Age catching up with Japan’s women free divers, keepers of a 3,000-year tradition
Self-taught divers harvest abalone and shellfish in waters off central Japan until they are in their 70s, and remember a time when women couldn’t net a husband unless they could free-dive
The deep crevices etched in Reiko Nomura’s face seem to tell an ancient story, a story of joy and hardship, intimately connected to the sea and a Japanese tradition of female free divers that dates back 3,000 years.
Nomura, who began diving along the jagged coast around the Shima Peninsula, central Japan, in childhood with her mother, dived until the age of 80. Like all female divers, no one taught her how to dive. It is a skill she learned on her own.
Before her at Hachimankamado, a restaurant that’s the base for elderly divers like her, a feast is laid out ready to grill, including abalone, Japanese spiny lobster, turban snails and hijiki (a brown sea vegetable).
“This is a real feisty one,” says another diver, Mitsue Okano, 70, pointing to the lobster wiggling in her hand before she pierces it nonchalantly with a skewer.
