 Akoya pearl cultivation, which began in the 1920s in Japan, provided numerous small, most often greyish pearls as a by-product.Traders from India, where natural pearls were harvested and processed during past centuries, needed no sales talk to be convinced that they could sell Japan Akoya keshi in their market and to visiting Arabs as natural pearls, because their close similarities.Having access to Indian labor capable of sorting, drilling and stringing tiny pearls, arrangements were made to send Japanese keshi pearls to India (even during many years in which imports were not sanctioned), provide processing services at conditions without rival, and covertly retain pearls for sale in India under an allowance for pearls ruined in the course of processing.