If you're a cultured pearl aficionado, you know this name instantly: Mikimoto. Both the name of the pearl jewellery house as well as the man himself, Kokichi Mikimoto was born in the seaside coasts of Toba, a village in Mie, Japan in 1854. Witnessing the amazing bounty of fish, lobsters and oysters that the seaside provided, Kokichi and his wife Ume, ventured his entire life savings to create a pearl oyster farm. Since the method for culturing pearls were not invented yet. Mikimoto labored for years through trial and error, encountering countless setbacks and failures until, after years of experimentation, Mikimoto pioneered and patented methods for producing spherical cultured pearls in the early 1915. Sensing the opportunity and armed with a fierce entrepreneurial spirit, Mikimoto, toured the world in the early 1920's promoting his Japanese Akoya pearls, causing immediate an international sensation. A master marketer, Mikimoto's popularized Japanese Akoya pearls to the point where they became known as "Mikimoto" pearls - his name becoming ubiquitous as the pearl themselves.