Prologue

The place is the south end of the Izu Peninsula, southwest of the Kanto (Tokyo) area. The women are Ama--diving girls who are trained to dive into shallow water and reef areas and retrieve shellfish and other marine life used in gourmet seafood meals. It was a hard and dangerous occupation, and the girls used no special equipment. Most of them worked for a labor boss, who took a cut of their wages (the man on the left is not the "boss," but the attendant to watch over the women). The occupation gradually vanished after the war--these were among the last of the tribe.

(All photographs were presented to me by a village photographer in Kamogawa, Chiba--considerably north of the Izu peninsula locus of the pictures.)