The first operation in the manufacture is that of ginning, which is conducted by means of a small implement called the rokuro, or windlass.  This consists of two wooden rollers revolving in opposite directions, fixed on a frame about 12 inches high and 6 inches in width, standing on a small platform, the dimensions of which slightly exceed that of the frame.  The operator, usually a woman, kneels on one side of the frame, holding it firm by her weight, works the roller with one hand, and with the other presses the cotton, which she takes from a heap at her side, between the rollers.  The cotton passes through, falling in small lumps on the other side of the frame, while the seeds fall on that nearest the woman.  The utmost weight of unginned cotton that one woman working an entire day of ten hours can give is from 8 lb. to 10 lb., which gives, in the end, only a little over 3 lb. weight of ginned cotton, and her daily earnings amount to less than 2d.  A few saw gins have been introduced into Japan during the last fifteen years, but no effort has been made to secure their distribution throughout the country districts.  After ginning, a certain proportion of the seed is reserved for the agricultural requirements of the following year, and the remainder is sent to oil factories, where it is pressed, and yields about one-eighth of its capacity in measurement in oil, the refuse, after pressing, being used for manure.  The ginning having been finished in the country districts, the cotton is either packed in bales and sent to the dealers in the cities, or else the next process, that of carding, is at once proceeded with on the spot.

This process is almost as primitive as that of the ginning.  A long bamboo, sufficiently thin to be flexible, is fastened at its base to a pillar or the corner of a small room.  It slopes upward into the center of the room, and from its upper end a hempen cord is suspended.  To this is fastened the “bow,” an instrument made of oak, about five feet in length, two inches in circumference, and shaped like a ladle.  A string of coarse catgut is tightly stretched from end to end of the bow, and this is beaten with a small mallet made of willow, bound at the end with a ring of iron or brass.  The raw cotton, in its coarse state, is piled on the floor just underneath the string of the bow.  The string is then rapidly beaten with the mallet, and as it rises and falls it catches the rough cotton, cuts it to the required degree of fineness, removes impurities from it, and flings it to the side of the operator, where it falls on a hempen net stretched over a four-cornered wooden frame.  The spaces of the net are about one-quarter of an inch square, and through these any particles of dust that may still have adhered to the cotton fall to the floor, leaving piled on top of the net the pure cotton wool in its finished state.  This work is always performed by a man, and by assiduous toil throughout a long day, one man can card from ten to twenty pounds weight