KIOTO SILK INDUSTRY
Kioto remains the home of the arts, although no longer the seat of
government. For centuries it ministered to the luxury of the two courts,
which gathered together and encouraged hosts of artists and artisans,
whose descendants live and work in the old home. Kioto silks and crapes,
Kioto fans, porcelains, bronzes, lacquer, carvings, and embroideries
preserve their quality and fame, and are dearer and better than any other.
Silk is the most valuable article of export which Japan produces, and
raw silk to the value of thirty millions of yens goes annually to
foreign consumers, while the home market buys nearly seven millions of
yens’ worth of manufactured fabrics. The Nishijin quarter of Kioto and
the Josho district, north-west of Tokio, are the great silk centres of
Japan, and any silk merchant, fingering a crape gown, will tell instantly
which of the rival districts produced it. Recently Kofu, west of Tokio,
and Hachioji, twenty miles south, have become important centres of
manufacture as well. The silk market has its fluctuations, its panics,
and its daily quotations by cable; but raw silk has so inherent a value
that it is a good collateral security at any bank, and the silk-broker
is as well established and important a personage in the mercantile world
of the Orient as the stock-broker in the Occident. Next to specie or
gems, silk is the most valuable of commodities in proportion to its
bulk, the cargo of a single steamer often representing a value of two
million dollars in gold. The United States is the greatest consumer of
Japan’s raw silk. In 1875 fifty-three bales only of raw silk and cocoons
were shipped to America. In 1878 there were two thousand three hundred
and thirty-six bales, in 1887 some sixteen thousand eight hundred and
sixty-four bales, and in 1901 the export of raw silk to America amounted
to forty seven thousand six hundred and sixty-two bales. Our share of the
raw silk is nearly all consigned to Paterson, N. J. With the opening of
this great foreign trade, silk is dearer to the Japanese consumer than
twenty years ago; and while it still furnishes the ceremonial dress, and
is the choice of the rich, cotton and, of late, wool have taken its place
to a great extent.
Everywhere the rearing of the worms goes on. The silk districts and
villages are always thriving, prosperous, and tidily kept, forming
peaceful and contented communities. Each house becomes both a nursery for
the worms and a home factory, where every member of the family engages in
the work. Wages in silk districts range from eight to twenty cents, in
United States gold, for a day’s work of eighteen hours, the higher price
being paid to the most expert and experienced only. The houses are all
spacious, kept most exquisitely clean, ventilated, and held to an even
temperature. Sheets of paper coated with eggs, and looking like so much
sand-paper, will in a few days fill the waiting trays with tiny white
worms. The mulberry-leaves have to be chopped as fine as dust for these
new-comers, which are daily lifted to fresh trays by means of chopsticks,
the fingers being too rough and strong for such delicate handlings. For
a week at a time the tiny gluttons crawl and eat, then take a day and
night of sleep, maintaining this routine for five weeks, when, having
grown large enough, they begin to wind themselves up in cocoons. Then
the cauldron of boiling water and the whirling reel change the yellow
balls into great skeins of shining silk, ready to be twisted, tied,
and woven either at home or across the seas. Compressed into bales of a
picul’s weight, or 133½ pounds, the raw silk finds its way to market,
or, woven in hand looms in the usual thirteen-inch Japanese widths, or
in wider measures for the foreign trade, it is again sold by weight,
the _momé_ being the unit. One hundred and twenty momé are equal to one
pound. Twenty-five yards of fine white handkerchief-silk weigh from 150
to 200 momé, and 100 momé of such silk varies in price from six to seven
dollars, gold.
Steam-looms are fast supplanting the old hand-machines in Nishijin and
Josho. The Government sent men to study the methods in use at Lyons and
bring back machinery, and now there are filatures and factories in all
the silk districts. Private corporations are following the Government
example. At the Kwangioba no Shokoba the first exhibition of foreign
machines, with instruction in their use, was given. To-day the lively
clatter of the Jacquard loom is heard above the slow, droning noise of
the hand-loom behind Nishijin’s miles of blank walls. Slowly the weavers
are abandoning the rude loom, which was probably in use, like gunpowder,
at an age when Europeans clothed themselves in skins and lived in caves;
and the singing draw-boy is descending from his high perch, where he has
so long been lifting the alternating handful of threads that make the
pattern.
