Recommended listening: Nanae Yoshimura - The Art of Koto
Story
The Heian gentlewoman Sei Shōnagon had a fear of boats. She spent most of her life in walled gardens or fancy carriages and believed that "a boat is no way for people of quality to travel". It was rare she had need to travel over water, and doing so always made her distinctly uneasy. While she admired people who could strike a moving pose while standing confidently on deck, she herself saw boat travel as beneath her and a source of fear. When describing the perils of boats in her masterpiece The Pillow Book, a collection of her musings on life and poetry, she wrote:
A stretch of water may seem terrifying, but your spirits sink still further at the thought of the fisher girls who dive for shells. If that thin rope tied to their waist ever snapped, whatever would they do? It would be all very well if it were men doing the diving, but it must feel miserable for women. The men are on board, singing away lustily, moving the boat along with the women's waist ropes dangling into the water. You'd imagine they'd be feeling full of anxiety and trepidation. Apparently, when the woman wants to come up to the surface she tugs on the rope, and you can quite see why the men should scramble to pull her up as fast as possible. Even an onlooker must weep salt tears to witness the gasp of the woman as she breaks surface and lays her hand on the edge of the boat - really, I find it utterly astonishing to see those men sending the poor women overboard while they float lazily about on the surface!
Her account of the fisher girl, or ama ("sea woman"), is one of the few times Shōnagon expresses genuine sympathy for a woman of the working class. Her general disdain for commoners is overcome by her horror at seeing women free dive into the ocean, a place which held much fear for an upper-class woman who hated travelling by water. It's also typical of Shōnagon's writing to side with a woman who she sees as doing all the work while men laze about, particularly lower-class men who she had little time for.
Shōnagon's perception of the ama as being miserable, however, is probably a projection of her own fear of boats rather than the true feelings of an ama, with whom she never would have spoken. Ama had already been free-diving in Japan for up to a thousand years before Shōnagon ever saw one, and would continue to do so for the next thousand years right up to the present day. Women from certain coastal communities started learning the special free-diving technique as teenagers. It's thought that women have been favoured over men for this job because the distribution of fat in their bodies made them more robust in the face of cold waters. Ama traditionally wear white because it is believed to ward off sharks, and the white cloth wrapped around their heads before modern diving goggles often bore Buddhist prayers for protection. They practice specialized breathing techniques which enable them to dive up to sixty feet and are thought to contribute to their long lives - many ama continue diving well into their eighties. When they are pulled back up to the surface, they make a special whistle called isobue which helps them avoid the bends.
Contrary to Shōnagon's conclusion that the ama must find their lot in life terrible, modern-day ama interviewed today usually report that their work is full of joy, exhiliration, and challenge, as they dive underwater to hunt for pearls, abalone shells, sea urchins, and other treasures of the ocean. Other than the introduction of more modest clothing and strict limits on the diving season out of concern for environmental issues, the work of the ama today has changed little from what women would have done in Shōnagon's time. Although they are best known today for finding pearls, in the Heian period their most prized find was abalone, whose iridescent shells were used in imperial shrines. Although Shōnagon and others at court occasionally referenced the ama in their poetry, they were far more familiar with the luxury end product than they were with the inner lives of the women who dove into the cold water in search of the precious shells. If the ama Shōnagon saw while travelling was anything like the women who do that job today, she was no doubt thrilled every time she spotted an abalone shell and took pride in her skilled work.
A stretch of water may seem terrifying, but your spirits sink still further at the thought of the fisher girls who dive for shells. If that thin rope tied to their waist ever snapped, whatever would they do? It would be all very well if it were men doing the diving, but it must feel miserable for women. The men are on board, singing away lustily, moving the boat along with the women's waist ropes dangling into the water. You'd imagine they'd be feeling full of anxiety and trepidation. Apparently, when the woman wants to come up to the surface she tugs on the rope, and you can quite see why the men should scramble to pull her up as fast as possible. Even an onlooker must weep salt tears to witness the gasp of the woman as she breaks surface and lays her hand on the edge of the boat - really, I find it utterly astonishing to see those men sending the poor women overboard while they float lazily about on the surface!
