March 28, 2005

Ukai - photographs of traditional cormorant fishing Ukai, or cormorant fishing, is a traditional method of river fishing that has been practiced in Japan for some 1300 years. This method involves fishermen using cormorant birds on leashes to catch sweetfish (such as the Ayu). Ukai is not as widespread as it once was, because it is no longer an economically viable form of fishing. Nowadays, there are only a few people authorized to perform ukai, and it is protected under the Imperial Household Agency. Positions are usually inherited and passed on within each family. [all this quoted from the site]

Don't you want to be there!

posted by goofyfoot 19 years ago
  • It's like something from a peter greenaway movie only less english.
  • Doris, you didn't properly capitalize. Goofy will spank you with a copy of Strunk and White.
  • Fuguyare, I culled this from a friend on a private forum, and didn't look for sources. Did I fuck up somehow?
  • damn, that is pretty awesome stuff. I'd never heard of such an art before.
  • This is neat, Goofyfoot. Cool post!
  • Cormorants are sleekly handsome birds -- used to see them sunning themselves along the California coast. Had no odea of their lifespans, however, until now.
  • Some gorgeous film work, that.
  • This is cool. I had a kids book about a commorant, but now I can't recall it...
  • They still do this in China too (where they don't just chuck some dynamite in) but without the traditonal clothes. I always thought it must really suck for the comorants - all that effort to catch the fish and you can never swallow because your throat's tied.
  • js, are you thinking of Island of the blue dolphins?
  • Very Cool! Thanks goofyfoot!
  • Wet as a shag on a rock.
  • Saw a great doco on the Chinese cormorant fishermen. The bird is treated like a member of the family.
  • We used to use the same principle when the kids were small: tie a rope around their waists, send them into grocery stores to steal fruit, then yank them out the door at high speed and run off, avoiding the gunshots of the proprietors. I hope the grandkids are good grabbers, because they're almost old enough to be useful, and I want a few good years out of them before they get too big to reel in easily.
  • Goofy- Nope. It was part of a series about a duck that gets lost, and this part was about a commorant and his fisherman taking the duck in (but that part was mostly about the commorant).
  • js, I think this is that you're looking for.
  • Cormoants above a rippling pool of light fish for their shadows. -- Octavio Paz, from "A Tale of Two Gardens"
  • Cormorant fishing: how stirring, how saddening. -- Basho
  • Coleridge described himself as a "library cormorant". --J. D. McClatchey
  • These are some VERY nice photos--every bit as nice as the Nat Geo winners.
  • Now just for the tourists, they did say. *Briefly considers trying to make the Jersey cormorants work for their dole, as it were*
  • Rats. I mere flick of the wrist and it's in stone. "Jersey RATS, I mean.
  • Where is that comment edit button anyway?