Three Riders Get One Run Each at Three Targets Down a 250-Metre Course in Kamakura on the Sixteenth of September
Yabusame closes the three-day Reitaisai festival at Tsurugaoka Hachimangu. The ritual has been part of the shrine's calendar since 1187 and the archers ride without reins.
The yabusame ritual is performed at one o'clock in the afternoon on Wednesday 16 September at the Tsurugaoka Hachimangu shrine in Kamakura, closing the three days of the shrine's Reitaisai grand festival.
The format is unforgiving. A straight track of 250 metres has three targets set along it. Three horsemen, chosen from the best archers in the area, ride the course at a gallop and shoot each target in sequence. Each gets one run. There is no second attempt and no aggregate over rounds.
The difficulty is not the archery on its own but the archery without hands. The rider drops the reins entirely and steers with his legs while drawing a long asymmetric bow, and has roughly a second to hit a small wooden target squarely enough to shatter it as he passes. Archers ride in samurai hunting dress, in layered kariginu-style garments and traditional headgear.
Yabusame has been part of this festival since it began in 1187, instituted by Minamoto no Yoritomo, who founded the Kamakura shogunate and built Tsurugaoka Hachimangu as the spiritual centre of his new military government. It developed as a battlefield skill during the Kamakura period, from 1185 to 1333, and was refined into ceremonial form over the long peace of the Edo period. Mounted archery training at Japanese shrines is recorded from the middle of the sixth century.
The festival itself is fixed to 14, 15 and 16 September every year, regardless of the day of the week. The vigil is on the evening of the 14th at six, the main ceremony at ten on the 15th, and the mikoshi procession at one that afternoon. After the yabusame on the 16th, bell crickets are released at five o'clock.
Admission is free. The shrine is a ten-minute walk from JR Kamakura Station, about an hour from Tokyo, and a front-row position requires arriving in the early morning.
Japan Travel describes the practice as difficult and dwindling, and the number of riders able to perform it to ritual standard is small. That, more than tradition, is why only three ride at Kamakura each year.