Young Japanese women known as joko endured brutal sixteen-hour shifts inside the sweltering Tomioka Silk Mill inhaling toxic fibers to single-handedly finance the rapid…

The women behind Japan’s first modern silk mill

When the Tomioka Silk Mill opened in 1872, Japan’s Meiji government wanted more than a factory. It wanted to show that the country could use modern machinery to produce silk fine and consistent enough to compete in overseas markets. The mill brought mechanized silk reeling—the process of unwinding filaments from boiled cocoons—into a large, government-run workplace.

The young women who operated its machines were often called jokō, a term for female factory workers. Many came from rural households. Their labor turned a labor-intensive craft into a more organized industrial process, while the mill also trained workers who could carry its methods elsewhere.

Silk connected factory work to national power

Silk was one of Japan’s most important exports. Selling it abroad brought in foreign currency that could help pay for imported machinery, technology, and other goods as the country industrialized. That made women’s factory work part of a much larger economic transformation—but silk earnings were not a direct, one-to-one payment for particular ships or military campaigns.

The government’s patriotic appeals gave the work a national purpose, but that did not erase the personal costs. Factory life separated many recruits from home and placed them under strict workplace routines. Conditions differed across mills and over time, so claims that every Tomioka worker endured identical shifts, starvation wages, or a particular disease burden flatten a more complicated history.

A model factory, and a lasting labor legacy

Tomioka’s significance lies partly in what it demonstrated: industrial technology depended on workers who could operate it, and women formed a substantial part of Japan’s early factory labor force. The mill helped make silk production more systematic and helped spread industrial skills beyond its own walls.

The striking link is therefore not that each worker personally financed an empire. It is that a product made through thousands of women’s hours at the reel helped connect rural labor to export income, industrial growth, and the expanding ambitions of the Meiji state.