Ukehi

Ukehi or Ukei was a Japanese Shinto divination ritual.
Generally, it was a type of cleromancy which involved asking a question of the kami and coming to an answer through some type of sortition. The belief was that the kami would influence the outcome of the sortition in order to communicate their will.

Function and performance

, a nineteenth-century practitioner of ukehi, identified six functions of the rite. He claimed it could be used to:

ask for information or messages from the kami
establish the will of the kami
predict the outcome of an event
enervate or animate living beings
manipulate weather conditions
kill one's enemies

The dictates of ukehi can come as a dream, but more commonly the petitioner would use the ritual to ask a question of the kami and then await an omen of some sort to confirm their response. If nothing happened, it was assumed that the kami did not favour the proposed course of action. The questioning of the kami took the form of an oath or vow. Sometimes the ritual involved inscribing the choices available on bamboo slips, which were then shaken in a container; whichever slip fell out dictated the appropriate course of action.
In the novel Runaway Horses, Mishima Yukio described the procedure of ukehi as "contain an element of danger not unlike a footing that could give way at any moment".

Notable ''ukehi''

An ukehi ritual undertaken by the deities Amaterasu and Susanoo-no-Mikoto resulted in the birth of eight more deities.
Ukehi by hunting is described in the Nihon Shoki.
Also in the Shoki, the Emperor Jinmu carries out an ukehi involving submerging jars of ame rice-syrup into the headwaters of a river, and when the river fish become inebriated and float to the surface, this is taken as a sign of the approval of the kami.
In the late 19th century, Hayashi Oen and his pupil Otaguro Tomoo performed ukehi several times, and eventually the latter received what he believed was divine authorization to begin the Shinpūren rebellion.