HISTORY OF AMA DIVERS OF JAPAN
Ama (Japanese: 海女, “sea women”) are Japanese divers, famous for collecting pearls. They are also known as uminchu in Okinawan or kaito in the Izu Peninsula
NICKNAMED the “pearl diving mermaids” of Japan, the ama, which means “woman of the sea” in Japanese, are female freedivers who have perfected the craft of freediving to depths of up to 10 metres in the chilly waters of Japan, wearing nothing but a loincloth.
Records of these women date back to as early as 750CE, having been mentioned in the oldest Japanese anthology of poetry – the Man’yoshu. Local legends even claim that ama women were once seafaring gypsies of the northeastern Asian seas, having lived fairly nomadic lifestyles along the coasts, throughout the seasons.
Utilising special breathing techniques to enable them to hold their breath for up to two minutes underwater, the ama divers work quickly below the surface, harvesting and gathering abalone, seaweed, and other shellfish. Upon the discovery of natural pearls, the ama began diving for pearls and later, when pearl culturing was introduced by Kokichi Mikimoto in Japan, the ama divers worked alongside him in the country’s nascent pearl industry.
By the 1950s, there were over 17,000 ama divers, but after education for women improved and Japan’s economy grew significantly in the 1960s and 1970s, many Japanese girls chose not to follow in their mothers’ and grandmothers’ footsteps to become ama and left for the cities to find lessgruelling work.
These incredible freediving women are a dying breed, with only about 2,000 left practising this age-old tradition.
Today, the remaining women are elderly – some even in their 90s – and have been practising the art of freediving since a very young age, spending most of their lives out at sea.