CHAPTER XXVI
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. Three years later two thousand three hundred and thirty-six bales were sent, and in 1887 sixteen thousand eight hundred and sixty -four bales, while Europe took only fourteen thousand bales. Our share of the raw silk is nearly all consigned to Pater.son. 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 ground-work.
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.
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 habuiai,
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 repousée, from the scale-like convexities of its surface, and is a most fascinating fabric. Finest and most exquisite of all 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
CHIRIMEN
womens’ 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.
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.
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
EBISU CHIRIMEN
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
KINU CHIRIMEN
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 cardboard, 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.