On October 22 in Uji, Kyoto Prefecture, Mariko Sawaki releases cormorants into a pond. Yoshiaki Konishi UJI, Kyoto Prefecture -- When masters call out to a flock of Japanese cormorants, the birds return to the bank of a man-made pond, their throats bulging with fish.
The scene resembles the traditional cormorant fishing practiced in many parts of Japan, except that the birds are not tied to a leash.
Untethered cormorant fishing in Japan has been revived for the first time in 21 years after fishers here have built solid trust with the birds through five years of intensive training.
During the first demonstration held on October 22, the cormorants disgorged the fish kept in their gullets, drawing a round of applause from a gallery of about 30 spectators.
The birds returned just as they were supposed to, and they are so well-tamed, said Yasuko Kobayashi, a nurse who came from Kyoto with a friend to watch the session.
After training a pack of nine artificially incubated cormorants, born and raised in the city, the Uji City Tourist Association reinstated the practice of untethered cormorant fishing.
Fishers affectionately refer to the birds by the generic nickname of Utty after the word u is pronounced in Japanese as oo, which is Japanese for cormorant.
I was convinced that they would make it, said Mariko Sawaki, 48, who leads the pack of cormorants after the public session held in the pond by the side of the Ujigawa River. I am relieved that they have done it. Tethered cormorant fishing along the Ujigawa River, a specialty on summer nights, has been popular among tourists.
Sawaki said that spectators will feel the ties we have forged with the untethered cormorants. We will be able to entertain them in a different way than we do on summer nights. In conventional cormorant fishing, a fisherman adjusts the tightness of the rope wound around a cormorant's throat to prevent the bird from swallowing river fish it caught, such as sweetfish. The fisherman is disgorged when the fisherman pushes at its throat.
The tradition of untethered cormorant fishing was discontinued in 2001 along the Takatsugawa River in Masuda, Shimane Prefecture.
Like walking a dog without a leash, the technique requires strong bonds between humans and animals.
In 2014, the Uji City Tourist Association successfully had a Japanese cormorant hatched through artificial incubation for the first time in Japan.
Fishers found that the hatchling was tamer than its wild counterparts because of imprinting, in which an animal takes the first creatures it sees to be its parents.
In September 2017, they began training the birds for untethered cormorant fishing.
Twelve cormorants have been hatched through artificial incubation. The fishers have teamed up nine of the birds, the youngest under 1 and the oldest under 8 for daily exercises.
Mention of cormorant fishing appears as early as in the Chronicles of Japan and the Records of Ancient Matters, both of which are official history books compiled in the eighth century.
The practice can be found for sightseeing purposes at 11 spots across Japan, including along the Nagaragawa River in Gifu and along the Oigawa River in Kyoto. Migratory Japanese cormorants caught in Hitachi, Ibaraki Prefecture, are typically used.
The Uji City Tourist Association plans to operate untethered cormorant fishing viewing sessions, combined with visits to local sightseeing spots, during the daytime in spring and autumn.
The association's website is https: kyotouji-tour.