Traditional Japanese Horseback Archery
The history of Japanese horseback archery dates back to the 4th century. It became popular in Japan, attracting crowds. The Emperor found that the crowds were not appropriate to the solemn and sacred nature of the occasion, and banned public displays in 698. Horseback archery was a widely-used combat technique from the Heian Period to the Sengoku Period. Nasu no Yoichi, a samurai of the Kamakura Period is the most famous horseback archer in Japan. Three kinds of Japanese horseback archery (Kasagake, Yabusame, and Inuoumono (dog shooting)) were defined.
When the arquebus was introduced to Japan in the 16th century, archery became outdated. To maintain traditional Japanese horseback archery, Tokugawa Yoshimune, the eighth Tokugawa shogun, ordered the Ogasawara clan to found a school. Current Japanese horseback archery succeeds to the technique reformed by the Ogasawara clan.
Traditionally, women were barred from performing in yabusame, but in 1963 female archers participated in a yabusame demonstration for the first time.
Read more about this topic: Mounted Archery
Famous quotes containing the words traditional, japanese and/or horseback:
“In abnormal times like our own, when institutions are changing rapidly in several directions at once and the traditional framework of society has broken down, it becomes more and more difficult to measure any type of behavior against any other.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)
“I am a lantern—
My head a moon
Of Japanese paper, my gold beaten skin
Infinitely delicate and infinitely expensive.”
—Sylvia Plath (1932–1963)
“Perhaps you have forgotten me. Dont [sic] you remember a long black fellow who rode on horseback with you from Tremont to Springfield nearly ten years ago, swimming your horses over the Mackinaw on the trip? Well, I am that same one fellow yet.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)