Facts! That takes true dedication to horsemenship!

and a s* load of focus ... he's clearly one of those people to work well under pressure

@@MrSimonw58 very true

get paid 01 Cannot understand the meaning does not mean meaningless. It just means that you are uneducated.

August Hayek , or that you overthink

get paid 01 Just because you did not go to school does not mean that other people overthink.

"I belong to the warrior in whom the old ways have joined the new." I always thought that movie line perfectly sums up Japanese culture.

m popo I

East Asian aesthetics in general are pretty cool.

+Mark Stafford It was quick as balls, that's a purebred arabian for you.

Kshitij Raj none of the horses used in this particular ceremony were native breeds or crosses of, the last one was a thoroughbred ex race horse.

@Kshitij Raj I personally know the owners, and ride these horses regularly, the white thoroughbred has sadly passed away a few years ago, also I have 3 Japanese horses and they are nothing like these guys ;) have a good one.

Yes he was fast & he also got confused at the start thinking he was racing down the side next to the crowd lol he must enjoy it!

That’s a nice touch! Do you practice Yabusame or Kyudo? I’m in the UK and part of an archery club, a lot of people here use compound bows and recurves. I have a takedown recurve, but I tend to use my Korean horsebows a lot (shooting off both sides).

0:58

lol I aplod you good sir *claps slowly*

Drive by shooting on horseback with a bow and arrow... that would be something to see (*.*)

It would be-hoof you not to make such puns again.

Usually your target is not a recycled paper dummy. Its a man that usually shoots something back at you.

OUR HORSE IS RUNNING FROM THE BATTLEFIELD

lol literally just came here after decimating an army with my horse archers in shogun 2

It's crowded but it's worth it to see mounted archery

Easy, step 1: transfer $10.000 in to my account, I will tell you what to do next. Shhh... Don't tell your mother.

Whatchu ma' talking 'bout boy? Allow me to remind you we got hot dog eating contests. Be proud of your cultural heritage boy.

we got ppl shooting guns

We do www.horsearchery.us

People are too busy having pointless arguments and being offended by everything

Nessa Patriot I read that most of these horses they use now are ex racehorses, since they are taller

In case you're still wondering, there are horse breeds that originally were native to Japan, but most of them are fairly small and fairly weak (not able to carry a human for a longer amount of time). I myself don't know actually which of them could be used in warfare. But I assume that Japanese warriors used foreign horse breeds to ride on and farmers continued to use the native animals to help them on the field and carry goods.

She looks Arabian. This is not real samurais you know, there’s rules for this as sports but no rules which breeds you would use. Lots of people choose non Japanese horse to play

Sig, longbows were never used on horseback. They are not meant to be used on horseback. They are the size of a man if not taller and the limbs of the bow would constantly be bouncing off the horse's shoulder, destroying accuracy.

Hunter Findon That's where you're wrong. Both the English and the Japanese had large bows, the English call theirs the Longbow the Japanese called it a Yumi. In both cases Some archers were on horseback. If you actually watched the video you'll see that they are firing a longbow from horseback quite well. In Europe, some English Longbowmen were mounted and fired their bows from Horseback. This was not something anyone could do, it required a lot of training and practice. In fact Edward III made it a law that all men between 16 and 60 had to practice the longbow every Sunday.

Hunter Findon These are long bows. There's an excellent BBC documentary comparing the differences between the Japanese Yumi and English Longbow. The Yumi's release point is about 1/3rd up from the bottom instead of at the halfway point specifically so that it may be fired from horseback. It nonetheless retains equal or superior power to the English longbow thanks to being a recurve.

+APsupportsTerrorism not power, efficiency. There is a huge power discrepancy between a 130lb longbow and a 70 or 80lb yumi, which no one really uses anymore anyway. Recurves are more efficient because it has long limbs in a short space.

+Cannibal713 They were exposed to it yes, I just started doing Kyudo and in the book that I bought it talked in depth about why they did not switch over. Long story short, the appreciation of the beauty of the long Japanese bow won over the practical part. To achieve the same pulling force they have the long draw which goes way further than any other drawing technique there is. I did however read somewhere on the federation page that sometime during and before Sengoku warring era the Samurai used a little smaller bow for horse riding. I believe it was either a 168 or 161 cm instead of the 220 cm long bow. Hope this helps, I am pretty sure I am right on all points but can't give you a 100% guarantee.

Ok, thanks. Thats very Japanese to take the aesthetics into account.

You are welcome, it's refreshing to find constructive questions on the internet.

A Yumi actually is a recurve bow. I think what you really mean is a reflex recurve bow. Although it is a little contentious to say, the actual definition of recurve is that the string touches the limb, which yumi tend only to do at the top, and not all of them do. The limbs, however, most definitely do curve away from the archer when the bow is unstrung, unlike a straight bow. Why use large bows, when they could use what they know to create shorter bows with as much power? I think that comes down to a couple of factors, one being that they are cheaper, easier to make, and last longer at the time, as there is a lot less strain in the bow. The other is the amount of pinch, or how sharp the angle of the string is. the larger this is the more difficult and prone to error the shot will be, making it less accurate. They also did like to draw ridiculously far, back to the shoulder, which actually gives it about a 25-30% increase in power (and even more speed as the arrows did not need to be stronger etc) from the same draw weight. This draw distance necessitated certain methods of shooting from horseback anyway, so they decided to be less flexible in their style, but base their strategy on the strongest method. They did use bigger bows on foot, but they still used huge ones on horseback. Famously they all got gunned down though when oda bought the newest guns, the matchlock, and became the first army to use them en masse which basically put an end to the takeda school of horse archery faster than you can say "FIRE!" they were pretty effective from the 1100s so they had a good run. I think overall they valued the huge range and penetration at range that the yumi uniquely provided for the time period. In fact, the impressive thing in japanese archery is not the bow, but the special glove, that allowed a thumb grip to provide smooth release, high fire rate, which was a lot more advanced than a thumb ring, and allowed a nice smooth motion to get the most out of the energy of pulling it back. It is not quite as fast as 3 shots in 1.5 seconds, as the best horse archers could do, but at least it penetrates armour at least as well as a longbow.

first, this is a ritual shot when they are encouraged to hit for the belief of good luck second, this is fucking HORSE ARCHERY that we're talking about. A horse can run at about 25mph and that's like a fucking motorcycle, not mentioning it's walloping up and down constantly. And they shot an arrow from a long bow, while still controlling the horse. They also have to draw the arrow fast enough so they don't miss the target due to the long drawing time before shooting. imagine shooting a Springfield while riding a motorcycle over a bunch of speed bump. I would like to see you do that and hit a target half meter away

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