Ukai

Ukai, or cormorant fishing, on the Nagara river 

Fireworks light up the night sky. All around me, people look up from their elaborate bento dinner boxes, turning around for a better look out the back of the boat. The ukai is beginning, and it's the last one of the year.

Ukai is cormorant fishing, a tradition dating back 1300 years. I am in Gifu city, capital of Gifu prefecture, and the cormorant fishing is the town's major tourist draw. 

The sightseeing boats

In ukai, cormorants go out with a fishing boat. They've been trained to catch fish, with a ring around their necks to prevent their swallowing them. Each boat is manned by three or four men: the master, who supervises the birds, hauling them back onto the boat when they get a catch. There's also someone to take care of the fire, an assistant, in the middle, and a helmsman at the back.

Here in Gifu, there are six boats that set out each evening, each boat with a fire bobbing from the bow, sending sparks out into the night. The job of cormorant master is passed down through families, and the current masters are a mix of young and old. Every day, the order of boats to set out is determined by lot, as the first boat to leave gets best pick of the fish.

We in the tourist boats wait by the riverbank for the ukai boats to pass. We were sent off with enthusiastic taiko drumming by some local kids, and waited on the boat, eating and drinking and watching a passing boat of girls dancing with fans.

The fireworks mark the beginning of the the ukai, and it's not long before we see the boats themselves. The cormorants are tethered to the boats, which are gliding slowly along in the water, and bobbing, diving and swimming around in a mess of dark shapes. Every now and then, the master will dive forward to grab one of them out of the water and wrest a fish from its beak, before throwing it back in.

These cormorants don't have a bad deal. It takes time to train cormorants to fish; the fisherman obviously want to take good care of them. They're brought in from another prefecture, which sells cormorants to those 12 locations in Japan that practise cormorant fishing. They only wear the neck rings while fishing, and the fishing itself took less than an hour. Their lifespan is far higher than those of wild cormorants.

The fish themselves are sold to the hotels along the Nagara river bank, and they don't go cheap! I heard they can fetch 7000 yen per fish!

If you're interested in seeing ukai for yourself, well, you've missed the ukai season in Gifu for this year (it was May 11 - October 15), but there may be other places you can see it.  

Regarding this ukai in Gifu, it costs around 3000-3300 yen. You can choose from three departure times. If you go with your friends and want to make a fun night of it, choose an earlier time and bring food and booze; you can enjoy more of a festival atmosphere. If you just want to see the ukai, you can take the later slot; all three departures will observe the same ukai. I think it was worth seeing, but the actual time we spent able to see the boats clearly was only a few minutes.

One other good thing about Gifu is that it's not that difficult to get to the ukai site. Gifu is only 20 minutes from Nagoya; then the bus to Nagarabashi (the stop nearest the ukai fishing) is another 15 minutes. This bus is easy to find - platform 11 at Gifu station - and the site easy to find from Nagarabashi bus stop.