press, 1990. p98.</ref> By the 1720s, roughly 90% of silk processing in the archipelago was done in and around Kyoto.<ref>Kaplan, Edward The Cultures of East Asia: Political-Material Aspects. Chap. 16 & 18. 25 June 2003 <http://www.ac.wwu.edu/~kaplan/>.</ref>
Being associated with wealth and luxury, silk was regularly prohibited by the shogunate from being worn by [[chonin|commoners]], as part of repeated issuances of [[sumptuary regulations]]. ''Chônin'' generally skirted these regulations, however, covering up their silks under rougher garments in public, and/or wearing more lavish garments only in private. Many garments were also made of lesser materials, but with lavish inner linings.
By the 1760s, Japanese domestic production of silk had grown to such a point that the realm was able to actually begin ''exporting'' silk, and importing gold and silver, reversing the flows which had so concerned the shogunate a century earlier.<ref>Hellyer, 73-78.</ref>
Japanese silk production first appears in Western records in [[1859]]. In that year, Italy is said to have been producing five times as much raw silk as Japan, and China ten times as much. Japan's production expanded quickly, however, growing five-fold by [[1862]], just as French and Italian silkworm cultivation was ravaged by disease. Fifty years later, in [[1912]], Japan was the top exporter of silk in the world, and by 1938, roughly four-fifths of world silk production was controlled by Japan. In total, roughly half of Japanese exports in the [[Meiji period]] were textiles or textile-related products.<ref name=conant74>Conant, Ellen. "Cut from Kyoto Cloth: Takeuchi Seihô and his Artistic Milieu." ''Impressions'' 33 (2012). p74.</ref> Where Edo period silk production is often lauded as an example of Japanese proto-industrialization, contributing to great improvements in livelihoods for those who engaged in such activities, Meiji period industrial factory production of silk is often pointed to as representative of the grueling and oppressive conditions under which factory workers (in the case of silk mills, often chiefly young women) were forced to work, very long hours, for little pay. The [[Tomioka silk mill]] laborers strike of [[1898]] is a particularly famous example of numerous such incidents; the 1979 film ''Aa, Nomugi toge'' ("Ah! Nomugi Pass") presents a fictionalized account of the experiences of such silk mill workers circa 1900-1905.
==References==
<references/>
[[Category:Economics]]
