What happens
Silk, the Golden Thread, an episode of The Pacific Story first broadcast on March 3, 1946, traces the history of silk from its origins in ancient China. It follows the spread of silk along the Silk Road through the caravan city of Lulan and the Roman world, then tells how Chinese silkworms reached Korea and Japan. The episode describes how Japan built a major silk export trade with the United States by 1929, and how American women came to depend on silk stockings. It then shows the trade being squeezed by tensions in the late 1930s and early 1940s, as Japan's silk exports dwindled under embargoes and the war. The episode closes on the postwar revival of silk production in Japan.
Ancient China, Lulan, Rome, Korea, Japan, the United States and Berlin, from ancient times to the postwar period.
Characters: Pat, Nick, Alvar, Wilbur, Sally, Mr. Mathuro, Princess Hilus
Listen for: The account of how the secret of silk spread from China through Korea to Japan, and how the trade shifted from the American market to embargo and wartime.
Written from the episode itself; it never gives away the ending. Every recording is remastered for the stream: cleaned of rumble, hiss and mains hum (and the old TV whine where we found it), then levelled in two passes to steady broadcast loudness, so one show is never quieter than the next.