The Beauty of Ama, the Diving Women of Japan

Born in Florence, Italy, Fosco Maraini (1912-2004) was active as an anthropologist, orientalist, mountaineer, and photographer. Maraini came to Japan for the first time in 1939 to research the culture of the Ainu people at Hokkaido University, and from 1942 lectured at Kyoto University. Despite returning to Italy after the war, he continued to visit Japan frequently, publishing many writings and photographs on Japanese subjects that made a major contribution to the wider international appreciation of Japanese culture. Amanoshima (‘The Island of the Diving Women’) was photographed in 1954 on the islands of Hegurajima and Mikuriyajima off the north coast of the Noto Peninsula. Shot using a hand-built underwater camera, it documents the ama, local women who dove for shellfish with almost no equipment. Full of a pure and serene beauty, they seem to symbolise a naturalism peculiar to Japan as an island nation. Kyoto, where he lived with his family as a young man, was a special place for Maraini, and this year’s exhibition is being held to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of its sister-city relationship with Florence.