TEXTILE INDUSTRY. 379 



the stage of a house industry, and never suppHed more than 

 the domestic need. This is the case also in the cities of the pro- 

 vinces of Kawachi and Harima, especially of Sakai and Himeji, 

 which have the largest cotton industry. The Riukiu Islands 

 furnish cotton materials, usually white checks on a blue ground, 

 which are very popular on account of their strength and durability. 

 The looms at Morioka in the North supply a considerable part 

 of the demand, but get their raw material from the southern 

 provinces. A cotton stuff from Narumi in the province of Owari, 

 and called Narumi-shibori is very celebrated. The dyeing of this 

 fabric is similar to that of Kanoko-shibori (which see), and many 

 houses at Arimatsu, a pretty village on the Tokaido, deal in it. 

 The industry has accom.plished all that was possible with the old 

 looms and other appliances, but with the opening of the country 

 to foreign competition, pan scarcely keep its position. 



However notable the performances of the nations belonging to 

 the Chinese system of civilization have been in the working up of 

 the before-mentioned and other vegetable textile stuffs, they have 

 never expended upon them any real art. 



It was in the nature of things that the silk manufacture should 

 have reached a far higher degree of perfection. The excellence 

 and remarkable fitness of the material for artistic treatment, and 

 the many centuries of effort had so operated, that even in the 

 Middle Ages, e.g.^ in Marco Polo's time, the Chinese could furnish 

 silk velvet, brocade, and other fine fabrics at moderately cheap 

 prices, not only to Western Asia, but also to the districts near 

 thereto. 



We read for instance, in the work of Antonio de Morga,^ that 

 the Chinese junks which came in the spring with the then ruling 

 north-western monsoon, from Macao, Canton, and other ports to 

 Manila, brought " raw silk, velvet, plain and also embroidered in 

 various patterns, silk brocade of many colours and patterns, and 

 ornamented with gold and silver (all the gold threads, however, were 

 of paper and spurious), damask, satin, taffetas, etc." 



Even more interesting is an item from Linschoten,- which ex- 

 pressly states that the Portuguese got silver from Japan in exchange 

 for silk wares, which they brought from Macao, although at the 

 time of the conquest of Malacca (151 1 A.D.) by Albuquerque, ac- 

 cording to a note made by the son of this Portuguese general, the 

 Gores (Japanese .'') brought already silk and brocade among other 

 things to Malacca.^ 



The apparent discrepancy between these two statements is 



^ "The Philippine Islands, Moluccas, Slam, Cambodia, Japan and China at 

 the close of the sixteenth century, by A. de Morga." London : Hakluyt Soc. 

 1868, p. 337 ff. 



2 " The voyage of J. H. van Linschoten to the East Indies, etc., from the old 

 English translation of 1598, by A. Burnell." Hakluyt Society, 1875, p. 147 ff- 



^ Crawford : "Descriptive Dictionary of the Malay Archipelago," p. 164. 



