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AMASAN: WOMEN OF THE SEA

BY AMIE WILLIAMS

JAPON, 2009, 24min

VO ST FR

Less than one hundred miles south of Tokyo’s hi-tech hyperbolic metropolis, a group of seven women divers, all over the age of sixty, carry on a tradition that has been handed down for generations. The documentary film, Amasan, looks at the dying art of the Amasan, or Sea Women of Shirahama, Japan, women who plumb the depths of the ocean for prized abalone, a culinary delicacy.
Diving together for decades, these women have formed a tightly-knit bond, as well as a business co-operative, providing economic security for their husbands and families. At a time when the pressures of globalization and environmental degradation have wreaked havoc on the fishing industry worldwide, these women and their inherently balanced, almost sacred relationship with the sea serve as a metaphor for a way of life fast disappearing. These seven Ama, because they rely quite literally on their heart, lungs, and strength of spirit to succeed in the industry, serve as anchors in an otherwise frenetic, unexamined modern world,driven by commerce, ambition, success.

It’s a film that celebrates growing old while embracing the beauty, camaraderie and longevity of female friendship, defined by lives lived mostly “underwater” and the freedom that they find beneath the sea.

“When a woman puts her hands into the ocean, we do it not to disturb, but to restore the balance…a balance that has been lost and forgotten.”

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