Luster Regained

Kokichi Mikimoto, who founded Japan's cultured-pearl industry at the turn of the century, once vowed that with his gems he would "choke the lovely necks" of women around the world. For decades, his boast seemed to be coming true. Cultured pearls -- the lustrous kind that grows after a tiny grain of clam shell is inserted into the mantle of an oyster-- expanded into a $90 million-a-year business. Thousands of families, including half of the 18,000 population in the western Japanese town of Shima, earned a livelihood raising pearl-bearing oysters in baskets that dangle from myriad rafts in quiet inlets of the coastal seas.

Two years ago, a series of misfortunes plunged the Japanese pearl-producing industry into a private depression of its own. Along with the advent of mini skirts, Western women turned away from cultured pearls to such cheaper adorn ments as plastic beads, colored stones and metal chains. Exports dropped from a peak of $65 million in 1966 to $46 mil lion last year. In Manhattan, pearl sales at Tiffany's were down by 50% in 1968. Only part of the drop can be blamed on fickle fashion. "The real trigger in the decline was quality," says Tiffany Vice President Henry Platt. "The pearls had a low luster and more flaws."

Shameless Kuzu. Platt's complaint can be traced to the industry's expansion. The number of pearl producers in Japan rose from about 100 at the end of World War II to 4,600 -- including many economically weak one-family operations. They crowded their oyster rafts into half the space required for proper pearl growth, harvested huge quantities of low-quality pearls and sold them at cut-rate prices. Instead of waiting three years for the pearls to develop, hard-pressed growers sometimes dumped their harvest onto the market after only six months. At that age, a pearl's nacre -- the lustrous layers produced by the oyster -- is so thin that the pearl loses its color after a few months. Old-line Japanese traders call premature pearls kuzu (trash), and they complain that this type of inferior merchandise tarnishes the reputation of the whole industry. "In department stores you can buy what is shamelessly called a pearl necklace for as little as $2.77," says Toshiaki Homma, president of the K. Mikimoto company.

With the decline in exports, the number of exporting firms has dropped sharply. Several hundred marginal operators have switched to growing sea weed, which the Japanese like to eat for breakfast and with their afternoon tea. Many pearl rafts have been abandoned entirely, or covered with tents to serve as outlandish, seaborne campgrounds. Meanwhile a modest start has been made by the Japanese Diet toward regulating the industry by setting a minimum sea space per raft to assure sufficient food for the pearl-producing oysters. In a desperate effort to keep pearl prices from plunging, the Japanese Federation of Pearl Cultivators last year stockpiled some 42 million pearls.

Little-Girl Charm. The maneuver was well timed. Feminine fashion has begun to rediscover cultured pearls. To adorn their fall creations, U.S. dress designers have turned once more to the Japanese gems as a means of expressing elegance, opulence, sophistication and even such elusive attributes as "little-girl charm." The new trend has caught U.S. pearl merchants with depleted stocks, and as one result, retail pearl prices have already jumped 25% above their 1968 level. The Cultured Pearl Association of America predicts that prices will rise another 10% within a few weeks.

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