| The history of South Sea pearl cultivation transformed | | | | people, including Aboriginal Australians, Europeans, |
| the modern pearl industry. | | | | Chinese, Malaysian and Japanese; amongst who were |
| South Sea pearls had been sourced from the | | | | Tatsuhei Mise and Tokishi Nishikawa. |
| silver-lipped and gold-lipped, 'Pinctada Maxima' oyster | | | | It should be noted that many cultivated pearl industry |
| of Australia's waters since the dawn of time. For | | | | texts on the web wrongly credit the Japanese |
| thousands of years, Aboriginal fishermen had dove for | | | | entrepreneurs Tatsuhei Mise, Tokishi Nishikawa and |
| these naturally occurring South Sea pearl oysters using | | | | Mikimoto Kokichi, with the invention of the nucleated |
| their meat, shell and pearls for trade and tribute. | | | | cultivation technique. To this day, William Saville-Kent is |
| Unfortunately, as with all things precious, by the late | | | | not officially recognized as the father of this procedure |
| 1800s the modern world had all but depleted Australia's | | | | and the resulting cultivated round pearl. |
| natural South Sea pearl resource. However, off the | | | | In 1907, both Mise and Nishikawa applied for the patent |
| north-eastern coast of Australia, a method was being | | | | of Saville-Kent's method, but realizing that they were |
| unearthed that would not only revitalize Australia's | | | | now competing against each other they unified to |
| South Sea pearl industry but pearl production the | | | | patent and name it the 'Mise-Nishikawa' method. That |
| world-over. | | | | same year, quite probably in search of sponsorship, |
| The British marine biologist, William Saville-Kent, served | | | | Nishikawa wrote to Mikimoto Kokichi telling him of his |
| two posts as Australia's Commissioner of Fisheries, | | | | discovery; "...I have found the cause of Japanese pearl |
| one in Queensland and one in Western Australia. In | | | | formation, i.e. the reason why and how the pearl is |
| 1891, while on Queensland's Thursday Island, | | | | produced in the tissue of the oyster..." (G.F Kunz: 'The |
| Saville-Kent experimented with grafting one oyster's | | | | Book of the Pearl' 1908). |
| mantle tissue, inserted with a nucleus of shell, into | | | | In 1916, Mikimoto and Nishikawa joined forces and went |
| another oyster's mantle. This caused the formation of | | | | into large scale production using Saville-Kent's original |
| a pearl sack which produced nacre covering the | | | | technique, using it to cultivate the Akoya 'Pinctada |
| nucleus to form a spherical pearl. | | | | Fucata' pearl oyster. The implementation of this |
| Pioneering the technique, William Saville-Kent, acting as | | | | ground-breaking procedure marked the beginnings of a |
| scientist and Commissioner freely passed the method | | | | boom in Japan's pearl industry. By 1935 Japan was |
| onto other interested parties working in Australia's | | | | producing more than 10,000,000 cultured pearls every |
| north-eastern pearl industry. At that time, Australia's | | | | year. |
| pearl industry comprised of tens of thousands of | | | | |