The inventor of the man-made pearl; Kokichi Mikimoto

Pearls which shines deeply and mysteriously and are globe-shaped, which are different from other stone jewelry, attract people, especially women.
A natural pearl is made by a pearl oyster, but a pearl oyster which produces a pearl is very rare with the probability of one in every thousand pearl oysters. So if the method of the man-made pearl production wasn’t invented in Japan, people who can wear them around their necks would be limited. The man who invented the method of the man-made pearl production and the founder of Mikimoto Campany was Kokichi Mikimoto.

Mikimoto Pearl Island is in the Toba Harbor nearby the shore of Toba, we can go there across the bridge between the island and the entrance building on the shore.

On the island the statue of Kokichi stands looking in a southerly direction, probably to his home region which he loved. His standing shape holding a long cane in his right hand is gallant and cool with a long gown, a scarf and a hat, but his face is very aged and his brightness of vitality has disappeared. His face of the statue doesn’t match the one of the successor. If he was a man with a visual esthetic who stood gallantly with a hat, a scarf, a gown and a cane, I didn’t think that Kokichi wanted to build his statue for himself.
According to the information on the statue, it was built by donations from a lot of the then members of Mikimoto Company who were motivated by the initiation of many of the employees. The standing shape of the statue in which they wanted to remember him was the real shape of the aged Kokichi who they met in those days. He might have been loved by his employees.

The success story of Kokichi Mikimoto
Kokichi was born in the Sima region as the first son of a udon noodle restaurant owner in the end of the Edo era. He was kind and diligent, in addition, he was the entrepreneurial type. And the momentum of the new era of Meiji promoted his characteristics to a new business. He started a small sales business of vegetables, and after visiting Tokyo his business-eye was opened and he started selling sea-food ingredients of the Shima region to the Tokyo market.
Amid the new business he heard that pearls were popular in the foreign countries. So he started raising his pearl oysters, but most of his pearl oysters were dead by red algae tides before the pearl produce. He changed his viewpoint of his pearl oysters and he resolved to create man-made pearls by a new technologies with the natural power of the pearl oyster.
Among his many failures on his new inventing road he was criticized by many people, but even so, his wife fully supported him. When red algae tides occurred again and almost all of his pearl oysters died, he no longer had hope.

However a miracle happened. His wife found a man-made hemispheric pearl in a cultivated pearl oyster. This opportunity engendered his hemispheric pearl selling business, and he challenged to invent man-made spherical pearls in which nobody had succeeded. That led to his wife and him falling into suffering while creating the unknown method. He gathered new theories from many researchers and tested them adding his ideas to the theories. At last he invented a new method of the man-made spherical pearl. The method is a collaboration of factorial sequence processes and natural biological technologies, and it is maintained now. Naturally, his pearl oysters are living things, then they didn’t produce correct man-made pearls in the same way as manufactured ones by the factorial system, so then many workers who keep the soundness of the pearl oyster are needed in the production of the man-made pearl.

The man-made pearl of Mikimoto has the same brightness as a natural pearl, that is different from a fake pearl, and it has a perfect globe shape.


The main characteristics for his success
He was loved and he was surrounded by a lot of supporters through his life. That is one of his important characteristics for the success of the new business, besides his tenacity, patience and studiousness to his invention. By the way, it might be that he had other characteristics, I think. But yet there was no mention of his invisible characteristic.
Once upon a time he told the then emperor that he would put his pearl necklaces on the necks of all the women of the world. Depending on how to take it, it sounds like he had a big mouth, but if you catch the meaning according to his real phrase, you will feel his large hope to make all women pleased by the beauty of the pearl.
Moreover, he always said to his private guests in his house showing a panoramic view of the Shima Harbor dotted with little green islands; “it is a beautiful park. (There are many beautiful sights in Japan.) From now Japan should strengthen the sightseeing industry. I want to transform all of Japan into the park.”
Thinking about those anecdotes comprehensively, he might have had a strong desire for the beauty. His sensibility of beauty, in addition, his strong hope to put pearl necklaces around the necks of all the women might have introduced him to achieve the goal of the man-made globe pearl, which was even during the suffering of inventing a new method after the success of the man-made hemispheric pearl, I think. Furthermore, I was surprised by his foreseeable talent. In current Japan the sightseeing industry for foreign people is the most hopeful.
He might have been a great artist. It might be that he depicted his images of all the women of the world wearing his pearls on their necks and there were a countless number of beautiful parks in Japan in his brain. After all, his characteristic as the great artist made him the inventor of the man-made pearl. Because a great artist realizes an art in a field with noting in the same way as a great entrepreneur who realizes a big business in a field with nothing.