The gods cross the sea by boat. In summer, the two portable shrines of Shiogama Shrine in Miyagi are placed aboard lavishly decorated ceremonial vessels and carried across Matsushima Bay, escorted by a fleet of some hundred boats, one of Japan's three great boat festivals. The heavy shrines are first borne down a flight of more than two hundred stone steps toward the water, so that a festival of the land continues seamlessly onto the sea. The event began after the war, in 1948, as a prayer for recovery and for the prosperity of the local fishing and salt industries, an old rite layered with the hopes of a new era. Against the backdrop of the pine-clad islands of Matsushima, one of Japan's three famed views, the god-bearing fleet moves across the blue. This town keeps its prayers not on land, but out on the water.