Iyomante is a central ceremony of Ainu religion, the indigenous religion of the Ainu people of Hokkaido, Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands, built on the belief that certain animals, above all the bear, are kamuy, divine or spiritual beings, who visit the human world temporarily wearing an animal form as a kind of gift, bringing meat, fur and other resources for the community's benefit before their spirit returns to the world of the kamuy.
In the ceremony's traditional pattern, a bear cub was raised within the community, sometimes for a year or more, nursed and cared for as something closer to a family member than livestock, before being ritually killed in a manner and with accompanying prayers, offerings and formal address understood as sending the kamuy's spirit home with honour, gratitude and requests that it return again bearing further gifts, followed by a feast shared among the community. The rite is best understood in the terms Ainu tradition itself uses, as sending home a divine guest rather than as simple hunting or sacrifice in the sense those words carry outside the Ainu religious framework, and the atlas describes here the ceremony's meaning, structure and history rather than its specific ritual procedure, which belongs to Ainu religious knowledge.