In 1956 Japan, before automation transformed the sport, collecting golf balls from a driving range was an exhausting and often dangerous task. Workers moved carefully across the open field, scooping balls by hand while golfers continued to practice, their shots whizzing past with little warning. To protect themselves from injury, they wore heavy mesh headgear—crude yet essential protection against the constant risk of being struck. Each step was a test of timing, endurance, and courage, as the sound of clubs striking echoed relentlessly around them.
This snapshot of post-war Japan highlights a society in rapid transition. After years of hardship, the country was rebuilding its economy and opening itself more to Western influences, with golf emerging as a fashionable pastime among the growing middle class. Driving ranges multiplied in busy cities, offering a symbol of modern leisure, yet behind this new luxury were workers performing one of the more grueling and overlooked jobs of the era. Their presence was as necessary as it was precarious, a reminder that modernization did not erase the need for human labor.
Within a few decades, technology would completely change this scene. Mechanical ball-collecting carts, armored against stray shots, gradually replaced the men who once braved the open range. What was once a dangerous, repetitive routine became an automated process, invisible to most golfers enjoying their practice. This photograph, then, is more than a record of a bygone job—it captures the tension between human effort and the coming wave of innovation, a moment where resilience and modernization coexisted on the fairways of a newly modern Japan.
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