Gifu Nagara River Cormorant Fishing

Cormorant fishing on the Nagara River has operated without interruption since the eighth century, when imperial courts in Nara and Kyoto relied on ayu sweetfish delivered by usho — cormorant masters whose hereditary title passes through a single bloodline today. The Imperial Household Agency still appoints these fishermen, and their catch remains reserved for the emperor's table, a protocol unchanged since 1890. Each cormorant is trained from the age of four months to dive on command, retrieve ayu from depths up to six metres, and surrender the fish before swallowing. A single usho manages twelve birds simultaneously, manipulating individual leashes with practiced tension while standing in a wooden boat lit by burning pine torches. Gifu Nagara River cormorant fishing tours run nightly from mid-May through mid-October, the season dictated by ayu migration patterns and water temperature rather than tourism calendars. The Nagara remains one of three rivers in Japan where ukai continues as a working practice, not a staged re-enactment. Viewing boats — long, low-sided craft accommodating twelve to fifty passengers — moor fifty metres downstream from the fishing vessels, close enough to hear the birds' throaty calls and the splash of their entry into the current. Torchlight reflects off the water in columns, illuminating the cormorants' sleek black forms as they surface with fish clamped crosswise in their beaks. The usho work in silence, reading the river's mood through vibrations transmitted up the leashes. The technique itself is simple and brutal: a loose ring of cord encircles each bird's throat, tight enough to prevent swallowing anything larger than a minnow but slack enough to allow breathing. Ayu, a slender riverine fish prized for its cucumber scent and delicate flesh, forms the exclusive target. After each dive, the cormorant returns to the gunwale, where the usho strokes its neck to coax the fish upward. A full session lasts ninety minutes, ending when the birds tire or the current shifts. The catch is weighed on board, then packed in ice for delivery to Kyoto by dawn. Gifu city rebuilt its riverfront economy around ukai in the 1950s, when post-war infrastructure projects threatened to dam the Nagara entirely. Local historians argued that cormorant fishing represented intangible cultural heritage worthy of preservation, a claim that gained traction after UNESCO formalized its heritage criteria in the 1970s. Today the city maintains a dedicated cormorant breeding facility and subsidizes the usho's equipment — boats, torches, and leashes — ensuring that gifu nagara river cormorant fishing tours remain viable as both tradition and livelihood. The viewing fleet expanded from eight boats in 1960 to forty-three today, yet the number of active usho has held steady at six.