Why Silk, Now? — Reviving a Vanishing Craft in Rural Japan
Japan once had more than 2.2 million households raising silkworms. Today, that number is just over a hundred—fewer than one in ten thousand of what it once was. So why would I choose, now, to take up this vanishing craft with my own hands? Let me tell you.
Silk in the Age of Myth
The history of silk in Japan is astonishingly old.
In the Kojiki—Japan's oldest chronicle, compiled more than 1,300 years ago—silkworms are said to have been born from the head of a slain goddess. The Nihon Shoki, its companion chronicle, speaks of the silkworm as well. In other words, sericulture was woven into the very story of how this country came to be.
That thread reached even the imperial court. Successive Empresses of Japan have raised silkworms with their own hands—a tradition unbroken from the Meiji era to this day. Raising silkworms is rooted that deeply in the culture of this land.
The White Thread That Built Modern Japan
Silk became more than culture in the Meiji era, in the late 1800s.
Raw silk was modern Japan's single greatest export. It crossed the seas, earned foreign currency, and that wealth powered the nation's modernization. It is no accident that the Tomioka Silk Mill is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site—proof that this thread was once the very backbone of Japan.
At its peak, more than 2.2 million households raised silkworms. Every village had its mulberry fields, and when early summer came, whole families were swept up in caring for the worms. The silkworm was honored with a title of respect—"o-kaiko-sama," the honorable silkworm—and lived right alongside the people.
And Now, Barely a Hundred Farms
Those 2.2 million households have dwindled to just over a hundred.
In numbers, that is less than one ten-thousandth of what it once was. A practice that spread across all of Japan is now all but gone.
Its decline had many causes, not one:
・Global price competition — against cheap imported raw silk, domestic silk could no longer compete.
・An aging workforce — those with the skills grew fewer, and no one came to inherit them.
・Changing ways of life — as fewer people wore kimono day to day, silk lost its stage.
・The rise of synthetic fibers — cheap, easy materials took silk's place.
Each was a tide too vast for any single hand to hold back. And so, quietly, sericulture faded.
Will It Simply Disappear?
Honestly? Left alone, it will vanish.
Once the people are gone, the skills go with them—and so do the mulberry fields, the tools, and even the words to describe it all. Reviving a craft once broken is far harder than you might imagine.
But—should we really let it end this way?
Something that has endured since the age of myth, that carried modern Japan on its back, that people revered as "o-kaiko-sama"—snuffed out in our own generation. When I thought of that, I simply could not look away.
In Nomura, the Town of Silk and Milk
The town where we live—Nomura, in Seiyo City, Ehime Prefecture, on the island of Shikoku—was once known as "the Town of Silk and Milk."
Silk, from sericulture; milk, from dairy farming. This is a land that built its livelihood on thread and on milk, and that memory still lingers here, real and warm.
The light has not yet gone out.
There is still land where mulberry can grow, still people who know the craft, still a town that remembers the beauty of a cocoon. Just before it reaches absolute zero, we can still reach out our hands once more.
Why Sericulture, Now?
That is exactly why it must be now.
If nothing is done for another ten years, it truly will reach zero. And so, in this very moment when it is fading, there is meaning in beginning. To set this craft—reduced to less than one ten-thousandth—turning once more upon this soil is not simply a return to the past.
It is to reconnect a single thread, unbroken since the age of myth, to the era yet to come. That is why ZEROSPHERE begins with silk.
In this journal, I will record every step of that challenge, cocoon by cocoon. I hope you will stay, and watch it unfold.
ZEROSPHERE / The Keeper of Zero