I'm so curious about the connection between masculinity and polluted places. The particular tension you foreground in this image--the stakes of pursuing recreation in contaminated waters--is also something that emerges in my own field work in Michigan. The Great Lakes and rivers in my fieldsite are tremendously valued for the sport and leisure they enable (like fishing, swimming, or kayaking), although admittedly I haven't tracked as carefully the gendered dynamics of this valuation as your project does. I would love to hear more about two terms that briefly come up in your caption here, sabetsu and mendokusai, and how specifically "discrimination" and "trouble-making" are endured or experiences as gendered acts.
Photo and caption draw out two dimensions of the place, the shoreline, as both a place of recreation and site of a massive construction project, both of which the men you study find themselves part of. It's great that both the men with surfboards and the construction equipment are both captured in a single frame.