CHAPTER XVII
THE BIRTH, BRIDAL AND DEATH OF THE SILK-WORM
(NAGANO)
The mulberry leaf knoweth not that it shall be silk.—Arab proverb
One acre in every dozen in Japan produces mulberry leaves for feeding the silk-worms which two million farming families—more than a third of the farming families of the country—painstakingly rear.
But the mulberry is not the only mark of a sericultural district. Its mark may be seen in the tall chimneys of the factories and in the structure of the farmers' houses. Breeders of silk-worms are often well enough off to have tiled instead of thatched roofs; they have frequently two storeys to their dwellings; and they have almost always a roof ventilator so that the vitiated air from the hibachi-heated silk-worm chambers may be carried off. Yet another sign of sericulture being a part of the agricultural activities of a district is its prosperity. Silk-worms produce the most valuable of all Japanese exports. Japan sends abroad more raw silk than any other country. [[139]]
It is in the middle of the country that sericulture chiefly nourishes. The smallest output of raw silk is from the most northerly prefecture and from the prefecture in the extreme south-west of the mainland. But human aptitude plays its part as well as climate. The Japanese hand is a wonderful piece of mechanism—look at the hands of the next Japanese you meet—and in sericulture its delicate touch is used to the utmost advantage.
The gains of sericulture are not made without corresponding sacrifices. Silk-worm raising is infinitely laborious. The constant picking of leaves, the bringing of them home and the chopping and supplying of these leaves to the smallest of all live stock and the maintenance of a proper temperature in the rearing-chamber day and night mean unending work. The silk-worms may not be fed less than four or five times in the day; in their early life they are fed seven or eight times. This is the feeding system for spring caterpillars. Summer and autumn breeds must have two or three more meals. The men and women who attend to them, particularly the women, are worn out by the end of the season. "The women have only three hours' rest in the twenty-four hours," I remember someone saying. "They never loose their obi."
When the caterpillars emerge from the tiny, pin-head-like eggs of the silk-worm moth they are minute creatures. Therefore the mulberry leaves are chopped very fine indeed. They are chopped less and less fine as the silk-worms grow, until finally whole leaves and leaves adhering to the shoots are given. Some rearers are skilful enough to supply from the very beginning leaves or leaves still on the shoots. The caterpillars live in bamboo trays or "beds" on racks. In the house of one farmer I found caterpillars about three-quarters of an inch long occupying fifteen trays. When the silk-worms grew larger they would occupy two hundred trays.
The eggs, when not produced on the farm, are bought adhering to cards about a foot square. There are usually marked on these cards twenty-eight circles about 2 ins. in diameter. Each circle is covered with eggs. The eggs come to be arranged in these convenient circles because, as will be explained later on, the moths have been induced to lay within bottomless round tins placed on the circles on the cards. The eggs are sticky when laid and therefore adhere. In a year 35,000,000 cards, containing about a billion eggs, are produced on some 10,000 egg-raising farms.
The eggs—they are called "seed"—are hatched in the spring (end of April—as soon as the first leaves of the mulberry are available—to the middle of May), summer (June and July) and autumn (August and October). It takes from three to seven days—according to temperature—for the "seed" to hatch, and from twenty to thirty-two days—according to temperature—for the silk-worms to reach maturity. Half the hatching is done in spring. In one farmer's house I visited in the spring season I found that he had hatched fifty cards of "seed." From the birth of the caterpillars to the formation of cocoons the casualties must be reckoned at ten per cent. daily. Not more than eighty-five per cent. of the cocoons which are produced are of good quality. The remainder are misshapen or contain dead chrysalises. As there are more than a thousand breeds of silk-worm, all cocoons are not of the same shape and colour. Some are oval; some are shaped like a monkey nut. Most are white but some are yellow and others yellow tinted.
