I See Cormant Fishing for the Second Time

Gifu prefecture, where I now live, is famous for the ukai, or cormant fishing. The way it works is these cormant birds have a ring around their neck so that they can catch fish in their mouth, but not swallow them. The fisherman take the birds out on a boat, the birds dive into the water and catch a fish, and then the fisherman brings it back into the boat and shakes the bird until it coughs the fish up.

In the old days apparently this was a popular way to catch fish. These days it’s mostly a tourist industry. When I first arrived in Gifu this fall a co-worker took me out to view the cormant fishing (as you may remember from this previous blog entry). It was a good experience, but like all tourist traps, it’s something you do once just to say you’ve done it. Seeing it two times is really un-necessary.

Nevertheless when I was offered an opportunity to go for free, I thought, “Why the hell not?” It’s usually quite expensive to see Cormant fishing ($30 just to sit in the boat, $100 for the dinner course), so I thought I’d take advantage of the free offer.

The reason it was free is because it was part of a program to get elementary school children to interact with foreigners. The elementary school children had been studying English for a while, and were now going to get a chance to use their conversation skills talking with real foreigners.

Our Peruvian friend Jorge also originally signed up for the event, but the following week the organizer told him he couldn’t come because he spoke Spanish instead of English. The rest of us thought this was very unfair.

“It’s so stupid,” someone said. “Elementary students don’t know enough English to have a conversation. We’re going to be spending most of our time speaking in Japanese to them.”

“Besides, it’s useful for them to be exposed to Spanish as well,” I said. “There are more Spanish speakers in the world than English speakers.”

“Yes, this is really discrimination,” someone else said.

I guess if we really felt strongly about it, maybe we ourselves should have not attended in protest. But we went anyway. Jorge didn’t seem too upset about it. I think, like the rest of us, he just signed up for the hell of it. Besides, spending the whole evening interacting and speaking English with the elementary students was really more like work than fun.

In the end it was an okay night. Playing with the kids really tired me out, especially since I was already tired out from work. I got in a mock light saber battle with the kids sitting next to me, which was kind of fun for a while but on these hot summer nights it is much to hot to even move.

In typical Japanese fashion, rather than letting us just interact freely with the kids, the whole night was very structured. There was a time for opening greetings, organized games, and then an organized singing time. The kids had been practicing “Country Roads” which they wanted to sing with us. On my particular boat, I was the only American, the other foreigners being from France, Iran, and England. So I was the only foreigner who even knew the song, and the event almost turned into a solo performance for me. (As a Canadian friend later commented, “I don’t know why they didn’t let poor Jorge on the trip. Some of these French people could barely speak English.”)

As for the cormant fishing itself, I had already seen it once so it wasn’t too special. Some of the foreign community view it as cruelty to animals, but I think it is no worse than any other kind of working animal. What I can’t understand though is why the birds, even though they know they can’t swallow the fish, still catch them. I know animals are trained to do all sorts of things they wouldn’t otherwise do, but usually they do it because they know they will be rewarded with food. In this case the birds are giving up their food. What’s the motivation?
I’ve asked this question many times, and apparently the birds can’t help themselves. When they see a fish they just instinctively catch it.