Eideard

Daylife/AP Photo by Itsuo Inouye

It is about as far from the Olympic sport of archery as it can get. The bow is taller than the person shooting it and, to the uninitiated, it appears lopsided and unbalanced. There are no sights and no high-tech stabilizers.

And it is done on horseback, at upward of 65 kilometers per hour, or 40 miles per hour. It’s called yabusame, and it is the sport of the samurai.

Each year, archers in feudal shooting gear climb on their decorated mounts 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.

The scene is like something out of a movie by the great Akira Kurosawa. Banners flap in the ocean wind, marking the beginning and end of the shooting runway. Little boys in bright robes and black hats scamper about collecting the arrows and the debris from the wooden or clay targets destroyed by each hit…

“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.”

Yoshimi said that the tradition was reflected in the longbows, which are better suited for long-range attacks on a general area rather than picking off single adversaries.

“The bows haven’t really been adapted for this kind of shooting, because there is a big part of the sport that is spiritual, rather than practical,” he said. “That’s a lot of its appeal.”

I’d love to see a contemporary match between Japanese Samurai and Mongolian horsemen. For that matter, throw in some English bowmen with clothyard arrows. Could be a hell of a match.