In the whole world of stock raising there is nothing more remarkable than the birth of silk-worm moths. The cocoons on the racks in the farmer's loft are covered by sheets of newspaper in which a number of round holes about three-quarters of an inch in diameter have been cut. When the moths emerge from their cocoons they seek these openings towards the light and creep through to the upper side of the newspaper. For newly born things they come up through these openings with astonishing ardour. In body and wings the moths are flour white. White garments are suitable for the babe, the bride and the dead, and the moth perfected in the cocoon is arrayed not only for its birth but for bridal and death, which come upon it in swift succession. The male as well as the female is in white and is distinguishable by being somewhat smaller in size. On the newspaper the few males who have not found partners are executing wild dances, their wings whirring the while at a mad pace. When from time to time they cease dancing they haunt the holes in the paper through which the newly born moths emerge. When a female appears a male instantly rushes towards her, or rather the two creatures rush towards one another, and they are at once locked in a fast embrace. Immediately their wings cease to flutter, the only commotion on the newspaper being made by the unmated males. In a hatching-room these males on the stacks of trays are so numerous that the place is filled with the sound of the whirring of their wings. The down flies from their wings to such an extent that one continually sneezes. The spectacle of the stacks of trays covered by these ecstatic moths is remarkable, but still more remarkable is the thrilling sense of the power of the life-force in a supposedly low form of consciousness.
The wonder of the scene is missed, no doubt, by most of those who are habituated to it. From time to time weary, stolid-looking girls or old women lift down the trays and run their hands over them in order to pick up superfluous male moths. Sometimes the male moths are walking about the newspaper, sometimes they are torn callously from the embrace of their mates. The fate of the male moths is to be flung into a basket where they stay until the next day, when perhaps some of them may be mated again. The novice is impressed not only by the ruthlessness of this treatment but by the way in which the whole loft is littered by male moths which have fallen or have been flung on the floor and are being trampled on.
The female moths, when their partners have been removed, are taken downstairs in newspapers in order to be put into the little tin receptacles where the eggs are to be laid. On a tray there are spread out a number of egg cards with, as before mentioned, twenty-eight printed circles on each of them. On these circles are placed the twenty-eight half-inch-high bottomless enclosures of tin. Some one takes up a handful of moths and scatters them over the tins. Some of the moths fall neatly into a tin apiece. Others are helped into the little enclosures in which, to do them credit, they are only too willing to take up their quarters. The curious thing is the way in which each moth settles down within her ring. Indeed from the moment of her emergence from the cocoon until now she has never used her wings to fly. Nor did the male moth seem to wish to fly. The sexes concentrate their whole attention on mating. After that the female thinks of nothing but laying eggs. Almost immediately after she is placed within her little tin she begins to deposit eggs, and within a few hours the circle of the card is covered.
Food is given neither to the females nor to the males. Those which are not kept in reserve for possible use on the second day are flung out of doors. When the female moth has deposited her eggs she also is destroyed. [[140]] The shoji of the breeding and egg-laying rooms permit only of a diffused light. The discarded moths are cast out into the brilliant sunshine where they are eaten by poultry or are left to die and serve as manure.
Sericulture is always a risky business. There is first the risk of a fall in prices. Just before I reached Japan prices were so low that many people despaired of being able to continue the business, and shortly after I left there was a crisis in the silk trade in which numbers of silk factories failed. At the time I was last in a silk-worm farmer's house cocoons were worth from 5 to 6 yen per kwan of 8¼ lbs. From 8 to 10 kwan of cocoons could be expected from a single egg card. Eggs were considered to be at a high price when they were more than 2 yen per card. The risks of the farmer are increased when he launches out and buys mulberry leaves to supplement those produced on his own land. Sometimes the price of leaves is so high that farmers throw away some of their silk-worms. The risks run by the man who grows mulberries beyond his own leaf requirements on the chance of selling are also considerable.
Beyond the risk of falling prices or of a short mulberry crop there is in sericulture the risk of disease. One advantage of the system in which the eggs are laid in circles on the cards instead of all over them is that if any disease should be detected the affected areas can be easily cut out with a knife and destroyed. Disease is so serious a matter that silk-worm breeding, as contrasted with silk-worm raising, is restricted to those who have obtained licences. The silk-worm breeder is not only licensed. His silkworms, cocoons and mother moths are all in turn officially examined. Breeding "seeds" were laid one year by about 33,000,000 odd moths; common "seeds" by about 948,000,000.
