The Formation of the Modern East Asian Economy
The Japanese are fond of display, and so wrap themselves
up in clean and elegant clothing. Since the country
was unified by Tokugawa Hideyoshi 24 years ago, people
have become interested in nothing else but dressing
themselves. So that their thirst for silk would not
be quenched if they consumed all the silk shipped out
of China and Manila. At present, Japan consumes annually
180,000 to 210,000 kilograms of raw silk. The price
of one kilogram is 300 taels. When purchase in packs,
it cost 250 taels this year but usually it costs more.
This is a white silk yarn of excellent quality, which
the people process beautifully. The thread is woven
into white silk cloth with great skill and then cut
up to make clothing. In addition, the imported cloths
include several thousand bolts of plain or embroidered
velvet, plain taffeta, damask, thick woolen cloth, and
much else. All of these imports are sold and consumed
every year. Regardless of whether they are men or women,
the people wrap themselves up with brightly colored
dress. It does not matter if they are a young girl,
a spinster, or even a housewife over the age of 50.
As the upper limit
of annual silk yarn consumption in Japan in early seventeenth
century would have been about 240,000 kilograms, a Japanese
scholar has recently estimated that this figure would
have been made into 180,000 pieces of adult clothing.
Thus, when 97 Chinese ships arrived in Nagasaki with 140,000
kilograms of silk yarn, that would have allowed over 100,000
Japanese out of a total population of 12 million to own
a piece of imported silk clothing every year. Since silk
was not thrown away, its ongoing import into Japan must
have made what was once a luxury product into an object
of common consumption.
All this import of foreign
silk yarn indicates that Japanese production of silk must
have boomed during these years. In fact, it also developed
many new skills thanks to the introduction to Japan of
looms which allowed for the production of high quality
silk textiles. The Chinese type of loom, capable of weaving
brocade with highly complex patterns of gold or silver
thread, was transmitted from Ming China to Kyoto by the
latter half of the sixteenth century. At roughly the same
time, Chinese weavers from the Lower Yangtze delta were
brought to the port of Sakai, near present-day Osaka,
to teach Japanese artisans how to weave golden thread
brocade, damask, crepe, and other high quality silk.
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