![]() Lessons from this highly specific case present a world in itself, but those should resonate broadly among analysts, and not only those of historical inclination. ![]() The work of examining eggs to prevent the spread of disease is one important aspect of sericulture in modern Japan. This approach brings into wider view understudied angles that help enrich previous understandings of the US-Japan tensions that ensnarled the history of the industrialization of silk production and trade. Thinking historically through Bombyx allows for the investigation of multiple issues, from the craft of silkworm husbandry and the production of scientific knowledge, to matters of safety, national security, and consumer culture. The development of scientific interests in the hygiene of Bombyx mori shows how investments in human skills connected to the cultivation of the moth species were tied to the production of unease about the growing presence of Japanese fibers in the US textiles market. As Americans accepted raw silk fibers with increasing enthusiasm from Europe, China, and Japan, the relationships among humans, moths (including their juvenile forms), and microbes gradually changed and facilitated the mass production of raw silk that Japan would export to the United States by the early 1900s. The new technicians subjected to this scientific training at relatively new Japanese sericulture experiment stations and institutes were examined for their performance just as much as the moths themselves were. These moths, represented in the form of abstract smears, carried potential signs of disease that could decimate entire stocks. The slides displayed tissue samples from mother moths that had just laid fertilized eggs. Seated at desks placed uniformly next to glass-paned windows, young women or men looked into their microscopes, careful not to cast any shadow that could obstruct their fields of view, illuminated by sunlight. These pupils would form a line of defense, standing watch against contagion. In Japan in the late 1800s, a category of student emerged to partake in “egg examinations” that aimed to prevent the spread of disease in the domesticated silkworm species Bombyx mori. The path of the parachute began much earlier, in fact, before the threat of war loomed in the Pacific. That sign of a life possibly saved, that half sphere of air enclosed by silk, drifted into the center of a US boycott against Japan between 19. Made of little more than light, strong cloth and string, the tug of an actual World War II soldier’s parachute ripcord would allow the fabric to billow out and bring him to a soft landing-ideally to a place of safety. It represents one of the most soft and simple of combat toys, and, for the writer, it perhaps reminded him of more innocent days. Even if you abused it, whacked it really hard-gracefully, lightly, it floated back to you.Īmerican writer John McPhee once described with great nostalgia a toy silk parachute that his mother gave him in the 1940s. Always, it floated back to you-silkily, beautifully-to start over and float back again. Folded just so, the parachute never failed.
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