Culturing Pearls​—A Gem of an Idea!

KOKICHI Mikimoto was deep in thought. He was thinking about oysters, and he wondered aloud, “How do pearls get in there in the first place?”

“Accident,” answered Ume, his beloved wife.

“If it’s an accident, then how can we make it happen on purpose?” Mikimoto mused. “There must be some way to sow pearls and make them grow like rice or turnips.”a

Centuries before this young couple in Japan talked about ‘growing’ pearls, this precious gem from the sea was already being harvested in exotic places of the Orient and especially in the Persian Gulf. Around the tiny island sheikhdom of Bahrain, oyster beds were aplenty. Each May, the pearling season began by the decree of the sheikh. The divers, with pearling songs on their lips, put out in their wooden boats, looking for the lustrous gems locked away in oyster hosts.

Natural Jewel of the Sea

What they were looking for were jewels of the sea called natural pearls. A pearl is formed when some minute particle has got into the oyster while it is in the sea. The oyster spins around the intruder his precious swaddling bands, a pearly substance called nacre. Soon, the nucleus is no longer recognizable. It has become a polished gem​—a pearl, ready for use.

Theories about pearls are as old as the harvest. The ancient Chinese called it “the hidden soul of the oyster.” The Greeks imagined that pearls were formed when lightning entered the sea. The Romans fancied that pearls were the oyster’s tear. All of this only highlights its mystery and rarity. Even as recently as 1947, out of 35,000 oysters harvested by a crew in one week, only 21 bore a pearl treasure, and of these, only 3 were of marketable quality.

Natural pearls were the most sought after of gems until the technique for polishing stones was perfected. During the Roman heyday, General Vitellius, it has been reported, financed an entire military campaign by the sale of “just one of his mother’s earrings.” In the first century, Jesus used the “pearl of high value” to illustrate the precious “kingdom of the heavens.” (Matthew 13:45, 46) Marco Polo described meeting the King of Malabar, whose trappings included a “rosary” of 104 pearls and rubies “worth more than a city’s ransom.” Good quality naturals were like gold, and the divers were the prospectors.

As the world moved into the 20th century, the gorgeous natural pearl remained popular with royalty and the rich. Its high cost, however, kept it out of the reach of the common people. All of that would change with the advent of the cultured pearl.

Mikimoto’s Dream

By the late 19th century, natural pearl harvesting had nearly depleted the oyster supply around Japan. Because of his love for the sea around his home on Ago Bay in Mie Prefecture, Kokichi Mikimoto began to think seriously about oysters. He was intrigued by the oyster’s ability to produce pearls. Was there a way to produce pearls in such quantities that every woman who wanted a pearl necklace could afford to have one? So began his dream.

The idea of introducing some foreign particle into the oyster in order to have it developed into a pearl had been known for some time. The Chinese are said to have used this method since the 12th or 13th century to produce crude blister, or semispherical, pearls from freshwater mussels.

So it was in the 1880’s that Mikimoto started experimenting with oysters. With the help of the local fishermen, he went to work and implanted a thousand oysters with small bits of shell. But success was elusive; not one single oyster yielded a pearl. Fighting his own disappointment and the people’s ridicule, he mustered up the means and the courage to implant 5,000 more with bits of coral, shell, glass, or bone​—and waited. Meanwhile, he and Ume inserted tiny, shiny pieces of mother-of-pearl from shells into a smaller crop of oysters near their home.

Oysters have natural enemies, and one of the deadliest chose to strike that year. Called red tide, it was a plague of poisonous red-orange plankton that multiplied quickly and smothered the oysters. Five thousand seeded oysters and four years of hard work went with the tide, and Mikimoto’s dream turned into a nightmare.

Hoping to bolster her husband’s spirit, devoted Ume urged him to check the small unharmed crop that remained. It was a balmy day, so she went along and busied herself with the oysters. Opening one, she screamed. There, a gleaming white pearl! It was semicircular in shape and formed against the inside of the shell. Mikimoto had the method that yielded this blister pearl patented in 1896, but his heart was still after his dream​—the perfectly round cultured pearl.

Unlocking the Oyster’s Secret

Meanwhile, two other men were in hot pursuit of the same thing. By 1904, a self-made scientist, Tatsuhei Mise, had spherical pearl samples to present to marine experts in Japan. And by 1907 marine biologist Tokichi Nishikawa also had rounded pearls to show. One man’s progress led to another man’s enlightenment. Pearl farms today largely employ a combination of the methods developed by these men. However, the patent for the perfectly round cultured pearl was ultimately to go to Mikimoto in 1916. What had happened?

Once again, in 1905, Mikimoto lost his nucleated oyster crop to the killer red tide. Searching through 850,000 dead and stinking oysters on the beaches of Ago Bay, the weary man stumbled on the oyster’s secret. He found five perfectly formed round pearls, all lodged deep in the flesh of the oysters rather than against the shell. Now he realized what he had been doing wrong. Because he had been planting the nucleus between the shell and the flesh of the oyster, he had been getting only blister pearls. But these were deep in the oyster’s ‘belly’ and were thus ‘free rolling,’ allowing them to be completely covered by nacre. The result was perfectly beautiful round pearls!

Convincing the Public

By the 1920’s cultured pearls had begun to break into the international market. But one question remained: Were they real pearls or were they imitations? Court battles were initiated in England and France. But scientific studies done in these countries led to the conclusion that the only difference between natural and cultured pearls lies in their origin. For that, Mikimoto won the licenses to export his pearls as just that​—pearls. And he won for himself the well-deserved title “Pearl King.”

The “Pearl King” was to make his most outstanding mark on the market in his own country. The Depression had moved dealers to flood the market with imitation pearls made from glass beads coated with an extraction from fish scales. Such fraudulent practices were destined to ruin the market for good. Mikimoto stepped in and bought up all the fakes he could find. Then, one day in 1933, he personally shoveled an estimated 750,000 imitations, and a few poorly cultured ones, into flames at a public burning. Doubts about the genuineness of cultured pearls blew away with the smoke, and they have found an honored place on the gem market ever since.

Nowadays, the beauty of pearls is no longer the private preserve of royalties and the very rich. Many a working woman can gaze at perfectly round pearls like moons against a darkened sky of the jeweler’s velvet. She may even be able to buy some for herself​—all because pearls are cultured. What a gem of an idea!​—By Awake! correspondent in Japan.

[Footnotes]

[Picture Credit Line on page 25]

K. Mikimoto & Company Ltd.

[Picture Credit Line on page 26]

K. Mikimoto & Company Ltd.