The Ama of Ise-Shima

How well do you know your favorite landscape?

For many of us, there is some patch of earth that we know so well that we close our eyes and see what rocks lie where, how the paths or roads bend, and which plants you could pick if you walked this way or that. It could be your backyard, the area around your front steps, your favorite running loop. Although we may all be imagining totally different environments, chances are good that it’s above sea level.

The same perhaps cannot be said for Japan’s ama divers. These women spend their working days freediving beneath the waves, combing the rich underwater landscape for abalone, seaweed, oysters, and other marine fare using small knives or gloved hands. Ama dives last between thirty seconds and two minutes at a time, and when they break the surface they release a characteristic whistle (isobue) to regulate their breathing and protect their lungs. Most of us can hold our breath voluntarily for 30-90 seconds, but can you imagine doing that while working hard in bitterly cold water, keeping one eye out for sharks?

Photo by Aiko Ohno, an ama diver, photographer, and friend of Rikakko who so graciously invited me to an ama art show she was a part of!

A brief history of Ama Divers

The earliest written records of ama divers in Japan date back to the 10th century. During the Heian period (794-1185 AD), ama divers would collect abalone and other seafood delicacies for the imperial court or for offerings at important shrines. These divers would have been men and women, although people here have told me that women have always had an advantage due to their higher percentage of insulating body fat. Ama is written in Japanese as 海女 and is often translated as “sea women” (海 is the character for ocean, and 女 means woman or female).

A woodblock triptych of abalone diving by Kitagawa Utamaro, printed in the Edo period between 1788 and 1790. Photo from the British Museum online collection.

Harvesting seaweed in the Chiba peninsula south of Tokyo by Yoshiyuki Iwase, 1956

Traditionally, ama worked without goggles or weights, dressed only in a small loincloth called a fundoshi. In the early 20th century people started to see this as scandalous, and many ama began wearing all-white cotton diving outfits bedecked with lucky symbols to protect the diver and boost her harvest. I’m not exactly sure what drove this turn towards modesty, but I would guess that it has something to do with the increasing domestic and even international visibility of ama divers in Japan. Japan’s pearl industry was booming in the late 19th and early 20th century thanks to Kokichi Mikimoto, an entrepreneur who started the first cultured pearl farm in Ise-Shima, Mie Prefecture. His pearl company marketed high-quality Japanese pearls around the world, and he worked with local ama to meet the rising demands for cultured and wild-caught pearls. Coupled with the proliferation of photography, this newfound fame may have influenced the shift towards a more modest wardrobe in ama communities - but this is just a guess!

The 1960s brought wetsuits and better goggles, and today working ama benefit from modern neoprene, flippers, and weighted diving belts.

Me, with a model of these white Ama uniforms

The ama wear these symbols on their head scarves or amulets to protect them from harm while diving. These are called seiman (left) and doman (right).

Becoming an ama is hard work: girls were taught from the age of 12 or 13 to dive, honing their physical skills and intimate knowledge of the local seascape over several decades. In the 1950s there were over 17,000 working ama across Japan, but as educational opportunities for women grew throughout the second half of the 20th century many girls chose other career paths that were less physically challenging. The number of ama steadily dwindled over successive generations, and this trend has been exacerbated by Japan’s shrinking population and the exodus of young people from many rural areas. Today, there are less than 2,000 working ama, most of whom are over the age of 65.

Ama culture in Ise-Shima

First, a bit of context! The map on the left is where the Ise-Shima region (also called the Shima Peninsula) is in Japan. To the right is a map of the peninsula itself, with the heart marking the largest city of Ise, and the star marking the village of Ijika (which will be relevant later).

Ama divers exist all across Japan, but the largest community of working ama today is in the region of Ise-Shima, Mie Prefecture, about 3 hours from Tokyo by train. The Shima peninsula is a large chunk of forested land south of Nagoya, edged on three sides by a complex coastline of inlets, caves, and cliffs that open out onto the Pacific. The waters are a shocking blue-green, fed by the Kuroshio Current flowing up from the South China sea. About 800 ama work in the many small villages that dot this landscape, and when I was there in early May, they had just started harvesting wakame seaweed which they collect in baskets and lay out on the rocky shores to dry.

