Getting Serious about Sericulture

Sunday, April 12, 2026

Before I get into what we did today, I want to provide an update on the photo situation. I have decided to post my photos on Google Drive. Once I get it set up, I will start putting links to Google Drive in my blog posts or just sending you the link separately. If you do not have a Google account associated with the email address I am using for you, you will not be able to access Google Drive. 

It is time consuming and complicated to set it up, so it will be a few more days. It is also complicated to organize my photos because I have photos from my phone, Ken’s phone, and Ken’s camera. I have to transfer all of it to my iPad and set up a folder for each day. Then I go through the photos and edit them and delete the duplicates and decide which ones to use. Now I will have an additional step of transferring the final photos to Google Drive.

I do not want to allow the Google Drive photos to be available to the public, so I am setting it up to be shared with everyone who is on my blog mailing list. If you are not on my mailing list, you will not be able to access the Google Drive. If you are on the mailing list, you may have to log in to Google Drive with the same email address that I use to send you the blog links. Actually, I don’t know what you will have to do. It may be that you just click on the link and you are there.

The photos start out as large files, so my cloud storage is going to get used up quickly. To address this, I am going to have to remove the oldest files frequently, until I can figure out how to convert the photos into smaller files without it resulting in smaller pictures. I would advise you to look at any photos I put on Google Drive within a day or two so you see can see them before my cloud storage forces me to remove them,

If you are on the mailing list and you can’t access the photos, email me and I will see if it is something I can fix. I know there are some folks who read my blog who are not on my mailing list. If you want access to the photos, send me an email and I will try to add you to the list of those with access.

I am hoping all of this will be a temporary workaround and that I will be able to fix it this summer so that the blog and photos will once again be together in the same place. I know it is not easy to read a blog and look at the photos separately. I expect to have this fixed before my August trip, but I can’t fix it while I am away from home, and I don't have the time to.

Sericulture, breeding silkworms for the production of silk, began in China some 5,000 years ago and was a closely-guarded secret until 2,000 years ago when some silkworms were smuggled out of China. Japan started a sericulture around that time and it became a major industry. In the 19th century, as industrialization began to change the way things were done, innovations in sericulture also appeared. We learned about Jpana’s silk industry during a visit to the Tomioka SIlk Miill in Tomioka, not far from Takasaki.

The Silk Mill was built in 1872 as a government operated silk factory. t was one of the biggest silk factories in the world at that time, as Japan began modernizing. Girls and young women from all over Japan were hired to work in the Silk Mill. They lived in dormitories on the premises and received training in silk production, as well as optional general educational classes after work.

The silk worms were raised by local farmers, and when the larva made  cocoons, the cocoons were delivered to the mill for the beginning of a complicated processing protocol. First the cocoons were boiled to kill the larva. Then they were dried out and stored in large cocoon warehouses. The next step was called “reeling.” Up to 6 cocoons at a time would be carefully unrolled and the six strands would be twisted together to make a single thread which was wound up on reels. Traditionally, this was performed by hand and required great skill and care. But the new factory introduced machines to automate the reeling process and produce vastly larger quantities of silk. The factory was very successful for about 100 years and Japan became a leader in the silk industry.

The Silk Mill was closed in 1987 and has been turned into a museum. We saw the machines that were used, but we did not see them in action. I’m not sure they are still operational. We watched a woman demonstrate the process of reeling by hand. The thread from each cocoon was so fine you could barely see it. When a cocoon was nearly unwound, the dead silkworm would fall out and it would be scooped up and disposed of without stopping the unwinding. I don’t think weaving or dyeing took place at this factory. 

We saw the houses where the managers lived. In one of these houses there is now an exhibit with live silkworms. They were very ugly and they never moved, as far as I could tell. They do not live in the wild. Except for breeding stock, the larvae never make it to moth-hood, so you never see silk moths in the wild either.

There was some discussion between Ken and me about whether the women and girls who worked in Tomioka were oppressed. I think many of them had very hard lives they wanted to escape, and the factory gave them room and board and education, skills, and an escape route. However, the work hours did increase as the years went by and the laws in Japan changed. Initially the workers worked for 8 hours a day, six days a week. That was quite enlightened at the time. However, the factory went from government ownership to private ownership and the laws gradually changed to allow management to require the women to work up to 12 hours a day or more, with fewer benefits. The education available to them grew more limited, as well. 

We visited the museum shop at the end of the tour, and I didn’t buy anything because I was not impressed with the quality. The fabrics were mostly blends of 50% silk and 50% synthetic, and I didn’t like the feel of them. The scarves in the shop felt rough and unpleasant.

Tomioka Silk Mill is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site. They did a good job restoring parts of it and the explanation of the reeling process was good. I thought the “live silkworms” exhibit was really lame, and the shop was nothing to write home about. I would have liked to know more about the machinery.

Every place in Japan has a mascot. The mascot of Gunma prefecture (and of Takasaki) is a goofy looking cartoon pony. The mascot of Tomioka Silk Mill is Otomi-chan, a 14-year-old girl representing the female factory workers of the Meiji era.

For dinner we went bak to Oginoya, the clay pot place we ate lunch at on the first day in Takasaki.

The hotel gave us “hot eye masks.” I thought about trying one, but I was stumped by the directions. I will be including photos of the package, so you can see for yourselves. (It can be very entertaining to read English translations of Japanese instructions. But that’s a story for another time.)

Today’s fabric is mulberry silk. You may recall that silkworms like to eat mulberry leaves. Mulberry silk is produced by silkworms that have fed exclusively on white mulberry leaves. It is the highest quality natural silk available. Mulberry silk is prized for its softness, durability, and natural sheen.