FUKUSHIMA, May 25 (News On Japan) –
A runaway horse collided with spectators through the conventional Soma Nomaoi pageant in Fukushima Prefecture on May twenty fourth, injuring six folks, after the rider fell off through the race, inflicting the animal to bolt into the gang.
The incident occurred at round 12:50 p.m. through the armored horse racing occasion, one of many fundamental sights of the historic pageant, which started on May twenty third within the Soma and Futaba areas of Fukushima Prefecture.
The horse was later secured, however six folks, together with spectators and employees members, have been injured within the collision, with three taken to hospital.
None of the accidents are believed to be life-threatening.
Soma Nomaoi, identified for its samurai-style horseback occasions such because the “armored horse race” and the “sacred flag competition,” drew round 40,000 guests to the venue.
Soma Nomaoi is considered one of Japan’s oldest equestrian festivals, with a historical past stated to stretch again greater than 1,000 years to Taira no Masakado, the Tenth-century warrior thought to be an ancestor of the Soma clan. According to custom, Masakado launched wild horses on the plains of Shimosa Province, in present-day Chiba Prefecture, and had mounted warriors pursue them as army coaching, earlier than captured horses have been supplied to a shrine as sacred animals.
The ritual was later carried north after the Soma clan established itself in what’s now the Soma area of Fukushima Prefecture through the medieval interval. Successive Soma lords preserved the occasion by way of the top of the feudal period, creating it right into a show of horsemanship, army group and clan id.
Following the Meiji Restoration, when the outdated samurai domains have been abolished, the pageant confronted the danger of disappearing as a warrior-clan ceremony. It survived by being reorganized as a spiritual pageant related with three Soma shrines: Soma Nakamura Shrine, Soma Ota Shrine and Soma Odaka Shrine.
The trendy Soma Nomaoi is held over three days and options tons of of riders carrying samurai armor and carrying ancestral banners. Its best-known occasions embrace the armored horse race, by which riders gallop across the Hibarigahara grounds, and the sacred flag competitors, by which horsemen scramble to seize shrine flags launched into the air. The last day historically consists of the Nomagake ritual, by which unmounted horses are pushed right into a shrine precinct and one is captured and supplied ceremonially.
Soma Nomaoi was designated an Important Intangible Folk Cultural Property of Japan in 1978, recognizing its significance as a surviving expression of Japan’s equestrian and samurai traditions. The pageant has continued by way of durations of upheaval, together with in a diminished kind after the March 2011 earthquake, tsunami and Fukushima nuclear catastrophe, when it grew to become an necessary image of cultural continuity and regional restoration.
From 2024, the pageant was moved from its conventional midsummer schedule to late May in response to considerations over excessive summer time warmth affecting each riders and horses. In 2026, the occasion continued to draw massive crowds, with about 40,000 spectators attending the venue for its main horseback shows.
Source: FNN