The recently work of the photographer Nina Poppe show us the life and problems of an ancient tradition practice for a group of womens of 50-60 years old that live in the region of Ise-Shima, about 400 km south-west of Tokyo.
This womens are called Ama, and they dive searching for abalone, so they can provide their own food and money (with the profit of the mollusk). This tradition has remained in history for 2,000 years. The problem is that nowadays there’s no interest in young girls in following this tradition, because it’s seen as a male activity. Imagine that the people say that Ama are in-between people, which means that they are between a man and a woman. Instead of appreciate the labour of this group of woman that elaborate a solution of the non-presence of their husbands, the Japanese society condemns them to obscurity, forgetting all the skills that these womans had develop, for example, being under water for four minutes!
This traditions reveals us a different way to see and understand the figure of woman in Japanese culture (so different as the typical postcard of the Geisha’s), because the life structure that it shows is what in social studies we call ‘matriarchy’, which take the figure of woman as the one that not only take their own decisions, but also the socials.
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