is a drinking custom in

Miyako Island is the largest and the most populous island among the Miyako Islands of Okinawa Prefecture, Japan. Miyako Island is administered as part of the City of Miyako Island, which includes not only Miyako Island, but also five other islands. Geogra ...

Okinawa Prefecture is the southernmost and westernmost prefecture of Japan. It consists of three main island groups—the Okinawa Islands, the Sakishima Islands, and the Daitō Islands—spread across a maritime zone approximately 1,000 kilometers east to west an ...

Japan Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...

. The custom involves one person offering a toast to each of several other people in a round.

Custom

This group ritual involves people sitting in a circle. One person, the ''oya'' (master of ceremonies), makes a speech related to the particular celebration or ceremony being observed, filling his own glass with alcohol, usually an Okinawan distilled beverage called

awamori ''Awamori'' (, Okinawan: , ) is an alcoholic beverage indigenous and unique to Okinawa, Japan. It is made from long grain indica rice, and is not a direct product of brewing (like ''sake'') but of distillation (like ''shōchū''). The majorit ...

, and drains it. The ''oya'' then moves around the circle and pours awamori for everyone. After that he makes a short closing speech and chooses another ''oya'' to start the next round.

History

Similar group rituals involving

sake Sake, , or saki, also referred to as Japanese rice wine, is an alcoholic beverage of Japanese origin made by fermenting rice that has been polished to remove the bran. Despite the name ''Japanese rice wine'', sake, and indeed any East Asi ...

were once practiced across Japan. However, because the consumption of sake itself was limited to auspicious occasions, the popularization of ''otōri'' happened relatively recently. It is said that multi-turn ''ōtori'' started only after Okinawa Prefecture returned to Japan in 1972. Another popularized drinking ritual called ''Yoron kenpō'' can be found on Yoron Island,

Kagoshima Prefecture is a Prefectures of Japan, prefecture of Japan located on the island of Kyushu and the Ryukyu Islands. Kagoshima Prefecture has a population of 1,527,019 (1 February 2025) and has a geographic area of 9,187 Square kilometre, km2 (3,547 Square m ...

. The word ''otōri'' was used by Miyako's northern neighbor,

Ryūkyū The , also known as the or the , are a chain of Japanese islands that stretch southwest from Kyushu to Taiwan: the Ryukyu Islands are divided into the Satsunan Islands ( Ōsumi, Tokara and Amami) and Okinawa Prefecture ( Daitō, Miyako, Y ...

Okinawa Island , officially , is the largest of the Okinawa Islands and the Ryukyu Islands, Ryukyu (''Nansei'') Islands of Japan in the Kyushu region. It is the smallest and least populated of the five Japanese archipelago, main islands of Japan. The island is ...

. As part of New Year's rituals, the king offered awamori to the royal family members, and the highest-ranking officials called ''sanshikan''. In the 1980s, ''otōri'' became popular in

Perspectives

''Otōri'' is seen as a root cause of alcohol-related health problems in Miyako. In 2005, Miyako Health Authority started issuing ''ōtori cards'', red cards (off liquor) and yellow cards (giving one's liver a rest), with which people were supposed to decline the offer more easily. In 2020, Okinawa's prefectural government issued an advisory requesting that people refrain from the practice because of concerns relating to the spread of

COVID-19 Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a contagious disease caused by the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2. In January 2020, the disease spread worldwide, resulting in the COVID-19 pandemic. The symptoms of COVID‑19 can vary but often include fever ...

References

*Otōri, Miyako's way of drinking sake (part 1)(2002), Ryukyu Shimpo (evening), Aug. 18. *Otōri, Miyako's way of drinking sake (part 2)(2002), Ryukyu Shimpo (evening), Aug. 25.
Otōri, by Ganaha Munehiro, in Japanese

Footnotes

{{DEFAULTSORT:Otori Drinking culture Miyako culture