The modern cultured pearl industry began in Japan in the late nineteenth century. At the center of that story was Kokichi Mikimoto, whose name remains closely associated with cultured pearls more than a century later.

In 1890, Mikimoto established his first experimental pearl farm on the small island of Benten-shima in Ago Bay, Mie Prefecture. His original goal was not to grow free-round pearls, but rather to reproduce the ancient Chinese method of culturing blister pearls. This involved placing a nucleus between the shell and mantle tissue so nacre would deposit over the object while it remained attached to the shell.

Mikimoto’s early attempts failed repeatedly. Thousands of akoya mollusks were implanted with various materials, including coral, bone, and shell, but produced no viable pearls. Eventually, he concluded that the nucleus material itself was the problem and began using only mother-of-pearl shell.

In 1893, Mikimoto successfully harvested cultured blister pearls using shell nuclei. These pearls were hemispherical rather than fully round, but the achievement marked the first commercially successful cultured pearl production in saltwater mollusks. Mikimoto received a patent for this process in 1896 and rapidly expanded production throughout Japan.

Archival footage by Rudolf Voll