Yabusame – Horse Archery

Of all the things I would like to try, if I could pick one single uniquely Japanese experience, it would be yabusame. I really can’t think of any activity in Japan that is more attractive to me than this. Which might be why I haven’t felt up to the task of blogging about it before. Yabusame is the ritual practice of mounted archery, an old samurai training practice which today involves riding down a narrow lane attempting to hit three targets with a Japanese bow and arrow. In the old days this was a useful practice for war but after Japan gained stability under the shogun, yabusame has had a more ritual than practical meaning. Some yabusame exhibitions are used by priests to tell the fortune of the coming year (more hits means a better year and vice versa) and it is still a highly ritual sport complete with attending priests, blessings and full shinto rituals. Most yabusame exhibitions are three archers each being given three passes. Most horses used are trained exclusively for this task but in some cases, like in the case I am blogging about today, regular racing horses are used. Naturally, the faster the horse runs the lesser the chance of hitting the targets. Often the commentators will announce with dread in their voice that “today the horses are very lively”, meaning that the archers will have a hard time, but I also saw one event where the commentator joked that the horses seemed not to have been properly woken up yet!

The arrows, as you can see, are not pointed and they don’t need to penetrate the target. The target is a small wooden pane that is often pre-broken in half and filled with a tissue pocket of confetti, so that when the blunt arrow breaks the pane, a showering of confetti announce the hit! Another reason for the blunt arrows are the three judges seated next to the target or sometimes beneath or behind it! Perhaps as an added incentive to hit the target instead of a judge? I have never seen it personally, but some friends mention having seen stray arrows hit judges, apparently it’s considered bad sport to flinch!

The easiest target to hit is usually the first one, if the horse moves fast it becomes really difficult to draw the next arrow, place it on the bouncing bow and draw for the next target, especially if the archer is even slightly out of balance. But skilled archers are sometimes able to hit all three targets even on fast horses. I have seen plenty of not so skilled archers complete all three runs with zero hits tough, so I assume it must be an extremely difficult sport. If you’re into archery you will have noticed the peculiar Japanese un-balanced bows! The way of shooting these bows are completely different from western archery, for example, the hand holding the bow uses almost no force, resulting in the bow turning on it’s own, often leaving the string hitting the wrist of the left arm after letting the arrow loose! A properly drawn Japanese bow looks more like an arch than the line of the western drawn bow and unskilled archers will often end up with the string hitting their faces or wrists, which needless to say can be quite painful. I have done it several times while doing normal Japanese archery. There’s also horror stories in every archery school of someone accidentally getting their ear caught in front of the drawn string.

For me, yabusame is the epitome, the one sport to outshine all sports, and the ultimate of Japanese culture. Very dangerous and extremely difficult but when well performed it looks absolutely effortless. Plus look at those gorgeous costumes! I’ll post more photos from this event at Tokyo’s Bajikouen later. Enjoy!