Saturday, September 3, 2011

Yabusame

These are pictures I took of the yabusame festival at Samugawa Jinja last year. The riders are from the Takeda School of Horseback Archery.

Yabusame involves shooting at three targets to the left from a running horse, which he controls with his knees, and as a formal practice dates to the Kamakura period.

Samukawa Jinja is Southwest of Tokyo, very close to where I used to live, and dates to at least the 8th century according to documented evidence and is probably centuries earlier in the founding.





Probably because I was too busy watching, I didn't take pictures of them on the run.
But here's a video I found of the same festival, previous year which gives an impression of the movement: