Wild Horses

A couple of weeks ago, IUC sponsored a trip to see 流鏑馬神事 (Yabusame Shinji) in Kamakura. I really had no idea what it was when I signed up, but someone mentioned archery and since I've always been a fan of Link (of Zelda fame) and think it would be totally boss to learn how to defend myself with a bow and arrow, I figured, why not?


Clarification: we did NOT get to do archery like I had originally supposed --can you blame me for hoping?-- but we did get to watch a very cool archery contest. As I found out, Yabusame Shinji is a Shinto ritual involving an ancient style of Japanese archery on horseback. It dates back to the 6th century when it was created to amuse the gods, though it was brought to 鶴岡八幡宮 (Tsurugaoka Hachimangu) in 1186 by the founder of the Kamakura shogunate, Yoritomo Minamoto. While humoring the gods is by itself a very worthy cause, the ritual was also considered a means to make sure warriors could bring their A-game with bows. (It should be noted that Yabusame is considered neither a sport nor a marital art, but a ritual.)

Through my many trips to Japan, I've had the good fortune to see quite a few Shinto rituals. This was easily one of the more interesting ones. For one thing, in no other Shinto ritual that I have seen can I say that the ceremonial garb looked like rodeo costumes- seriously! When one of the archers passed by in what essentially looked like a red laquered cowboy hat, I had to take a double take. I did a little research and found out that the various costumes correlate to different eras in the history of mounted archery. The archers in the red cowboy-ish hats are wearing clothes from the Edo period. (Specifically, the red hat is called a kishagasa and was designed to cut wind, thus explaining the similarity to the shape of a cowboy hat.) The track consisted of three targets, each made to roughly simulate the size of a samurai's front body armor. When the archers would start flying down the track, they would let out the same piercing howl. I assumed they were doing the same thing tennis players do when they yell as they swing their rackets, but actually the archers were yelling "いんよいんよ” (IN-YO-IN-YO) which means "darkness and light." I'm not sure of the significance and I suppose it works, but if I had my choice I'd probably yell something more like "Fly mighty and true!!!" That's a mouthful though, so then again maybe not.