In a tour of the Nishijin factories, one scorching August day, we saw
many of these primitive hand-looms, with half-clad weavers tossing the
shuttles of silk and gold thread, their skin shining with the heat like
polished bronze, and marked all over with the scars of moxa cones.
Everywhere were gathered books upon books filled with samples of superb
brocades, many of them more than a century old. Everywhere we were
regaled with sweets and thimble-cups of lukewarm amber tea, that seemed
harmless as water, but murdered sleep. Everywhere we found a new garden
more enchanting than the last, and everywhere the way in which work-room
and kitchen, living-room and sales-room were combined; women, children,
family, workmen, and servants were ruled over by the master of the home
and factory, offered a curious study in political economy and patriarchal
government.
Until the Emperor, and finally the Empress and court ladies abandoned
the national dress, the court-weaver of brocade remained a considerable
personage, for he and his ancestors had been both tailors and
dress-makers to those august personages. We visited the beautiful garden
and lantern-hung verandas of this artistic dictator, and sipped tea,
fanned the while by attentive maids, while the stout, dignified, and
prosperous head of the ancient house and our Japanese official escort
conversed. Afterwards we were shown the books of brocade and silks
manufactured for the imperial family and court. The gorgeousness of some
of these, especially the blazing red brocade, stiff with pure gold thread
and covered with huge designs of the imperial chrysanthemum, or the
Paulownia crest of the Emperor’s family, fairly dazzled us. We saw the
pattern of the old Emperors’ ceremonial robes, and patterns designed by
past Empresses for their regal attire. Several of these were of a pure
golden yellow, woven with many gold threads; one design half covered with
fine, skeleton bamboos on the shimmering, sunshiny ground. The splendid
fabrics that bear the imperial crest may be woven only for the reigning
family, and their furniture coverings, draperies, and carriage-linings
are as carefully made and guarded as bank-note paper. Squares of thickest
red silk, wrought with a single gold chrysanthemum, are woven for the
Foreign Office, as cases for state papers and envoys’ credentials. Rolls
of the finest white silk were ready to be made into undergarments for
the Emperor, who, never wearing such articles twice, obliges his tailor
to keep a large supply ready; and these garments that have once touched
the sacred person are highly treasured by loyal subjects.
The weaver exhibited flaming silks covered with huge peonies, or fine
maple-leaves, or circles of writhing dragons, which the outside million
may buy if they choose, but not a sixteen-petalled chrysanthemum are
they privileged to obtain from him in any way. In discussing the
changeableness of the American taste, Kobayashi and his staff wondered
that the mass of our people did not care for silks that would wear
forever, rather than for the cheap fancies of the moment. The Japanese
cling to the really good things that have stood the test of a century’s
taste, and Japanese ladies had a pride in wearing the brocade that had
been theirs for a lifetime and their mothers’ before them. In noble
families inherited ceremonial dresses are as highly treasured as the
plate and jewels of European families, though they are now seldom worn.
Rolls of such silks and brocades were often presented by Emperor and
Shogun to their courtiers, and the common saying, “He wears rags, but
his heart is brocade,” attests the esteem in which these _nishikis_
(brocades) were held in olden times, and those _yesso nishikis_, with
their reverse a loose rainbow of woof threads, are far removed from the
thin, flat, papery, characterless stuffs known as Japanese brocades in
the cheap foreign trade.
A heavy silk tapestry, peculiar to Japan, although suggested by Chinese
models, is best woven now at the Dotemachi Gakko, an industrial school
for girls, maintained by the Government. The art had nearly died out when
the aged tapestry-weaver was brought to the school and given a class of
the most promising pupils. The fabric is woven on hand-frames, the design
being sketched on the white warp threads, wrought in with shuttles or
bobbins, and the threads pressed down with a comb. Each piece of the
design is made by itself, and connected by occasional cross threads, or
brides, as in lace. The fabric is not dear, considering its superior
beauty and durability, as compared to the moth-inviting tapestries of the
Gobelins and Beauvais, and conventional and classic designs are still
followed, the old dyes used, and gold thread lavishly interwoven.
