The bay at Mihonoseki is narrow and deep, and in early December the water in it is the colour of slate.

Two boats push off from the shore. The men aboard are local — parishioners of Miho Shrine, which sits at the head of the inlet where the fishing village ends and the sea begins. They take up their oars. Someone calls out, and both boats move at once.

What they are doing is repeating a conversation. In the old accounts, envoys arrived here by sea to ask a god whether he would give up his country, and the god's answer changed the shape of the world that followed. Every year, the arrival is rowed again.

Partway across, the crews begin flinging seawater at one another with their oars. December seawater, in a bay open to the Sea of Japan. From the seawall you can see it go up white against the grey and come down on their shoulders, and you can hear that the shouting does not stop.

It is not a performance, exactly. There is no stage, no announcer, no obvious place for a visitor to stand. You end up among fishermen's families on the concrete, holding your coat closed.

The boats reach the shrine. The oars come down. The sea goes quiet again, as if nothing had been settled here at all.