Word: silkworms
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...love life of the silkworm had become a matter of grave national concern in Japan. Before the war, Japan had controlled about 85% of the world's silk market. Now she had to compete with U.S. nylon. Last week the patter of tiny feet in mating trays of Tokyo's Imperial Sericulture Experiment Station bore witness to the frantic race between Japanese entomologists and U.S. chemists...
Honorable Silkworm. Like any modan (Japanese adaptation of "modern") city, Tokyo was dotted with open parks. But the monuments in the parks rarely commemorated historic figures. More frequently they were sacred to deified animals and trees. In the center of the city was a shrine to Inari, the god of harvests, and his servant, the fox. Inari & Fox did a mail-order business (literally) in charms against witchcraft. The cotton plant and the silkworm were annually feted because they gave their lives for humanity...
Things should be calmer in 1944. But Marvin still gets emergency calls-a sugar grower needs a shipment of live frogs from Argentina to eat insects menacing the sugar crop; a silk concern wants a shipment of silkworm eggs from Turkey. He turned down a request to ship perfume essence, worth $1,500 a Ib. But when the U.S. onion crop turned out poorly, 61,600 pounds of onion seeds were flown in from Argentina...