The gold thread employed in weaving brocades and tapestries is either
a fine thread wound with gold foil, a strip of tough paper coated with
gold-dust, or threads wound with common gold-paper. The fineness and
quality of the gold affect the cost of any material into which it enters,
and in ordering a fabric or a piece of embroidery one stipulates closely
as to the gold-thread employed. The fine gold-wires of Russian brocades
are very rarely used, because of their greater cost. The manufacture of
gold thread is an open secret, and women are often seen at work in the
streets, stretching and twisting the fine golden filaments in lengths of
twenty and thirty feet.
The old dyers were as much masters of their craft as the old weavers;
and in trying to match the colors in a piece of yesso nishiki, I once
went the round of Paris shops and dress-makers’ establishments in vain.
Nothing they afforded would harmonize with the soft tones of the old
dyes. A distinguished American connoisseur, wishing to duplicate a cord
and tassel from one of his old lacquer boxes, took it to a Parisian
cord-maker. The whole staff looked at it, and the proprietor asked
permission to unravel a bit, to decipher the twist and obtain some long
threads for the dyer. But with months of time allowed him, he could not
reproduce the colors nor braid a cord like the original, nor even retwist
the Japanese cord he had unravelled.
Velvet-weaving is one of the old arts, but it was accomplished by the
most primitive and laborious means, and the fabrics, dull and inferior
to foreign factory velvets, do not rank among the more characteristic
productions of Japanese looms. Kioto’s painted velvets are unique,
however, and charming effects are obtained by painting softly-toned
designs on the velvet as it comes from the loom, with all the fine wires
still held in the looped threads. The painted parts are afterwards cut,
and stand in softly-shaded relief upon the uncut groundwork.
The crape guild of Kioto is as large, and commercially as important,
in this day, as the brocade guild, whose members rank first among
manufacturers. All crape is woven in _tans_, or lengths of sixty Japanese
_shaku_, two and a half shaku being equal to an English yard. On the loom
this material is a thin, lustrous fabric, hardly heavier than the gauze
on which kakemonos and fan mounts are painted. It is so smooth and glossy
that one cannot discover the smoother warp and twisted woof threads,
alternately tight and loose, which give it its crinkly surface. When
finished, the web is plunged into a vat of boiling water, which shrinks
the threads and ensures the wrinkled and lustreless surface. Once dried
the tans are tied like skeins, and lying in heaps, look like so much
unbleached muslin. Crape must be dyed in the piece, and stretched, while
damp, by bracing it across with innumerable strips of bowed bamboo. In
the bath the pieces shrink from one-third to one-half in width, and a
full tenth in length, but the more they shrink the more cockled is the
surface. When finished the tan may measure from seventeen to twenty-four
yards in length, but weight and not measure determines its value, and the
scales are used instead of the yard-stick.
[Illustration: KABE HABUTAI]
While the Chinese weave only the original Canton crape, with its heavy
woof and firmly twisted threads, the Japanese have produced a dozen
kinds, each wrinkled, cockled, waved, and crinkled in different ways. The
great Joshu district produces not as many kinds of crape as Kioto, and
Nishijin’s looms are busier each year, weaving crapes as light and thin
as gauze, or as heavy and soft as velvet; some costing only thirty or
forty cents a yard, and others two and three dollars for an arm’s length.
The soft, thick, heavily-ribbed _kabe habutai_, once kept for ceremonial
gowns and the favorite gifts of the great, is most expensive, having
heavier threads and larger cockles than other crapes, and never showing
crease or wrinkle. Plain crape, or _chirimen_, differs as the fineness of
thread and the closeness of weaving add to its weight. _Ebisu chirimen_
might be called _repoussé_, from the scale-like convexities of its
surface, and is a most fascinating fabric. Finest and most exquisite of
all is the lustrous _kinu chirimen_, or crinkled silk, which shows only
the finest lines and parallel ridgings marking its surface lengthwise.
