Ukehi or Ukei (誓占, lit. "pledge divination") is a Japanese Shinto divination ritual.
Hayashi Oen, a nineteenth-century practitioner of ukehi, identified six functions of the rite. He claimed it could be used to:
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 [2] response. If nothing happened, it was assumed that the kami did not favour the proposed course of action.[1] The questioning of the kami took the form of an oath or vow.[3][4] 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.[citation needed]
In the novel Runaway Horses, Mishima Yukio described the procedure of ukehi as "contain[ing] an element of danger not unlike a footing that could give way at any moment".[5]