Isle of artificial pearls

Imagine a mountainous country, which initially boldly wedged into the ocean, pushed it, and then if snikla, tired of the struggle, resigned to the proximity of the water element and even intermarried with it. This is the birthplace of artificial pearls - Shima Peninsula, where the sea filled the hollows between the mountains. Green hills rise straight from the sea blue. Secluded coves, islands, bays, like mountain lakes - they do not have the number.



Mikimoto Pearl Island - a place where in 1893 Kokichi Mikimoto first in the world to successfully received cultured pearls from the clams.
On this island welcome guests from all over the world who enjoy visiting the Museum of pearls, Kokichi Mikimoto Memorial Museum and show ama diver.
The museum pearls, materials which are dedicated to everything that concerns pearls from different sides presented its appeal: in terms of history, fine and applied arts, science and industry.



Liberty Bell - 12, 250 pearls and 366 diamonds



In Kokichi Mikimoto Memorial Museum presented its way of life, which he dedicated to pearls and was an enthusiast of the business until the end of life.



Kokichi Mikimoto five-tiered pagoda - 12760 pearls



Here you can show posmatret diver for pearls - ama, as with open stands, and from a special viewing room. (In the observation room audio guide is available in Russian).



May see the show and panoramic cabins special vehicle.







In "Pearl Plaza" on the first floor are products of the company and Mikimoto Pearl Island original products. On the second floor is an observation deck, which offers a beautiful view of the Gulf of Toba and restaurant Awako.
Kokichi Mikimoto as managed to turn a "pet" is a capricious creature like an oyster?



The Japanese know how to find a new use for the human labor, thus offsetting the poverty of Japan on the issue of natural resources. Cultured pearls in oysters - is a painful deviation from nature, it is like a stone in the kidneys in humans. And in order to inside clam pearl formed, needed a whole chain of coincidences: the sink should get a grain of sand, which enters the body entirely oysters, while not injuring her internal organs. In addition, the grain should "grab" a piece of the surface tissue of mollusk that can produce nacre. This tissue starts to encapsulate the foreign body iridescent layers, gradually forming a pearl.
Produce pearls artificial means to increase the probability of a rare set of circumstances. Cultured pearls as much real as natural, ie formed in the sink by accident.
The idea to grow pearls on underwater plantations first came to his son by the name of the merchant noodles Mikimoto. In 1907, after nineteen years of unsuccessful experiments, he finally managed to get the spherical pearls, entering into the body of bivalve shells pieces of mother of pearl, wrapped oysters other living tissue.
People who are able to enter into the body of the nucleolus clam operator name. It is, if you think about it, thousands of experienced surgeons, each of which makes for a daily four-eight operations; and at the same time thousands of jewelers, who are required much more filigree craftsmanship than by craftsmen setting serious ready pearls in gold and silver.
To nucleolus was a gem, it is necessary to enter it exactly in the place where the clam would tolerate inside this foreign object. It is necessary to achieve more and to continue to put off pearl shell is not on their wings, namely around the foreign body. That's why have to do something similar to the vaccine - administered after the kernel piece of tissue from another mollusk. It is necessary to enter the nucleus and the additive in the right place. This is not any damage or hurt the internal organs of the mollusk. In the first case utritsa perish in the second - the pearl will not have the correct form. Finally, the additive must necessarily relate to the kernel, otherwise it cells that produce nacre, will not be able to form around the nucleus "pearl bag».
If you plunge a scalpel slightly deeper than it should, lifeless shell valves swing open. This means - damaged connecting muscle and oyster doomed ...
It is believed that it is necessary to make at least 10,000 operations, to learn how to enter at least a small nucleoli. Enter the same large trust only operators with more than three-year experience.



Small pearls (diameter from four to six millimeters) matures in a year, the average (six to seven millimeters) - two years, a large (more than seven millimeters) - three.
Of course, the larger the core, the more expensive gem can grow therefrom. There is, however, a well-known biological limit beyond which even at the most skilful operation body shell can not save themselves so much in the foreign body. For double sinks such limit is the core diameter of seven millimeters. To become a pearl, it must grow a pearl layer thickness of not less than a millimeter.
Experience has shown that to keep semimillimetrovoe nucleus in the body longer than three years shellfish inappropriate. Increases the likelihood of any kind of growths. If the pearl and grows, it becomes less and less radiant. Quickens the risk of rejection when clam even at the cost of its own destruction pushes it proliferating foreign body from itself.
Almost everywhere expanse of the Gulf peninsula Sima shaded dark stripes. Rafts made of poles, which are tied under water basket with shells resemble furrows rice fields. Green on the sides of the mountains, surrounded bay pestreyut red scars. It's pearling industry.





It is difficult to keep the shell from the cold. With twelve degrees in mollusks sharply slowing all life processes, and at eight degrees - they die. Shellfish like a sea in which swim nice person. Below fifteen degrees - a cold, and above twenty-eight - very hot. In the August time sultry Japanese tug rafts have to take away from the coast and lower baskets in the cooler, deeper layers.
Ama diver exist in Japan since time immemorial. Women "ama" - diver for pearls. Craft ama has an ancient history: in the ancient Japanese poetry collection "Man'yoshu" says that even 2,000 years ago in an area called Shem lived ama.
This whole area, which is now part of the National Park Isedzima, surrounded by mountains cues. Its shores, as well as the coast of the Inland Sea, dramatically go into deep waters. In its geological structure they belong to the ancient period "Lower Jurassic." That is why the region is characterized by Sima indented coastline and numerous islands along the coast. The mountain slopes are suitable to the sea, the plain land are quite small, and therefore the life of the local population since ancient times has been associated with the sea. Men engaged in fishing, and the women carried a lighter work, getting seafood. The climate on the peninsula Sima quite warm, and the sea is rich in marine products. Therefore, here and there was a women's craft diver for pearls - ama.
Currently, the national park Isedzima lives about 1000 ama. Numerous groups of different ages diver working in the turquoise waves of the sea.



Cultured pearls from MIKIMOTO



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Source: okinawa-japan.livejournal.com