The kamuy are not gods above the world but beings that visit it. In Ainu understanding a kamuy inhabits its own realm in its own form and enters this one clothed as a bear, an owl, a fish, a plant, a tool, or fire in the hearth. The visible animal is the visit; the meat, the pelt and the usefulness are the gift it brings.
That premise organises everything. What people owe a kamuy is hospitality and the correct means of return, and what they receive in exchange is continued visitation. The relationship is reciprocal and specific.
Kamuy-huci, the grandmother of the hearth fire, holds a position closer than any other, because the household fire is the channel through which other kamuy are addressed. There is no sovereign among them, no assembly, and no genealogy of divine generations.
The creator, who set out the land, is not the governing presence in religious life, and the working relations are with the kamuy encountered in the immediate world.
Human beings do not become kamuy. The two are distinct kinds of being who deal with one another.
Ainu religion is living, the Ainu are a recognised Indigenous people of Japan, and this atlas lists the tradition as restricted. Ceremony is held at community level by the people who hold it, and none of it is reproduced here.