History
In 1639, the Matsudaira clan became rulers of the Kanō Domain and brought with them umbrella artisans from their former home in the Akashi Domain (modern-day Hyōgo Prefecture). By 1756, the umbrellas became more fully developed and the modern shapes and designs first appeared.
During the end of the Edo period, approximately 520,000 umbrellas were shipped north to Edo each year. By the beginning of the Meiji period, production increased to 12 million umbrellas each year and international sales first began on a widescale. Production continued to increase until its peak during the Shōwa period, which 15 million umbrellas being produced each year, but modern production has dropped to just tens of thousands of umbrellas.
Read more about this topic: Gifu Umbrellas
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The history is always the same the product is always different and the history interests more than the product. More, that is, more. Yes. But if the product was not different the history which is the same would not be more interesting.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)
“As History stands, it is a sort of Chinese Play, without end and without lesson.”
—Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)
“The foregoing generations beheld God and nature face to face; we, through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe? Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs?”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)