thumb|upright=1.8|A Cercidiphyllum|katsura tree '''''' (, ; Sakhalin Ainu: , ) are wooden, carved ceremonial sticks used by Ainu men when making offerings to spirits.
thumb|upright=1.8|A Cercidiphyllum|katsura tree '''''' (, ; Sakhalin Ainu: , ) are wooden, carved ceremonial sticks used by Ainu men when making offerings to spirits.
==Background== thumb|An illustration of usage by (1897) The central section of an is decorated, featuring animals, floral motifs as well as abstract designs. The ends of an bear designs that represent the patriarchal lineage of the owner. The Ainu believe that the designs on the ends of the help the spirits in identifying the person who made the offering. The underside of the may on some occasions be carved with various symbols called . A common is symbol representing the killer whale. The pointed end of the is known as the "tongue". The libation process is performed when the "tongue" placed into a lacquerware cup or saucer, containing millet beer or sake. Drops of the liquid then fall upon the venerated object. The Ainu limited their representation of animals to the . Ainu men occasionally used the as a mean to lift their moustaches, leading non-Ainu observers of this habit to call them moustache lifters. Another name is "libation sticks".
Discovered by embedding cosine similarity (sentence-transformers MiniLM, 384-dim).