A highlight of our recent visit to Japan was getting to see cormorant fishing on the Uji River which runs through Uji city in Kyoto. We came across this opportunity by chance, having climbed nearby to see the macaques on a nearby hilltop (these are monkeys famously seen bathing in hot springs during the depths of winter). Having worked up quite a sweat we decided to “chill” for a little while aboard a little hired rowing boat on the river nearby. It was only when we returned our boat that we came across a poster advertising boat trips to witness the ancient tradition of fishing with cormorants. We decided that we would return to do so the next evening.
Cormorant fishing on this particular river has a deep history which stretches all the way back to the Heian era (784 to 1185). Elsewhere in Japan, even today, the practice continues in 13 cities, most famously in the Nagara river of the Gifu prefecture where it has continued uninterrupted for 1300 years. These days in Japan, cormorant fishing is not a viable commercial fishery in its own rite but instead has become a tourist attraction. It is pleasing to know that these traditions can continue to thrive.
Fishing using cormorants is not, by any means, restricted to Japan. China too has a rich history of cormorant fishing and the practice has also been carried out beyond Asia, in Greece and North Macedonia and Peru and, I was surprised to learn, England and France.
I am a fishing nut and so would sign up to something like this at the drop of a hat but I was pleased that everybody on our family holiday was keen to witness the cormorant fishing on the Uji. My wife Trinny, who is a thousand times more switched on than me, discovered that we could get an English speaking guide to tell us what was going on and, happily, our group was just big enough for us to get a boat of our own. In addition to our guide and our boatman who poled us along the river, our group consisted of myself, Catriona, our daughter Pippa and our son Leo and his girlfriend Carla.
Once our boat had been poled into position it was attached to the stern of another boat and similarly another boat was attached to our stern so, together, we formed a chain of boats moored temporarily in the middle of the river. As night approached two cormorant fishing boats worked their way downstream on one side of viewing boats and then upstream on the opposite side and this was repeated again.
Each of the cormorant fishing boats had 3 people aboard. The cormorant master, wearing a traditional straw skirt called a Koshimino, uses up to 6 birds, although on this occasion each had four. Each bird is tethered using a 4 metre rope which can be broken should the bird become snagged on the bottom in some way.
Japan is a country built on traditions and I have no doubt that becoming a highly-skilled cormorant master would involve a long apprenticeship. I was interested to learn that, of the three cormorant masters in Uji, two of them are women. Each is responsible for a team of birds and this includes their care and upkeep throughout the year (the fishing season here runs only from July 1 to September 30). Apart from the cormorant master, there are two other people on a cormorant fishing boat. One is positioned close to the master and will drum against the side of the boat. The other person, at the opposite end is responsible for poling the the boat.
The cormorants used are the Japanese cormorants (Phalacrocorax capillatus) and differ from those used elsewhere. On the boat they have a kind of pecking order. When not fishing they stand on a little platform. The highest ranked bird will be mightily pissed off if a lower status bird tries standing on his (or her?) spot and arguments and fights will break out as a result. Sooner or later everyone knows where they need to be standing if they want to have a quiet life!
So how does the fishing happen in practice? The boat drifts or is poled by the member of the crew and the birds are controlled and guided by the cormorant master. They can swallow any very small fish that they catch but constriction around the neck means anything too large is caught in the gullet and they are promptly retrieved and the fish is removed. The fish that are taken are mainly sweetfish which the Japanese call ayu and they are used to feed the captive cormorants the next day. In a kind of cage which extends outwards over the side of the boat, pine logs are burned and the bright light source attracts fish from below and makes them more visible to the hunting cormorants. The master guides the birds who “fish” beneath the glowing fire. At the same time a drumming sound is made against the side of the boat.
In the light of the fire and the sounds of drumming, the birds are straining like a pack of excited dogs on leashes except that in a split second they can “disappear” into the dark river and reappear a few moments later.
Every now and again they will have an ayu in their beak.
The video above (I hope it works) shows the cormorants fishing.
fishydreams 