Japan In Focus

Tokushima: Silkworms Spin Thread onto Frames to Make Silk Fans

The Yomiuri Shimbun

15:28 JST, November 8, 2025

NARUTO, Tokushima — Sanyuan is a workshop where fans are crafted by raising silkworms on bamboo frames in Naruto, Tokushima Prefecture.

Mieko Tomoeda, 68, started the workshop for small articles at her home after she retired from her job at the city office about 10 years ago. She learned how to raise silkworms in Gunma Prefecture and other places where silk cultivation thrives.

At Sanyuan, silkworms are raised on mulberry leaves and about 10 of them are put on each bamboo fan frame. It takes about three days for them to cover the frame with the silk they produce.

Courtesy of Mieko Tomoeda
Fans made with silk extracted from silkworms

Tomoeda can create about 60 fans in a good year, but has been able to make only about 10 fans so far this year, partly because of the poor growth of silkworms amid the intense summer heat.

The fans are sold at roadside rest areas and other locations in the city.

According to the prefectural government and others, sericulture once thrived in the prefecture, but it has been in decline since around the 1980s. “I hope I can preserve the history of sericulture for the future generations in my own way,” Tomoeda said.