2020 Volume 28 Pages 33-49
Two different types of western silk reeling system played an important role in development of Japanese silk manufacturing industry in modern Japan. One of those is Italian type silk-crossing system and the other is French type silk-crossing system. In this study, we focused on the Italian type silk-crossing system and examined 68 academic documents and technical books for raw silk production which published from the Meiji era, the Taisho era to the Showa era to analyze changes of the technology. And we compared with the Italian type silk-reeling process and French type silk-reeling process to realize a fundamental difference between two systems. As a result, Italian type silk-reeling process in Japan is the same as French type silk-reeling process, it turned out that factors of the technological transitions were attributable to adaptation of Japanese silk mills to the introduced western style technology, quality of raw material cocoon and changes of the global market structure and needs. Furthermore, based on the description of “Kenneru-shiki Tomoyori-shiki Hikaku shiken” (Meiji 39) etc., we analyzed the relationship between ratio of crossing density, efficiency, and quality, which are parameters that indicate the process condition, and confirmed the feature differences between the two mechanisms. From these results, we found that the Italian type silk-reeling process was a mechanism that had the ability to change and adapt flexibly to changes in the market structure. Therefore, it was possible to consider that the French type silk-reeling process could not maintain the superiority in which both efficiency and quality were taken into consideration compared to the Italian type silk-reeling process, and that it led to the disappearance at the end of the Taisho era.
