Japanese silk

Silk from East Asia had declined in importance after the smuggling of silkworms from China to the Byzantine Empire, however, in 1845, an epidemic affecting European silkworms caused by a microsporidia Nosema bombycis, grasserie, caused by a virus, flacherie devastated the European silk industry.[2]

This led to a demand for silk from China and Japan, where as late as the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Japanese exports competed directly with Chinese in the international market in such low value-added, labor-intensive products as raw silk.

Between 1850 and 1930, raw silk ranked as the leading export for both countries, accounting for 20%–40% of Japan’s total exports and 20%–30% of China’s.[3]

By the 1890s to the 1930s, Japanese silk exports had quadrupled making Japan at that time the largest silk exporter in the world; mostly due to the economic reforms during the Meiji restoration and the decline of the Qing dynasty, which led to rapid industrialization of Japan whilst the Chinese industries stagnated.[4]

During World War II, embargoes against Japan had led to adoption of synthetic materials such as Nylon,[5] which led to the decline of the Japanese silk industry and its position as the lead silk exporter of the world. Today, China exports the largest volume of raw silk in the world due to its economic reforms in the 1980s. [6]

• Antheraea yamamai, wild silk moth species in Japan