Page:Eliza Scidmore--Jinrikisha days in Japan.djvu/271



remains the home of the arts, although no longer the seat of government. For centuries it ministered to the luxury of the two courts, which gathered together and encouraged hosts of artists and artisans, whose descendants live and work in the old home. Kioto silks and crapes, Kioto fans, porcelains, bronzes, lacquer, carvings, and embroideries preserve their quality and fame, and are dearer and better than any other.

Silk is the most valuable article of export which Japan produces, and raw silk to the value of thirty millions of yens goes annually to foreign consumers, while the home market buys nearly seven millions of yens’ worth of manufactured fabrics. The Nishijin quarter of Kioto and the Josho district, north-west of Tokio, are the great silk centres of Japan, and any silk merchant, fingering a crape gown, will tell instantly which of the rival districts produced it. Recently Kofu, west of Tokio, and Hachioji, twenty miles south, have become important centres of manufacture as well. The silk market has its fluctuations, its panics, and its daily quotations by cable; but raw silk has so inherent a value that it is a good collateral security at any bank, and the silk-broker is as well established and important a personage in the mercantile world of the Orient as the stock-broker in the Occident. Next to specie or gems, silk is the most valuable of commodities in proportion to its bulk, the cargo of a single steamer often representing a value of two million dollars 255