This culture of national mermaids diving for the nation is not only unique to Japan however. From 2007 Korea has been presenting its best case to have the Haenyo divers of Jeju Island listed as a UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage. In similar fashion, Japan has now joined the races by recommending its own female divers, boosted by the popularity of a recent NHK drama ‘ Amachan‘, starring a young girl who moves to the Tohoku region of Japan to became an Ama diver. ( Asahi) Anderson’s The Little Mermaid tells a story about how love has no right place, its place is everywhere and inside everyone’s hearts. Mermaids(1990) despite the title, this comedy starring Cher and Cristina Ricci is a conventional comedy that takes place entirely on land and does not feature half-human/half-fish creatures. The students also created a statue dedicated to the victims of workplace accidents, which will be unveiled on Monday. “This is much more important than the mermaid,” said Marciano. In many versions, the mermaids were seen as emblematic of the belief, which has been confirmed by evolution, that humans first came from the sea. But in many versions, a mermaid signals impending doom and disaster. A scary mermaid as portrayed in Milan Todorovic’s film Nymph (2014) aka Killer Mermaid.

Aquaman (2018) this underwater world features Mera, the queen of the sea and while she is not technically a mermaid, she has some mermaid-like abilities. Scales: A Mermaids Tale (2017) a young girl just turned 12, and realizes she is a mermaid in this kids movie. In this Polish mix of fantasy, horror, romance, and music that was originally released as Córki dancingu, two mermaid sisters are adopted as entertainers into a Warsaw cabaret during the 1980s. One of the sisters earnestly seeks to integrate with humans and fall in love, while the other simply wants to feast on human flesh. A Film a Day by Sonia called it “a very unique and dark take on the famous tale by Hans Christian Andersen.” The Mermaid (2016) This Chinese mermaid comedy was made by the director of Kung Fu Hustle and Shaolin Soccer. Although perhaps the scantily-clad, romanticised image of the profession is a thing of the past, there’s still a rich history and culture that needs to be conveyed to younger generations. The tourism industry at Mikimoto Pearl is a great start to help preserve the memory, but the age-old fishing traditions held by small coastal villages are definitely in need of special attention to make sure their heritage isn’t forgotten completely. Marciano said he did not want to cast judgement on the students’ inspiration, but that he viewed the work “as a representation of reality, in this case of the female body”.

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Harry Potter & The Goblet Of Fire (2005) features merpeoples, which have similar traits to mermaids. This TV movie based on the hit television series Sabrina the Teenage Witch stars Melissa Joan Hart reprising her title role, but this time she travels to Australia with her friend Gwen. Upon arrival, she meets a muscular and charming merman named Barnaby, who lives in a secret mermaid colony. Sabrina falls in love with Barnaby and makes it her mission to protect the colony from discovery by a biologist with bad intentions and capitalist industrialists who seek to economically exploit the colony. H.P. Lovecraft’s Dagon (2001) A dark and gloomy twist on the mermaid theme as filtered through H. P. Lovecraft and an ancient biblical sea god. In this hit comedy, Tom Hanks stars as a swinging young bachelor whose life had been saved by a mermaid (Daryl Hannah) when he was a child, only to have her save his life again when he reaches adulthood. She falls in love with him the second time around and follows him to Manhattan, where most of the comedy is wrung from a mermaid’s inability to assimilate with modern human society. Daryl Hannah said she was obsessed with Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Little Mermaid” as a child and even practiced swimming with her legs bound together, which made this role extra-easy for her. The Little Mermaid (1989) Disney’s animated The Little Mermaid led to a resurgence of mermaid themes in movies. Predictably, there are also films made around the profession. Ama are featured in the famous work ‘Tampopo’, as well as the rather less famous, and slightly bizarre 1959 horror movie ‘Ama Ghost House’ (海女の化物屋敷). (Trailer below). The most popular modern cinematic version of the mermaid myth is Disney’s beloved animated feature The Little Mermaid (1989), which was remade as a live-action film in 2023. But many modern twists on the legend, as detailed below, recall the age-old idea that mermaids serve as warnings of trouble to come. The Best Mermaid Movies Mr. Peabody and the Mermaid (1948) William Powell stars as a married man who falls in love with a mute mermaid.

The Lighthouse(2019) – This psychological horror movie from Robert Eggers features a mermaid as part of Ephraim’s (Robert Pattinson) descent into madness. Adolfo Marciano, the headteacher of the Luigi Rosso art school, hailed the statue as a ‘tribute to the great majority of women who are curvy’. Photograph: Monopoli Times Beach Blanket Bingo (1965) a subplot in this Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello comedy involves a dimwit who falls in love with a mermaid. On Hegura island in Wajima city, rules state that abalone under 10 centimetres must be returned to the sea, with a punishment of two days without work if caught breaking them. Despite their efforts however, numbers of abalone and other shellfish have been in decline, in part due to overfishing, but also the rising sea temperatures which affects the growth of seaweed the shellfish eat. ( Source)

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Depictions of Ama are featured in old works of art, such as the piece below by master Kuniyoshi. ( Source) The Greek sirens were females who sang beautifully and were originally depicted as half-human/half-birdlike, but the sirens began appearing as mermaids—which is an Old English portmanteau of mere (sea) and maid (young woman) in Christian retellings of Greek mythology. Mermaids perform as strippers in the strange horror musical Lure (2015).

The most profitable pursuit however was diving for pearls. Traditionally for Ama, finding a pearl inside an oyster was akin to receiving a large bonus while they went about their ancestral practice of collecting shellfish. That changed when Kokichi Mikimoto, founder of Mikimoto Pearl, began his enterprise. A Mermaid’s Tale(2017) a girl on the cusp of adolescence befriends a teenage mermaid, and their special bond may help to resolve an ancient family feud. While traditional ama divers wore only a fundoshi (loincloth) to make it easier to move in the water and a tenugui (bandanna) around their head to cover their hair, Mikimoto ama wore a full white diving costume and used a wooden barrel as a buoy. They were connected to this buoy by a rope and would use it to rest and catch their breath between dives.

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Mikimoto used Ama divers to look after his cultivated pearls on Mikimoto Pearl Island, near Toba city. This business was the main reason for the strong association between Ama and pearl diving among foreign observers that continues to this day. Another little-known fact is that the ‘traditional’ white attire we often see Ama divers wearing was also created by Mikimoto. He observed how surprised the foreign tourists visiting his pearl island were when seeing the Ama diving naked wearing only their traditional loincloth. ( Source) Beppe, who lives in Monopoli, said the sculpture, which has been kept covered until its inauguration, had caused much discussion in recent days, with some people criticising it as “too provocative”. The main character of the show Lucia Nanami, the princess of the North Pacific, which is like one of the seven mermaid kingdoms goes on the adventure of her lifetime.