A few weeks before arriving in Ise-Shima, I had the opportunity to chat over zoom with Rikakko, a young ama diver living in the village of Ijika in the Shima Peninsula. Most ama learn to dive from their mothers and relatives, but Rikakko grew up far from the coast in the mountains of Japan. After school she moved to Nagoya for work, and ended up falling in love with a young man from Ijika who was also working an office job in Nagoya. They got married, and decided to leave the big city for his hometown so he could become a fisherman. It was in Ijika that Rikakko fell in love with the sea and rocky coast of Ise-Shima, and decided to train as an ama.

Mikimoto Pearl island in Toba, Ise-Shima, just north of Ijika.

As it turns out, swimming in the icy water is only part of the challenge. Rural communities in Japan tend towards the insular, and it can take many years for outsiders to break in. Rikakko had the advantage of being a local’s wife, but even so she had to intentionally cultivate her relationships with older ama over several years in order to learn their skills and dive with them. Ama can work alone, but often they choose to dive together for safety and companionship. After a few hours in the ocean, they gather together in ama goya (diver huts) with an open fire in the center to warm up, chat, eat meals, and even nap. Being accepted into the fold of an ama community is essential to learning the skills and ecological knowledge necessary to succeed as an ama.

The ama of Ise-Shima have very strict rules governing their harvest practices. For instance, abalone is a very valuable yet slow-growing shellfish, and ama customs prohibit the harvest of abalone for four months out of the year during its spawning season. I visited the Toba Sea Folk Museum in Ise-Shima, which had a large collection of wooden tools for measuring abalone and other shellfish to ensure it was large enough to sustainably harvest. They also establish their own “no-take” zones, and strictly regulate the number of fishing days. Japanese fishing law often backs up these regulations, but Rikakko emphasized that ama take pride in their collective tradition of sustainability whether or not the government requires it.

After several years of work, Rikakko is now a fully-fledged ama, one of only three young divers in her community. She balances her time between diving, working from home at an internet marketing company, and making fabulous youtube videos in flawless English to share ama culture with the Anglophone world. You can watch her videos here: https://www.youtube.com/c/rikakotheama

The future of ama

Ferns grow inside an abandoned house in Toba

As I talked about in my last blog post, rural areas across Japan are experiencing drastic declines in population, especially amongst younger people. In response, the government of Japan has initiated a vast array of incentive programs to encourage people to live in abandoned rural properties and train to become farmers, fishers, or craftsmen who will carry the nation's precious traditions onto the next generation.* One of the other young ama in Rikakko’s community moved to Ijika as part of one of these government programs, and received some kind of financial support to start her career as an ama.

The number of ama may be dwindling, but their culture is still very much alive and celebrated in their communities. Tourists come to Ise-Shima from all across Japan and even the world to walk the coasts where the ama work, see the famous pearl farms, and eat fresh seafood at restaurants overlooking the sea. They show up in anime, books, and TV programs like “Amachan”, a 2013 TV drama about a girl from Tokyo who moves back to her mother’s village and trains as an ama. Beloved and respected, the ama are an invaluable piece of Japan’s cultural heritage.

A few works of art from a show I attended called "Ama & 13 Artworks" at the Toba Sea-Folk Museum:

An anime ama diver outside a local restaurant!

* A side note: one thing I love about Japan is how seriously they take the traditional, the artisanal, and the local. Every place you go has some kind of special miso, mochi, ceramics, cloth, or sake that has been around for a billion years. My cousin Maddie told me about Japan’s 1,000 year old businesses, which led me to this article about a tea shop we went to in Kyoto… with truly the best mochi I have ever had!!

Until next time!

Grace