Japan’s first industrial silk mill was established in 1872 with the help of French engineers, coincidentally in Tomioka, the city where I was born and raised. The economy of my hometown region depended on the silk industry for over a century. My childhood memories are filled with mulberry trees and silkworm sheds; I even kept a silkworm as a pet. As these products became successful exports, their industrialization accelerated, leading to the decline of traditional local craftsmanship and the spread of Western technologies across the country. Today, inexpensive production in China dominates the global silk market. Yet this now-defunct industry was a crucial point of departure for Japan’s modernization in relation to the Western world—effectively forming another Silk Road, this time by sea.
By tracing the historical trajectory of this maritime Silk Road from my hometown to Europe—partly to the Netherlands, where I am currently based—Silkworm Madcap examines the paradoxes of Japanese modernization under Western power and influence. In narrating the enduring legacy of these paradoxes from my present position as a Japanese woman living in Amsterdam, I seek to understand how the late-capitalist world I have inherited came into being. At a time when global systems of production, labor, value, and even war profoundly shape our daily lives while remaining difficult to see or understand, I find it important to make my story of the Silk Road visible through a personal narrative shaped by humor and poetic expression. I plan to travel and film the historical site and compose the film narrative. In addition to that, I experiment with selling vintage kimono woven from traditional Japanese silk in Europe, investigating both their current value and the exoticized perceptions surrounding them in action.