Will Robb Photography

One of my favourite things about Japan is how ancient rituals and festivals go on on unchanged for centuries. No matter how the country grows in terms of economy and technology, some things from the past just never change.

Every year in mid April, Kusajishi (deer grass target archery) and yabusame (horseback archery) events are held along the banks of the Sumida river in Asakusa. This year I went along for the second time during my stay here and the photos I took form part of my Lonely Planet online portfolio.

Archery has a long history in Japan. From the prehistoric Jomon period hunters used bows and arrows to hunt from food and from around 300BC an asymmetrical shaped bow made from bamboo that had been slowly hardened in a smoking chamber came into use. To this day, bows are made to the same standards using traditional methods. Until the 4th century AD, archers on foot were commonly used in warfare in Japan and after that archers on horseback came into play and from around the 10th century onwards horseback archery was used as a military training exercise. Ancient competitions, much like today’s events, were held when archers galloped there horses over a a 255m course at high speed, firing arrows at 3 targets along the way. Failure in the past was considered a disgrace, those who did not do well in terms of form as well as performance were required to commit ritual suicide (seppuku). For health and safety reasons this practice was outlawed in 1987….

The archers who take part in each event have often trained for many years, knowledge has been passed from fathers to sons (and more recently daughters) over the generations. Each archer goes through years of what would seem to many people of tedious training, concentrating on stance and stamina for holding the bow, achieving perfect breathing and balance before even getting to practice shooting an arrow. It could take more than 10 years of practice before someone is considered of a good enough standard to enter a competition.

I really enjoyed watching both events. The Kusajishi event was very slowly paced, time was taken over each movement, from removing items of outer clothing which would impair aiming, to drawing the bow, maintaining this position for a period of time before releasing the arrow with a shout of “yo-in-yo” which means darkness and light and is symbolic of the balance between ying and yang, the harmony between body and spirit that is required to succeed. The concentration on each participants face was intense. The clothes were amazing, I loved the shoes and kimono, simple but beautiful. Quite an easy event to photograph, there was plenty of time to see what was going on and select a variety of angles to shoot the archers from, getting a good idea about how they were dressed etc. The standing archery is all about form, hitting the target is of secondary importance, where I was I was boxed in and couldn’t get a good shot of the target even if I had wanted to, so I just concentrated on getting fairlry close up shots with my 80-200mm lens, shooting at a high iso to freeze each image in a nice crisp moment.

The horseback archery event was much harder to photograph. People queue for hours for a spot next to the 255m long track where the horses are raced down. The horses move really fast, they are big and the small rope separating them form the crowd doesn’t supply much in the way of safety in my book, so I spent about 2 hours standing in a good spot about 5m back from the crowd on an embankment next to some trees. As the events start got nearer, it got extremely crowded and people got quite aggressive over where they wanted to stand and watch from. After being jostled about for a while I wasn’t in the best of mood, people were shouting at each other and shoving people out of the way to get a good spot and I was in danger of getting shoved off the embankment onto the people sitting below, but I dug in my heels (literally) and kept the spot I had been presiding over.

As the horses galloped down the course I followed their path through my viewfinder on my 28-70 f.2.8L lens, starting with my lens at about 70mm and zooming out to about 35mm as the horses got nearer. I rattled off as many photos as I could on quick shoot mode as each horse ran past. My EOS 5D only shoots about 3 frames per second, so for each time a horse ran by I could get about 10-12 shots off which was more than enough really. I wanted to get a feeling of motion in each shot, so I sot on a low iso setting, only 100, I got a nice feel to the photos with it. I managed to get a few good shots of arrows in motion and targets being smashed from my bursts of shooting. I was happy with the results, showing the arrow being drawn, being released and the target being hit. Got to admire the skills the archers have.