Her account of the fisher girl, or ama ("sea woman"), is one of the few times Shōnagon expresses genuine sympathy for a woman of the working class. Her general disdain for commoners is overcome by her horror at seeing women free dive into the ocean, a place which held much fear for an upper-class woman who hated travelling by water. It's also typical of Shōnagon's writing to side with a woman who she sees as doing all the work while men laze about, particularly lower-class men who she had little time for.
Shōnagon's perception of the ama as being miserable, however, is probably a projection of her own fear of boats rather than the true feelings of an ama, with whom she never would have spoken. Ama had already been free-diving in Japan for up to a thousand years before Shōnagon ever saw one, and would continue to do so for the next thousand years right up to the present day. Women from certain coastal communities started learning the special free-diving technique as teenagers. It's thought that women have been favoured over men for this job because the distribution of fat in their bodies made them more robust in the face of cold waters. Ama traditionally wear white because it is believed to ward off sharks, and the white cloth wrapped around their heads before modern diving goggles often bore Buddhist prayers for protection. They practice specialized breathing techniques which enable them to dive up to sixty feet and are thought to contribute to their long lives - many ama continue diving well into their eighties. When they are pulled back up to the surface, they make a special whistle called isobue which helps them avoid the bends.
Contrary to Shōnagon's conclusion that the ama must find their lot in life terrible, modern-day ama interviewed today usually report that their work is full of joy, exhiliration, and challenge, as they dive underwater to hunt for pearls, abalone shells, sea urchins, and other treasures of the ocean. Other than the introduction of more modest clothing and strict limits on the diving season out of concern for environmental issues, the work of the ama today has changed little from what women would have done in Shōnagon's time. Although they are best known today for finding pearls, in the Heian period their most prized find was abalone, whose iridescent shells were used in imperial shrines. Although Shōnagon and others at court occasionally referenced the ama in their poetry, they were far more familiar with the luxury end product than they were with the inner lives of the women who dove into the cold water in search of the precious shells. If the ama Shōnagon saw while travelling was anything like the women who do that job today, she was no doubt thrilled every time she spotted an abalone shell and took pride in her skilled work.
Artist's Comments
The idea for this illustration came to me while I was rereading The Pillow Book on the train at the start of May while I was speeding along the coast. Looking out at the water, I was inspired to learn more about the ama and draw one for this series! The ama in my illustration has just spotted an abalone shell which she will dig out before tugging the rope to come back up to the surface. Some great photographs of ama were taken in the early 20th century which I was able to use as a reference - that was back when they wore the traditional loincloths. Watching videos on YouTube about modern-day ama also gave me lots of inspiration for the composition and for how to draw the plants, which was the most challenging part of this picture. This illustration was also inspired by Mermay, which I've always enjoyed but never participated in before! It was also challenging to colour an underwater scene for the first time. The scanner changed the colours a bit, but overall I think it came out pretty well. ~ May 26, 2019
Resources
Want to learn more about the ama? Here are some recommended resources.
"Diving Into the Past with Japan's Famous Female Free-Divers" by Teresa Levonian Cole
Here you can read one about one author's experience going to visit a community of ama in the Shima Peninsula, where ama have been concentrated since the boom of the pearl industry in the late nineteenth century. The article features an interview with Mayumi Mitsuhashi, a 67-year-old ama who is one of the youngest working in her community today.
"Japan's Ama Divers: A Sacred Tradition" by Caoilfhionn Rose
This article includes some of the historical photographs by Fosco Maraini which captured the cheerful and hard-working ama. You can also see black-and-white footage of the ama in this 1957 film.
