Following on from the previous article, this is a story about mosquito repellent in Japan. INABANA.JP might be the only place in the world that writes about such a trivial subject as mosquito repellents.
Well, please bear with me. (^_^;)
130 years ago Ueyama Eiichiro succeeded in developing an easy-to-use mosquito repellent that broke away from the inefficient mosquito repellent methods of the past.
However, although the product was finally launched, Ueyama was still not satisfied with its performance.
Extending the length of the mosquito repellent incense would increase the time it smoked, but it would also make it more fragile and difficult to handle.
Conversely, if you increase the thickness while maintaining the length, the amount of smoke will increase, but the time spent smoking will not. The risk of burns will also increase.
Is there any way to extend the flow of the incense while maintaining ease of handling? Ueyama consulted with incense burner craftsmen and devised a variety of solutions, but no good solution could be found. Ueyama spent his days in agony.
Ueyama Eiichiro and his wife Yuki
One day, however, an idea came to him that could be seen as a breakthrough. It was Ueyama’s wife Yuki who came up with the idea.
Yuki saw a snake coiled around a snake in the garden and suggested, “Why don’t we make a long spiral incense stick?
Convinced by his wife’s suggestion that the problem could be solved, Ueyama immediately set about developing a spiral-shaped incense stick.
Again, however, development proved difficult. It was difficult to form the long, thin incense sticks into a uniform spiral and they were not suitable for mass production.
So we made a spiral mould and pressed the paste incense into it to form it, but this time when we removed the hardened incense from the mould, it did not pull out well and the incense broke into pieces.
In the end, they settled on a manufacturing method of wrapping a long, thin incense stick around a wick and shaping it, and since then the spiral-shaped mosquito coil has become the standard for mosquito repellent tools in Japan. It took a total of seven years from prototype to commercialisation. (1902) (Mosquito coils are now manufactured by the punching method.)
The burn time was extended from 40 minutes to six hours, and the product evolved into a sufficiently practical product. The whirlpool mosquito coils received great acclaim from the public and later became a hit product that was exported in large quantities overseas.
One man’s insatiable research spirit and passion produced an effective protection against the wonders of nature…
Now, when using spiral mosquito coils, you will often use the metal stand that comes with them, but you will also often use a dish or container.
Incense sticks produce ash when they burn, so it is better to have a dish to catch it, and it is safer to have a cover to prevent unexpected burns or fires.
The container can be anything as long as it holds the incense well, has good ventilation and is non-combustible, but in Japan, containers with designs based on certain animal motifs are well known.
Today, it is rare to actually see a container with that animal design in use, but for some reason, pictures and cartoons featuring mosquito coils have a high probability of depicting that animal-shaped container. It was probably a common design more than 60 years ago.
The animal is a pig.
Why was a pig used in the design of mosquito coil containers?
I wondered about it myself, but did not know its origin, but through research I have recently found out the reason.
Originally, they were ‘wild boars’, not pigs.
Although modern people do not have much knowledge or awareness of this, in older times the wild boar was considered the ‘deity of Hibuse'(deity of fire protection).
The Buddhist patron goddess Marishiten is a deity. She is a goddess, but was also worshipped by the Japanese warrior class as a god of valour and victory.
The wild boar was considered to be the messenger of Marishiten because of its fierce and direct rushing nature. As Marishiten was also the god of fire, the wild boar, his messenger, was also thought to be an animal that controlled fire, and as a result was regarded as the god of fire prevention.
Mosquito coils were an innovative mosquito repellent, but they also posed a fire hazard, so it is likely that the boar figure was incorporated into the container with the hope of preventing fire.
What was initially a wild boar may have changed in design towards a pig that was closer to human life and more familiar…
Mosquito coils are used less frequently in today’s Japanese summer. Safer sheet and liquid mosquito repellents are more common.
However, the enthusiasm and ingenuity of our ancestors, who were passionate about taking on the battle between mankind and mosquitoes that lasted for more than a thousand years, is valuable and can be used as a reference today.
I am thinking about this while feeling nostalgic for the smell of mosquito coils I smelt as a child…