For most of the history of the pearl, natural pearls were relied upon for their collection. This was a risky, expensive, and difficult process that produced very few results. Pearls were extremely rare, and extremely valuable. It wasn’t until the Japanese discovered how to nucleate mollusks to produce cultured pearls, that pearls became available to people other than the very wealthy.
Kokichi Mikimoto, the son of a noodle maker, worked with his dedicated wife Ume to develop a strategy that enticed oysters to produce pearls on demand. It was this discovery that brought about the beginning of oyster farming and cultured pearls. Of course, they didn’t know that government biologist Tokichi Nishikawa, and carpenter Tatsuhei Mise had also each discovered the cause of pearl formation.
With all of these discoveries, and Mise’s patent in 1907 for a grafting needle, cultured pearls became quite an important and competitive science. They didn’t even know about each other’s efforts until Nishikawa applied for a nucleating patent and found out that Mise had discovered the exact same thing. They united for their common goal, creating the Mise-Nishikawa method, which is still the essence of cultured pearls today. Mikimoto took this a step further by altering the Mise-Nishikawa method, with his own, and creating a technique to culture round pearls. This patent was granted in 1916. From there, Mikimoto took off, shadowing the works of the others.
