Having invented a method for creating cultured pearls in 1893, Meiji Era entrepreneur Kokichi Mikimoto set about selling them to the world. Apparently not one for understatement, he once announced he hoped to "adorn the necks of all women around the world with pearls."
But how to achieve such a grand objective from the island nation of Japan — especially back at the turn of the 19th century, without telephones, planes, faxes or the Internet?
The Japan Times, of course! One of Mikimoto's first forays into marketing his wares to the world involved purchasing advertising space in these very pages. His company's elegant Art Nouveau-inspired ads first appeared in 1905 — almost simultaneously with Japan's victory over Russia in the war that had been raging since the previous year — and they have continued on and off ever since. Now, an exhibition of Mikimoto advertisements, dating back to that early Japan Times artwork, is being held at Mikimoto's flagship building in Tokyo's Ginza district.