This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.
Ryukyuan religion assigns official community ritual to women, and it gives a specific doctrinal reason why. Onarigami holds that a woman's spirit carries protective and blessing power over her brothers, tracing that precedence to the goddess Amamikyu, and it is this belief, not simply local custom, that ethnographers document as the structural basis for the noro priesthood.
A noro is a hereditary priestess, historically appointed by the state and passed down among female relatives of local officials, who performs the community's official rites: propitiation of ancestors and local deities, the calendar's seasonal observances, and historically, ritual duties tied to the Ryukyu Kingdom's own royal household. The role sat alongside, and was not replaced by, the Buddhism and sectarian Shinto that reached the islands later from mainland Japan; ethnographers describe Ryukyuan religion as pragmatic and adaptable enough to be woven into household, kin group, community and formerly royal ritual at every level of Ryukyuan society rather than displaced by imported forms.
Noro led ritual continues in parts of Okinawa today, at utaki sites including Sefa Utaki and the utaki of Kudaka Island, keeping onarigami a living structural claim about who conducts a community's ritual life rather than a description of a vanished office.