Used chiefly for the carelessly tied obi of the bath kimono, or as
_obishime_, tied over the women’s heavy satin and brocade obis to keep
their stiff folds in place, these stringy scarfs add a last artistic
touch of color to a costume. Kinu chirimen shrinks half its width, but
loses nothing in length in the bath, and a tan a yard wide ranges from
eighteen to twenty-eight dollars in price. _Kanoko chirimen_ is plain
crape dotted over with knots or projections in different colors, a result
arrived at by processes similar to those employed at Arimatsu for dyeing
cotton goods.
[Illustration: CHIRIMEN]
_Yamamai_, so little known outside the home market, is a most artistic
fabric, roughly and loosely woven of the threads of the wild, mountain
silk-worm, that is fed on oak-leaves. Yamamai has the natural yellow
color of the cocoons, is considered both a cure and preventive of
rheumatism, and is often worn at the command of foreign physicians. It
is softer to the touch than the Chinese pongee, not being weighted with
the clay dressing of Shantung pongees, while much heavier than the Indian
tussores, all three of these fabrics being the product of the same wild
oak-spinner.
[Illustration: EBISU CHIRIMEN]
[Illustration: KINU CHIRIMEN]
The painted crapes of Kioto, specially designed for children’s holiday
dresses and obis, are works of art, in the manufacture of which the
old capital holds almost a monopoly. All the elaborate processes of
patterning such crapes were shown us one morning at Nishimura’s great
establishment. First, on a square of white crape, wrung out in water and
pasted down at the edges on a board, the outline of the principal design
was sketched in indigo. This line was then carefully covered by a thread
of starch, drawn from a glutinous ball held upon the point of a stick,
while the painter turned and tilted the crape to receive it. This starch,
or “resist,” as occidental dyers term it, is to prevent the spreading
of the colors by capillary attraction, and the limits of every color
must be carefully defined, unless the fabric is to be made one of those
marvellous studies of blended and merging tints. As soon as the first
color dried, the first starchy outline was washed out, and another drawn
for the second color. After the removal of each “resist,” the square
was stretched on bowed bamboos and dried over a hibachi. The artist had
purposely worked out his design with such cunning that it was only when
the last touches in red had been given that we discovered the Daimonji’s
fires burning on the mountain-side, and a troop of men, women, children,
and jinrikishas, all with glowing lanterns, figuring as silhouettes on
Sanjio bridge.
When a whole tan of crape is to be painted, much of the design may be
stencilled through perforated card-board, but, in general, the best
painted crapes display free-hand sketches, with patterns never exactly
repeated, nor exactly matching at the edges. After the general outline
is sketched, the tan, sewn together at the ends, is made to revolve
horizontally on two cylinders, like a roller towel, passing before a
row of seated workmen, each of whom adds a single color, or applies
the “resist,” and slips it along to the next. Sitting on the mats, the
soles of his feet turned upward in his lap, in a pose that a circus
contortionist might envy, each workman has a glowing hibachi at his
knees, over which he dries his own work. And such work! Hazy rainbows on
misty skies, flights of birds, shadows of trees and rushes, branches of
pines and blossoming twigs, comical figures, animals, and fantastical
chimeras, kaleidoscopic arrangements of the most vivid colors the eye can
bear. These painted crapes are beyond compare, and the English and Dutch
imitations in printed delaines fall absurdly short.
Following the Chinese example, Kioto silk-weavers now make silk rugs
equalling the famous ones of Pekin. Even when new they have a finer
bloom and sheen than the old prayer-rugs of western Asia, but their
designs, first made from the suggestions of an American house, are
neither Japanese, Turkish, nor at all Oriental, nor do they allow the
best effects to be obtained. At two dollars a square foot, these thick,
soft rugs make the costliest of floor coverings in a country where the
cotton and hemp rugs of Osaka sell for a few cents a square foot, and
the natural camel’s-hair rugs of North China for eighteen cents a square
foot.