Time and tide

Diving in ... Dr Kato
Diving in ... Dr Kato

The life of Japanese mermaid women has been captured in words, images and sounds for the first time.

For generations, Japanese women have pushed themselves to their physical limits diving for valuable abalone in Ise Bay at Toba City in the Shima region, 400 kilometres southwest of Tokyo.

Historical references to the women, known as ama, date from as early as 900AD, but little other published work on the cultural tradition is available prior to the early 1960s.

Dr Kumi Kato, from UQ’s School of Languages and Comparative Cultural Studies, is adding a unique resource to the story of the ama, with the help of sound researcher, composer and musician, Dr Ros Bandt.

Dr Kato has also written a chapter on the ama for Hearing Places (Cambridge Scholars Press), a 35-chapter interdisciplinary work focused on the role of sound in understanding the environment.

She said she was fascinated by the ama’s dedication to the natural environment, the physical extremes to which they pushed themselves while diving and the sounds they made in between dives, known as isobue or sea whistle.

During a two-week field trip in 2005, she and Dr Bandt recorded the sights and sounds of traditional ama life, interviewing 20 women aged between 54 and 88, in and out of the water.

“These women have to breathe quickly between dives. Because they have a time limit of 30 minutes or an hour, the isobue is critical,” Dr Kato said.

“They are actually hyperventilating, and that sound really intrigued me. It sounds like a dolphin call and is an agonising, very emotive kind of sound.

“I was also interested in these women’s physical strength, but most importantly, the ethics they had towards the ocean resource and the spiritual connection with the ocean environment.”

The story of ama entitled Waiting for the tide is written and narrated by Dr Kato and, with Dr Bandt’s specialist recordings, was aired on ABC Radio National’s Radio Eye in July.

Plans are also under way for a two-disc CD featuring recordings and images.

The project is timely as modern hazards seriously threaten the survival of the centuriesold tradition.

“Where once ama dived naked from boats rowed by men, they now wear wetsuits and goggles and only dive off the shore for 10 to 30 days a year,” Dr Kato said.

“It is interesting to know that women resisted both goggles and wetsuits, fearing they would lead to over-harvesting. I believe the isobue symbolises the women’s strict sense of ethics.

“In the past 20 years, the catch is a tenth of what it used to be and the women are fully aware of social and environmental changes that surround them – illegal fishing, pollution, erosion and climate change.

“But the women’s sense of ethics hasn’t changed – they are always so strict about what they do and the word rankaku (over-harvesting) is like a curse to them. They keep saying, ‘so that we can come back tomorrow, so that we can come back next year’.”

Dr Kato said she believed preserving the kinds of cultural traditions practised by the ama would greatly contribute to conservation of the natural environment, and, as a whole, to the understanding of sustainability. 

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