Japan's samurai spirit still burns in cooler conditions

Japan’s thousand-year-old samurai horse festival has survived wars, earthquakes and a nuclear disaster. Now, it is adapting to a new challenge: climate change.
The Soma Nomaoi, held around Minamisoma in Fukushima prefecture, began as a way to train mounted warriors. A millennium later, it still carries the spirit of another era, with riders in samurai armour racing on horseback and competing in traditional events.
Until 2024, the festival was held at the height of Japan’s punishing summer. In recent years, the heat had become increasingly dangerous, with riders and spectators collapsing and horses suffering heatstroke. Organisers eventually moved the event to late May, when conditions are cooler.
For 69-year-old Mitsukiyo Monma, who has taken part for 54 years, the change has given the festival a new lease of life.
“You have to wear a kimono under the armour, which is not like going out in just a T-shirt in the summer”, he said, recalling one day when temperatures neared 40°C and he needed medical attention.

“Your clothes would be so soaked that you could wring out the sweat”, he added. “When the festival moved to May, it was the first time I could drink hot coffee before going out”.
Japan recorded its hottest summer on record last year, while temperatures of 40°C and above have become common enough for the weather agency to create an official term for them: “cruelly hot” days.
Such heat is especially challenging for Soma Nomaoi, where riders wear armour weighing around 25 kg. The main event begins with races around an oval track, with riders carrying giant flags on their backs. Hundreds then gather in a field to compete for coloured flags fired into the air and drifting to the ground.
For Monma, the experience remains deeply emotional.

“I feel like I’ve truly become a samurai”, he said. “I feel more courageous and on the day itself, my whole body and mind tighten”.
The festival is more than spectacle. Records suggest it has been held uninterrupted for at least 400 years, continuing even after the 2011 earthquake and tsunami that left more than 18,000 people dead or missing and triggered the Fukushima nuclear disaster.
Fumihiko Futakami, director of the Minamisoma City Museum, said the festival became a source of comfort when he was evacuated to Tokyo after the disaster.
“Even for people who have left here and now live elsewhere, when they think of their hometown, they think of mounted warriors”, he said. “It’s the identity of our town”.
This year’s event unfolded under cloudy skies, with temperatures around 18°C — far from the dangerous conditions of 2023, when more than 100 horses and dozens of people needed treatment for heatstroke and two animals died.
Still, the festival faces an uncertain future. Owning or hiring a horse is expensive and Japan’s ageing population has contributed to a steady decline in participants.
Monma worries the tradition may not survive another century unless organisers find new solutions. — AFP