photography and video of traditional breath-hold divers (ama san) in Mie prefecture, Japan
work-in-progress in collaboration with Dr Adrian Bell, University of Utah
Photo exhibition January through April 2024 in the lobby of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, open hours Monday- Friday 9h-17h
Click on images below for photo galleries or scroll to bottom for video montage
Breath hold diving for shellfish has a history that goes back centuries in Japan, with the earliest written reference to the divers or “ama” being in a book of 8th century poetry. It has historically been a practice dominated by women, drawing the attention of Japanese writers and artists for centuries. The 1900s saw the development of a tourism industry around the practice, with visitors traveling to coastal areas to watch the divers and diving shows being set up at different times to serve the tourism industry. Recently , it even became the focus of a popular major television series, “Ama chan”.
Regulation is by local fishing cooperatives and varies considerably. In much of Japan, local regulations restrict equipment use, requiring all harvest to be via breath hold diving. In some areas, like in Chiba, however, divers are permitted to use surface supplied air, which has reportedly resulted in a more depleted marine environment.
There are two different breath hold shellfish diving practices: cachido and funado. Cachido diving is simpler. Ama will either swim out from shore or head out on a boat together but then dive on their own, unassisted. The funado divers work in pairs (usually husband and wife). The diver dives deeper and faster with the assistance of a weight and then uses a rope pulled up by her partner to assist in getting back up to the surface. In actuality, both types of diving have similar amounts of bottom time, but the funado style (considered more dangerous) allows for access to deeper areas which also means significantly better harvest. While this increased harvest is based on two people’s efforts, it is often large enough to warrant the effort.
Ama, both cachido and funado, use similar equipment: old-style oval face masks, neoprene wet suits, short fins, a float to hold their retaining net for their catch and to aide in swimming, and a prying tool to get shellfish off the rocks. They do not use snorkels. As each new innovation arrived in Japan it was met with considerable local debate about adoption, as technological limits is one of the main ways to limit harvest for sustainability.
Harvest depends on the season and latitude. Most ama are concentrated in Mie prefecture on the middle of Honchu’s east coast, where water temperatures range between 15C and 26C. Here, the summer months are for abalone and turban shell snails, winter is for spiny lobster, and spring is for cultivation and harvest of wakame seaweed.
The two lead explanations for why, historically, women have dominated the diving practice are biological and social. Biologically, before the era of insulating neoprene wet suits, women were reportedly able to hold heat in better and could therefore dive longer. Socially, men often had other employment opportunities in fishing, having more freedom to leave home, leaving the diving to women who could then return more easily home for child care responsibilities.
While the national narrative and tourist industry have focused on the women divers, women have long dominated the practice, and there are some places where all of the divers are women, currently 40% of the ama in Japan are men, which seems representative of the history of the industry since statistics have been kept. Men, however, do not have a place in the tourism industry, focused as it is on the reproduction of the popular narrative of the women divers.
Today, as historically, diving was always just one part of a diverse set of income sources. Ama usually have some other form of employment when not diving, with many having other jobs in the fishing cooperatives.
It is a widely reported fact in Japan that the number of ama declines every year. The markets are no longer as lucrative and women have a wider range of employment opportunities. While it is still an important part of both local economy and culture, the harvest rates have been markedly declining in the last years. The main culprit people believe is climate change induced shifts in current directions and warming waters. With warmer waters comes a longer season of fish predation on local kelp forests creating less habitat for shellfish. Still, the industry survives.
It was a very different experience negotiating photography with divers in Japan, compared to in Tonga. On the one hand, there were a variety clear contexts in which photography was invited and where there were many other photographers. For example, on Sugashima (island community in Mie), there was a public invitation for people to come witness and document the ceremonies and Shinto rituals of the opening of the diving season. In this ceremony, the women divers compete to see who is the first to get a pair of red/black abalone (traditionally associated with “male” and “female”, though they are in fact different species). These abalone are then prepared as part of a Shinto ceremony and shared with the community and spectators. Also, there are a number of “amagoya” in Mie where photography is invited. Traditionally an “amagoya” is a hut where the divers have a fire to warm themselves and socialize between diving sessions, eating some of what they have harvested that day. However, some of these have been expanded into restaurants where tourists can share some of the harvest, prepared by the ama over a fire and where tourists can chat with the ama about their life as divers. Particularly when harvests are not so abundant, there is a high demand to work in one of these amagoya as an income supplement.
However, these and similar opportunities tend to reproduce a specific narrative of the women divers and not necessarily the whole picture.
Luckily, I was able to make contact with some of the divers on Toshijima (near Sugashima), where I was invited to follow one of the male divers, Masaya Nakagawa, to whom I am very grateful. It was a great, interesting experience following and diving with Masaya san on 4 dives. Despite the language barrier, I had a delightful time socializing with Masaya and the other divers there who also generously shared with me some of the different shellfish they harvested. ‘also had some of the best sushi of my life! I highly recommend a visit to Toshijima!
On Toshijima, the diving days, weather dependent, are set by the local fishing cooperative and are limited to 1 or 2 days per month during the season, around the time of the new moon. Divers go out on boats together and dive in different areas. One of the restrictions I had in photography was that they did not want me to take photographs that might include landmarks to identify the locations, which is why the camera is always directed down when above water.
Click on the images to see galleries of photos from the 2023 trip as well as a rough montage of video footage from the diving. This is a work-in-progress and I hope to be able to get more footage in 2024