Acquiring advanced Italian technologies

Abstract

This chapter investigates some of the consequences of Japan's decision to open to international trade in 1859. Initially only three ports were opened, including the newly created harbour of Yokohama, not far from Edo, renamed Tokyo after the Restauration of 1868. For several decades the country had very little to sell abroad. Among the few exportable goods offered by Japan, silk products were at the top. Due to the deadly silkworm epidemics in European silk countries, both silk threads (commercially known as raw silk) and silkworm eggs were in high demand. From the early 1860s, Western traders flocked to Yokohama to buy silk items, including silkworm eggs which were vital to keep European silk production going. Italy (including the areas that were under Austrian rule for some of the period under review) was at the time the second largest world producer of silk threads after China, exporting its high-quality raw silk to the best European and US textile factories. This chapter analyzes how highly qualified Italian experts, known as semai from the Italian silk jargon seme (seed) used for silkworm eggs, soon became the single most important group of silkworm egg traders in Yokohama. Thanks to them, Italy became an important partner in the Japanese foreign trade sector.