Ancient Sport lives on

Each year, archers in medieval shooting gear mounted on gorgeously decorated horses for a lively competition on the beach of Zushi, a town just south of Tokyo, galloping in the sand as thousands of onlookers cheer and shout. The first competition was held here in 1199.


An archer shoots an arrow towards a target on a galloping horse during an annual "Yabusame," or horseback archery festival, in Zushi, southwest of Tokyo on Sunday, Nov. 16, 2008. (AP Photo/Itsuo Inouye)
It's called yabusame, and it is the ancient sport of the samurai.

"There is nothing like this outside of Japan," said Ietaka Kaneko, who heads the Japan Equestrian Archery Association and the Takeda School of Horseback Archery, which traces its origins back more than 800 years. In battle, hitting the target was the whole idea. But yabusame has from its origins been almost as much an art as a sport. In many competitions, hitting the target is almost an afterthought — archers are judged, if they are judged at all, on the beauty of their run and the form they display as they release each arrow.

Archers don't actually sit. They squat, using special stirrups and very light saddles. There are three main types of shooting. The first, and most common, involves releasing the arrow at a target directly to the side of the archer from about 10 feet. Targets can also be placed obliquely to the front of the archer's path, or up to 50 feet away.

"When people think of the samurai, they don't realize that in the old days, archery was more important in battle than swords," said Hisashi Yoshimi, one of the featured shooters at the beach competition. "Archers didn't shoot at targets close up. They kept a distance and fired upward so that the arrows would rain down on advancing troops."

AP
Eric Talmadge