The Female Ama Pearl Divers of Japan. In the 1920s, a young law school graduate named Yoshiyuki Iwase left Tokyo and returned to his hometown of Onjuku, a fishing village in eastern Japan. With an early Kodak camera, he began documenting the traditions of the ama , women who dove for seaweed, shellfish, and most famously, pearls. What remains of Iwase's multi-decade career is the most comprehensive record of a legendarily tough, beautiful female community that today is almost all but gone. Men would occasionally dive, too, but it was believed that the fat content of women's bodies better armed them for plunging into frigid waters. In Japan, the tradition is said to be 2,000 years old. Before the invention of wetsuits, ama would customarily dive wearing only loincloths—it is easier to warm up without wet clothes clinging to your skin—and an experienced diver could go as deep as 30 meters and hold her breath for as long as two minutes at a time. The ama...
