When someone we love dies, the conversations do not always feel finished. There may be an apology we never offered, a question we never asked, or an ordinary moment we would give almost anything to experience again. The longing for one more conversation is part of what draws me to kuchiyose, a Japanese practice of spirit communication.
In the itako tradition of northeastern Japan, kuchiyose is a ritual through which a medium calls upon a spirit and speaks words understood by participants to come from that spirit. Its best-known form concerns communication with the dead. It gives a ceremonial setting to a hope many grieving people recognize: that a relationship might continue beyond physical death.
Researcher Marianna Zanetta describes a sequence she observed during fieldwork, while noting local variations. The medium begins by invoking kami or Buddhist figures as protectors, using prayers and chanting. She then turns to the spirit the visitor wishes to contact. Within the ritual’s spiritual understanding, that spirit communicates through the medium’s voice. A closing prayer brings the encounter to an end.
The messages described in Zanetta’s research often concern family bonds. They may express gratitude for being remembered, offer advice about everyday life, or ask relatives to continue prayers and visits to the grave. In this understanding, the relationship involves responsibilities on both sides of death: the living remember and care for their ancestors, while the ancestors remain part of family life.
There is something moving about that emphasis on remembrance. Grief can leave a person with love that has nowhere obvious to go. A ritual may offer a time and place to express it. For someone who believes communication has taken place, hearing a message of affection or reassurance may carry a significance that an outside observer cannot fully measure.
The women who traditionally performed kuchiyose as itako were often blind. Their preparation involved years of apprenticeship with an experienced teacher. Their practices were learned and passed on within communities, where becoming a medium also offered an occupation to women with limited alternatives. Blindness is therefore part of the tradition’s social history as well as its spiritual associations.
Nakamura Take provides one documented example. A January 2023 profile in Nippon.com reported that she had lost her sight at age three after measles. The writer, who had transcribed her kuchiyose sessions for a documentary book project, described messages that offered reassurance and comfort to people seeking contact with deceased loved ones.
Kuchiyose has been performed at gatherings associated with Mount Osore, but accounts of itako practice also describe meetings in ordinary homes. Sound is central to the ritual: voice, chant, and, in some traditions, musical instruments help give the encounter its form. The setting and practice deserve attention alongside the messages themselves.
Understanding kuchiyose also means seeing the practitioners as people with everyday lives. Ilaria Vecchi’s fieldwork challenges portrayals that confine itako to images of mysterious women summoning spirits. Her research examines their work and how they adapt to changes around them. That perspective helps keep the people and their communities visible when we discuss the ritual.
Documenting this practice does not settle whether the dead communicate through a medium. It shows how people have approached that possibility through a particular cultural tradition. We can describe the belief respectfully while distinguishing it from independently established evidence.
What stays with me is the willingness to make room for a conversation about someone who has died. Kuchiyose offers a way for believers to seek an answer, but it also draws attention to the person asking: someone who remembers, someone who misses, someone whose love is still present. That longing deserves to be heard with care.
