PLARL-MAKERS OF JAPAN

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 614, 16 March 1929, Page 2

PLARL-MAKERS OF JAPAN

1,000 MEN EMPLOYED Pearl-making has become an IID . portant industry in Japan. The Japanese pearl-maker is not a raannfacturer after the fashion of the Occidental, ■who lias learned how to blow glass bubbles and fill them wit), ; fish scale to meet the demand of thos. whose taste for pearls is satisfied with such imitations as they can afford. He is a farmer, rather, growing pearls inartificial stimulation on his waterv plantation. The Japanese pearl i farmer, no longer leaving the production of these jewels to the natural inclination of the oyster, has learned how. with the assistance of science ; he may make the mollusks engage iij i systematic pearl culture, to his profit This industry is centred on the south-east side of the main island of Japan. Here, almost forty years ape a one-time pedlar on the streets of Yamada and Toba. Kochiehi Mikimoto by name, launched in a moden way the enterprise that since then has brought to him the title "Pearl King." From the small beginning in pearl culture then made on and auout a rocky little island in Ago Bay has grown an industry with many : branches, utilising tens of thousands ' of watery acres and employing more than a thousand people. The output of these farms is more than a million pearls a year—not perfect pearls, yet pearls that scientists have pronounced equal to natural pearls in shape, colour and lustre. Research has shown that natural pearls originate from what is known as the pearl sac, the cells of which secrete the pearly substance, sometimes with, sometimes without, a nucleus. This pearl sac is removed from the living oyster and into it is introduced a fragment of the shell of a fresh water mussel to serve as a nucleus. The mouth of the tiny bag is tied and the whole sac is then inserted into the subcutaneous tissue of the shell-secreting epidermis of another oyster. The oyster is then returned to the sea.