Japan's Last "Ama" - The Female Fishers Who Free-Dive for Seafood by VICE News
This documentary interviews a mother-daughter team and gives an overview of the history of ama as well as some of their modern-day concerns. You can find many different videos about ama on Youtube. Some focus on older women who come from long lines of ama, while others interview younger women who were attracted to the freedom and connection with nature of the ama's lifestyle and have since become ama themselves. They all talk about how happy they are to find a good haul under the water, and some even describe the joy of hunting down valuable shellfish as slightly addicting. One actually uploaded photographs of her work as an ama to Google Street View!
"Braving the Sea: The Amasan (Women Divers) of the Yahataura Fishing Community, Iki Island, Nagasaki Prefecture, Japan" by Cristina P. Lim, Yasuhiro Ito, and Yoshiaki Matsuda
This academic article goes in-depth into an ethnography of one community of ama, looking in particular at the role of gender in the how women's importance in the community is not always matched by status. The ama have also attracted academic attention from scientists, who have studied their neurology, heart health, and decompression sickness.
"Watching Commoners, Performing Class: Images of the Common People in The Pillow Book of Sei Shōnagon" by Jeffrey Angles
I hadn't read this article when working on the illustration, but it's a fascinating look at how Sei Shōnagon discusses commoners in The Pillow Book. Angles interrogates the common notion that Sei Shōnagon was unilaterally disgusted with the lower classes by undertaking a close reading of her descriptions of commoners. He concludes that while she is always keen to reinforce social hierarchies that establish her as part of the aesthetically refined elite, she does occasionally challenge aesthetic boundaries by finding things to appreciate among the lower classes. The encounter with the ama is briefly addressed.
"Diving Into the Past with Japan's Famous Female Free-Divers" by Teresa Levonian Cole
Here you can read one about one author's experience going to visit a community of ama in the Shima Peninsula, where ama have been concentrated since the boom of the pearl industry in the late nineteenth century. The article features an interview with Mayumi Mitsuhashi, a 67-year-old ama who is one of the youngest working in her community today.
"Japan's Ama Divers: A Sacred Tradition" by Caoilfhionn Rose
This article includes some of the historical photographs by Fosco Maraini which captured the cheerful and hard-working ama. You can also see black-and-white footage of the ama in this 1957 film.
Japan's Last "Ama" - The Female Fishers Who Free-Dive for Seafood by VICE News
This documentary interviews a mother-daughter team and gives an overview of the history of ama as well as some of their modern-day concerns. You can find many different videos about ama on Youtube. Some focus on older women who come from long lines of ama, while others interview younger women who were attracted to the freedom and connection with nature of the ama's lifestyle and have since become ama themselves. They all talk about how happy they are to find a good haul under the water, and some even describe the joy of hunting down valuable shellfish as slightly addicting. One actually uploaded photographs of her work as an ama to Google Street View!
"Braving the Sea: The Amasan (Women Divers) of the Yahataura Fishing Community, Iki Island, Nagasaki Prefecture, Japan" by Cristina P. Lim, Yasuhiro Ito, and Yoshiaki Matsuda
This academic article goes in-depth into an ethnography of one community of ama, looking in particular at the role of gender in the how women's importance in the community is not always matched by status. The ama have also attracted academic attention from scientists, who have studied their neurology, heart health, and decompression sickness.
"Watching Commoners, Performing Class: Images of the Common People in The Pillow Book of Sei Shōnagon" by Jeffrey Angles
I hadn't read this article when working on the illustration, but it's a fascinating look at how Sei Shōnagon discusses commoners in The Pillow Book. Angles interrogates the common notion that Sei Shōnagon was unilaterally disgusted with the lower classes by undertaking a close reading of her descriptions of commoners. He concludes that while she is always keen to reinforce social hierarchies that establish her as part of the aesthetically refined elite, she does occasionally challenge aesthetic boundaries by finding things to appreciate among the lower classes. The encounter with the ama is briefly addressed.