HOME   WHO   HOW   NEWS & BUZZ   ADVOCACY VIDEOS   FEATURE DOCS   NARRATIVE FILMS   CURRENT FILMS   BUY FILMS   TRAILERS

It’s a cold, grey morning in Shirahama, Japan. A chilly wind sweeps over the rocky landscape, otherwise shrouded in fog. Out of the mist appear seven stalwart figures, marching towards the sea. At first they look like creatures from another era, if not another galaxy. As they approach, we notice they are clad in long rubber suits, and have hand-woven straw baskets strapped to their backs. Some of them also sport long, primitive knives hanging off their hips. One of them smiles, a wide, infectious grin as expansive as the ocean.

Less than one hundred miles south of Tokyo’s hi-tech hyperbolic metropolis, a group of seven women divers, mostly over the age of sixty, carry on a tradition that has been handed down for generations. While the threat of globalization and the pressures of the world economy have taken many young women away from sea villages to the city to find work, these divers still brave the dark, cold waters for their livelihood, six months a year. Because they don’t earn enough money diving, they supplement their income by farming on the off-months. While they admit that the abalone have become scarce as the fishing trade has been infiltrated by more commercial interests, they insist on doing things the old way, without breathing equipment and the most rudimentary of tools. They insist that it is the women divers, the Amasan, that can restore balance to the sea.