Of recent years enormous progress has been made in combating disease. I have spoken of how a silk-worm district may be recognised by the structure of the farm houses and the prosperity of the farmers, but another striking sign of sericulture is the trays and mats lying in the sun in front of farmers' dwellings or on the hot stones of the river banks in order to get thoroughly purified from germs. It is illustrative of the progress that has been made under scientific influence, that whereas twenty years ago a sericulturist would reckon on losing his silk-worm harvest completely once in five years, such a loss is now rare. Scientific instructors have their difficulties in Japan as in the rural districts of other countries, but the people respect authority, and they are accustomed to accept instruction given in the form of directions. Also the Japanese have an unending interest in the new thing. Further, there is a continual desire to excel for the national advantage and in emulation of the foreigner. The advance in scientific knowledge in the rural districts is remarkable, because it is in such contrast with the primitive lives of the country people. Picture the surprise of British or American farmers were they brought face to face with thermometers, electric light and a working knowledge of bacteriology in the houses of peasants in breech clouts.
It was while I was trying to learn something of the sericultural industry that I had the opportunity of visiting a noteworthy institution. It is noteworthy, among other reasons, because I seldom met a foreigner in Japan who knew of its existence. It is the great Ueda Sericultural College in the prefecture of Nagano. I was struck not only by its extent but by its systematised efficiency. On a level with the director's eyes was a motto in large lettering, "Be diligent. Develop your virtues."
TEACHERS OF A VILLAGE SCHOOL.
GIRLS CARRYING BALES OF RICE.
SERICULTURAL SCHOOL STUDENTS.
The Institute devotes itself to mulberries, silk-worms and silk manufacture. There are 200 students, as many as it will hold. The young men become teachers of sericulture, advisers in mills and experts of co-operative sericultural societies. The institution, in addition to the fees it receives and its earnings from its own products, some 33,000 yen in all, has an annual Government subsidy of about 114,000 yen. There are other sericultural colleges doing similar work in Tokyo and Kyoto, and there is also in the capital the Imperial Sericultural Experiment Station (with a staff of 87), where I saw all sorts of research work in progress. This experiment station has half a dozen branches scattered up and down the silk districts.
SOME OF THE SILK FACTORIES IN KAMISUWA.
VILLAGE ASSEMBLY-ROOM.
At Ueda I went through corridors and rooms, sterilised thrice a year, to visit professors engaged in a variety of enquiries. One professor had turned into a kind of beef tea the pupæ thrown away when the cocoons are unwound; another had made from the residual oil two or three kinds of soap. The usual thing at a silk factory is for the pupæ, which are exposed to view when the silk is unrolled from the scalded cocoons, to lie about in horrid heaps until they are sold as manure or carp food. The professor declared that his product was equal to a third of the total weight of the pupæ utilised, and was sure that it could be sold at a fifteenth of the price of Western beef essences. The Director of the College had tried the product with his breakfast for a fortnight and avowed that during the experiment he was never so perky.
It was a pleasure to look into the well-kept dormitories of the students, where there was evidence, in books, pictures and athletic material, of a strenuous life. The young men are made fit not only by judō, fencing, archery, tennis and general athletics, but by being sent up the mountains on Sundays. The men are kept so hard that at the open fencing contest twice a year the visitors are usually beaten. The director quoted to me Roosevelt's "Sweat and be saved."
From men we went to machines and mulberries. I inspected all sorts of hot chambers for killing cocoons. I saw, in rooms draped in black velvet like the pictured scenes at a beheading, silk testing for lustre and colour. I gazed with respect on many kinds of winding and weaving machinery. Then, going out into the experiment fields, I strode through more varieties of mulberry than I had imagined to exist. There are supposed to be 500 sorts in the country but many are no doubt duplicates. The varieties differ so much in shape and texture of leaf that the novice would not take some of them for mulberries.
It was held that it would not be difficult to increase the mulberry area in Japan by another quarter of a million acres. The yield of leaves might be raised by 3,300 lbs. per acre if the right sort of bushes were always grown and the right sort of treatment were given to them and to the soil. As to the additional labour needed for an extended sericulture, the annual increase in the population of Japan would provide it. I was told that "the technics of sericulture are sure to improve." It would be easy to raise the yield 2 kwan per egg card for the whole country. Within a seven-year period the production of cocoons per egg card had become 20 per cent. better. The talk was of doubling the present yield of cocoons. The "proper encouragement" needed for doubling the production of cocoons was more technical instruction and more co-operative societies. There had been a continual rise in the world's demand for silk and there was no need to fear "artificial silk." "People who buy it often come to appreciate natural silk." And I read in an official publication that "the climate of Japan is suitable for the cultivation of mulberry trees from south-west Formosa to Hokkaido in the north."