Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1890-07-10
SCIENTIFIC FIREWORKS.
An Industry in Which China and Japan
Are Supreme.

Although the west has long sur
passed the east in most of the features
of civilized life, says the n. Y. Star, it
has never yet approached the latter in
the manufacture of scientific fireworks.
Here China, and more especially Japan,
are masters whom we can scarcely imi-
tate, much less excel. In speaking of
this superiority of his race, Isoto Yat-
zomo,a japanese merchant of this city,
said:
Our skill in making fireworks is
largely due to the fact that the business
remains in the hands of the same fami-
ly generation after generation. In the
United States and England the son of
a rich brewer or retired merchant be-
comes lawyer or man of leisure,
clergyman or doctor. In Japan it is
different. A boy is brought up to take
pride in his fathers vocation and to
become his successor upon the latter's
death. The largest pyrotechnic estab-
lishment in Japan has been owned by
one family for al least 200 years. 1t IS
the same with the experts and artists
who are employed in the business.
They train their sons to be their assist
ants, their partners, and likewise their
successors. The result is always salts
factory from a pecuniary point of
view. Every artist during his career
will invent or discover something new,
which he transmits to his son as m
heirloom, instead of patenting it and
making it public prop Lrty, as is done
in America. In this way an esprit de
corps. something like the guild spirit of
old London. is created, which inures as
much to the benefits of the business as
to the persons who make livelihood
out of it. Just as you have families
here who are noted for their COM
mercial, intellectual, or political
achievements, generation after genera
ton, so in Japan we have families
who have been famous for a century
or more as manufacturers, inventors,
or designers of artistic fireworks.
"There is nothing extraordinarily
new, but any number of small novel;
ties, in the pyrotechnic world. The
coming season will see great increase
in eccentric and grotesque balloons.
Next Fourth of July it will be a simple
matter for every patriot to send up
menagerie almost as large as Noah's
ark, showing in the air all sorts of
animals, birds, and fish. These bal
looms are made of a peculiar kind of
paper, light as tissue, as strong as the
heaviest MANILA, and is perfectly air
tight. The secret of its strength and
texture is owned by only few manu-
facturers. To keep them in position
they are weighted with little pieces of
metallic lead in very much the same
fashion as are ladies riding habits.
Americans as yet do not appreciate
these balloons or how to use them.
They send them off without any regard
to the weather, whether calm or windy,
wet or dry. They should be sent off
only in calm, dry weather, when they
will remain overhead in the heavens
for hours. Any one cooperating with
his friends and neighbors can have. at
a trifling cost, the skies filed with
humorous or graceful figures, which
are not alone pleasure to grown folks,
but an educational display to the little
ones.
More remarkable and more ingeni-
Gus much than these balloons are what
you call day fireworks. These are real
ly smokeworks, in which a bomb shot
upward explodes in midair, sending
out lines and figures in vari-colored
smokes. Our Japanese artists have
worked for two centuries nnon this
subject and can do things that seem
almost miraculous to occidentals.
They can produce snakes, cobwebs,
parallel lines either vertical or hori-
zontai, waves, and zigzags, circles.
ellipses, balls, squares, diamonds, and
loops. A few have gone so far as to
produce figures. that can be recognized
as human or animal shapes their max
ers designed. These are exceptions,
however, and can not be relied upon.
The policy of the government is to
favor the industry, both by exemption
from taxation as we'll as by rewards
and other practical recognitions to
manufacturers and artists. We have
no fear of competition, as the chief
element in the work is labor, and that
costs so little in Japan as to be inap-
preciable. A bright girl can be hired
for few cents day with us, where a
man at S. would be required in New
York;