Ago Bay lies beneath a rolling coastline lined with lush green trees in the Mie Prefecture of Japan. A peninsula protects it from the Pacific, but on a windy day the sea turns white with waves and the trees shiver all the way up the bluff. It’s here, in these waters, that you find the legendary Ama, the female freedivers who have sought pearls, lobsters, abalone and more for 3,000 years.
That’s the folklore, anyway; in any case they’ve been here for a long time. The Ama are a hearty group with an average age around 70; the eldest is a spirited 88 years old. They can stay under water for up to two minutes, which is far longer than I can. Traditionally they have worn isogi, a long white diving costume and headscarf. The whiteness suggests purity – the Ama appear almost angelic – but was also practical, as it was believed to ward off sharks. About 60 years ago, they relented and adopted the wetsuit, but only when they’re in the water. While the men went out on their boats to fish, the Ama would dive. They carried stones around their waists that would help them sink to the bottom (these days they use weights); then they would search along the rocky ocean floor and, if they were lucky, find an oyster containing a pearl.
The pearls are no longer the realm of the Ama. Now they’re cultivated by Mikimoto, which maintains a large presence here. But the Ama still look for food, which they sell at the market. They bring a bucket that they keep attached to a buoy on the surface. At the end of the day, they retire to small huts, where they make a fire to keep warm or prepare a meal from what they’ve caught.
The Ama remain a fixture in the Japanese imagination, symbolising resilience and the sea, surrounded by a slightly mystical air. You may recall the scene from Tampopo, the great film about a ramen shop, where the dapper gangster eats an oyster from the hand of a young Ama who has taken it right from the water, while her fellow divers look on from the shore. In a less exalted cinematic incarnation, an Ama is James Bond’s romantic interest (one of many, naturally) in You Only Live Twice. Her name is, ahem, Kissy Suzuki, and she also happens to be a ninja.
Ama are rarely schooled in martial arts, despite Ian Fleming’s fantasies. But that romantic image from Tampopo had remained in my mind. I support making pilgrimages to eat something special. Some people dream of dinner in Copenhagen in a Michelin-starred restaurant with two dozen courses you can beam right to your Instagram account. I would rather eat seaside with a freediver, myself. That felt worthy of a journey. So I set out to see the Ama.
To get to Ago Bay from Tokyo you take the bullet train (Shinkansen) west via Nagoya. That’s the easy part. And it was even easier because my travelling companion, photographer James Harvey-Kelly, and I have an inside tip about Mansei, which has made a fried-steak sandwich since 1949 that’s worthy of its cult following. You buy this in a convenient box in Tokyo Station, served on white bread with barbecue sauce. It may be the best meal you will get in a box at a train station.
After the bracing modernity of the Shinkansen, we transfer to a local, decidedly more analogue affair. It is sleepy but charming, like the den in your grandparents’ home, if your grandparents stopped buying furniture in 1970. We take this train south (no food, alas), passing over bridges where we catch sight of the sea. When we finally walk onto the platform, we are at the end of the line and the only passengers left.
I doubt this is how the foreign dignitaries arrived when they held the G7 summit here in 2016. But it is a good way to get a sense of lovely Ise-Shima peninsula, home to a national park and one of Japan’s oldest Shinto shrines. Trees cover the coastline and many of the islands in the bay. The air is humid and feels tropical. It reminds me of the Pacific north-west, where I like to fish but rarely catch anything. Here, the Ama presumably have better luck.
If their huts are modest, our lodgings are not. We’re staying at Amanemu, a minimalist marvel that looks down from a bluff towards the water. There are lovely outdoor onsen, or thermal baths, set in a garden – so peaceful you’re sure a month here would change your life.
The Amanemu staff make a tomato juice that James claims is a quasi-religious experience. I focus instead on a Junmai Daiginjo sake from a nearby distillery called Zaku, determined to understand it intimately. Yes, we’re here for the Ama, but the cooking at Amanemu is superb, from a lobster sashimi to beef sukiyaki to cold soba. Swimming in the lap pool, lounging in the thermal baths, considering the prospect of becoming a sake journalist – it’s a pretty serene life.
