Early in the afternoon of September 23rd, on a stretch of grey sand on the Pacific side of the Boso Peninsula, portable shrines are carried into the sea.

Eighteen shrines from three districts of Isumi converge on Ohara Beach. The bearers wear nothing but wrapped cotton. They wade in until the surf is chest-high, then push against each other, and throw the shrines upward and catch them, over and over, in water that is neither calm nor warm. This is shiofumi, treading the tide, and it is offered for a good harvest and a good catch.

It would be easy to file the whole festival under violence, and easy to be wrong. As the light goes, the shrines come out of the sea, dry off, and move through the shopping street toward the primary school. Lanterns are lit. The shrines are raised high, held there, and everyone sings.

The song is a parting song. The rite is called owakare, the great parting, and it is the point at which a festival about strength turns into a festival about loss. The crowd that spent the afternoon shouting stands still.

A votive tablet at one of the shrines, painted in the Edo period, already shows this happening. The fishermen of this coast have been going into the water and singing goodbye for a very long time.