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カテゴリー1： 5. Rites and Festivals
カテゴリー2： Individual Shrine Observances
Title
U matsuri
Text
"Cormorant festival." A festival held December 16 to present cormorants to the kami of Keta Shrine in Hakui City, Ishikawa Prefecture. Cormorants are captured alive at a place called Ugai (Cormorant Cliff) at Unoura (Cormorant Bay) Shoreline in Nanao City. A catechism session about cormorants takes place at 3 a.m. on the 16th. The captured cormorants are then released in front of the altar and the head priest (gūji) sets off in pursuit. Divinations about the next year's harvest are made based on how this proceeds. The "bird-release rite" (hōchō no shinji) takes place after this is completed, in which the cormorants are released back to the sea. This festival was originally held on the day of either the horse or the snake during the 11th lunar month. Tradition holds that this festival originated with an offering of captured cormorants that kami of this region Mikadonushihiko made to Ōnamuchinomikoto—the kami enshrined (saijin) at Keta Shrine—when he arrived at what today is Kadonoshima, Kashima District, from Kitajima in Koshi, Niigata Prefecture.
— Mogi Sakae

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A cormorant in a cage and the ritual cormorant catchers"(utoribe)_Ichida Masataka___2003****_Ishikawa Prefecture"