We take a motorboat to the coastal town of Shima and meet Kimiyo and Naoko. Naoko is new to the area and has only recently begun freediving. Kimiyo became an Ama at 15, following three generations of women in her family, and has been diving for more than 50 years. Her mother dived when she was pregnant with her, she tells us via our translator, Akiko: “I was diving before I was born.” There’s no formal training for Ama. You watch and do. But there is an implicit commitment to do it well.
You learn things on any boat; say, about what fly to use if you’re fishing the Yellowstone. Here, we learn that the Ama prepare their masks by rubbing them with yomogi, a herb that keeps the glass from fogging up. Clever. They also jump into the sea from the left side of the boat, for good luck.
Ago Bay is a productive area. In addition to the pearls, seaweed is cultivated, on wooden structures that look like large grids of chopsticks. All is not perfect, alas; in recent years the water here has warmed. The Ama find less food than they used to. Their numbers are also declining; currently there are about 1,200 in Japan, down from an estimated 6,000 at the end of the second world war. Their practice is regulated, and they can only harvest from certain areas near the towns where they live. They follow closely monitored seasons for specialities such as lobster and abalone, and can dive only a few hours each day.
Yoshiya, our captain, navigates the boat next to a small island where the water is calm. Kimiyo sets out her float, backs into the water and then, like a jackknife diver, is suddenly facing directly down. The last thing we see are her flippers pointing straight to the sky, and she’s gone. After a few more trips, she returns to the surface carrying a large scallop that goes straight into her bucket. James pulls on a wetsuit and gets in the water to take photos. I hand him a camera or the occasional roll of film. The Ama and James are doing all of the work, while I’m standing on the boat, enjoying myself, taking notes but feeling rather useless. They drop me on the shore of the nearby island, and I dive in; the water is salty and warm.
After a shower back in town, we meet Kimiyo at a hut. This is a small house, really, with wooden walls and windows that prop open with views onto the sea. Inside are tatami mats and, in the centre of the room, an open grill surrounded by bricks. Traditionally the Ama sits on one side of a grill, the guests on the other. Kimiyo, last seen in the sea in a wetsuit, is now preparing our meal. She wears the traditional Ama costume, including the white head-wrap, with a checked scarf around her neck. If she was in her element in the water, she’s also perfectly at ease here. She has a generous energy and an unfussy, can-do attitude that seems to come with the profession.
We begin on an adventuresome foot with sazae, a sea snail that’s long, dark and vaguely menacing. It’s not covered up with garlic, butter and parsley like your beloved escargots – we’re face to face with the sazae and the sazae alone. It possesses a stubborn texture and a more vivid sea-snail taste than some might prefer; James, a daring diner, raises an eyebrow.
Then it’s on to scallops, which Kimiyo grills with the top of the shell still on so they don’t dry out, and which are excellent. Then some squid, nicely charred, which Kimiyo cuts into slices. She makes sure we know there’s mayonnaise available if we want it. This, with the squid and a little soy sauce, turns out to be a winning equation.
We’ve arrived, through my expert planning, during lobster season (actually, it was sheer luck). Ise-Shime lobsters are spiny, without large claws, and known for their sweetness. The grilled tails are delightful. “Oishi desu,” I say to Kimiyo, who smiles. (It’s good to know how to say “This is delicious” in the language of whatever country you’re in.) There’s some sticky rice, of course, but nothing fancier than that. A few small bottles of cold sake come and go. At a certain point we move on to beer.
Sitting by the fire with James and Kimiyo, I’m grateful for this meal, simply grilled, by the sea. It’s rare to enjoy elemental pleasures unchanged by time. When we have the chance, we should dive in.
David Coggins and James Harvey-Kelly stayed as guests of Amanemu, rooms from £1,260, aman.com
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