Together with air and water, salt forms
a part of the vital triad of substances
essential for the maintenance of life.
The human body incorporates
a certain percentage of salt which plays a critical
role in controlling and regulating the water content
of living tissues and cells.
At a very early stage in history, long before the
chemistry of salt was understood, our remote ancestors
were already aware of its importance for themaintenance
of life and health; the origins of salt manufacture
and the salt trade appear to date back to the most
primitive stages of human civilization.
Natural salt is found in several forms, each of
which calls for different production techniques.
In many parts of the world, rock salt occurs, often
in massive undergrand deposits while saline lakes
and salt-flats on sites of former salt-lake beds
also provide plentiful salt supplies in some countries.
In warm or tropical coastal areas with relatively
low humidity, salt is often extracted from sea water
through natural evaporation.
By comparison with other heavily populated parts
of the world, Japan has always been at a disadvantage,
for it has no known rock-salt deposits or other
terrestrial salt sources, while its relatively low
median temperatures and heavy rainfall make reliance
on natural evaporation impracticable.
Until relatively recent times, importation of salt
from abroad was difficult if not impossible, due
to the island nation's distance from the continent.
Thus, Japan was forced to develop its own salt technology,
some aspects of which are not found elswhere.
In general, Japanese salt production was carried
on in two stage First, various methods were utilized
to produce a heavily condensed saline solution from
ordinary sea water; in the second stage, this salt
concentrate was boiled down to yield a residue of
edible sea salt.
Even with the universal mechanisation in use today,
these two processes still form the groundwork of
salt manufacture in Japan; the search for increased
efficiency in extracting salt from sea water continues
to challege the ingenuity of contemporary scientists
and technician. The scope of their research is not
limited to edible salt production alone, for the
growing significance of soda and soda derivatives
in modern industry has if anything, increased the
importance of salt as one of the indispensable raw
materials necessary for the
advanced technology of today.
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Japanese Salt
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Foreign Salt |
