X-treme Equestrian

By Steven Kenworthy

If horse jumping were in the X-Games, it might look like Tado Age-Uma Shinji, also known as the Horse Rising Festival. One of the most bizarre festivals you’re likely to see in Japan, the event takes equestrian jumping to a new level, featuring horses, samurai armor-clad young men, and one nasty hill topped off with a three-meter wall. The fuzzy line between tradition and animal abuse will once again be put to the test on May 4th and 5th.

Said to be a traditional indicator of the harvest for the upcoming year, the festival is set at beautiful old Tado Shrine, reportedly established 1500 years ago. Its spacious grounds start at the foot of Tado Mountain and stretch, amid huge trees, about half a kilometer up the forested slopes, ending at a picturesque bridge near a waterfall.

The prominence of horses can be seen year-round at Tado. Religious trinkets sold at the shrine feature images of the animals, while live ones are often displayed to the public in a stable where visitors can feed them through a window.

But the horses really take center stage during the Age-Uma Festival. They are decorated in traditional costumes and paraded around the area throughout the two days. The noise and throngs of people gathered for the spectacle can make the horses skittish and hard to control. Teenage boys dressed in traditional samurai gear eventually mount the animals and, after their teammates do the requisite screaming, dancing and spraying alcohol around, get down to the real action.

Horse and rider charge along a straight path for a few hundred meters, building up speed before hitting the 30 degree slope that makes up the last 50 or so meters. Atop the slope is a three-meter wall that the horse must try to jump over. A tough leap for a horse on flat ground, it becomes clearly impossible when you add the hill into the equation. A good jump will get most of the horse’s body over the wall, but there’s still a fair bit of struggling—plus pushing and pulling by the rider’s teammates and others on hand—to get totally up and over.

Only about a quarter of the 18 horses involved make it over the wall. The rest fail, sometimes quite spectacularly. Because injuries to horses, riders and spectators are not uncommon, veterinarians, farriers, medical facilities and an ambulance are standing by.

Naturally, animal rights groups are not big supporters of the Age-Uma. They want the wall lowered or eliminated, the slope lessened, more training for riders and horses and other reforms.

One of the most vocal groups opposing the Age-Uma, the Equine Protection and Management Research Project (EPMRP), has been looking out for the welfare of horses in Japan since 2000 and started the Age-Uma Shinji campaign in 2003. Its efforts have forced changes such as halting the use of ropes to pull the horses over the wall, eliminating the beating, teasing and abuse of the horses during the event and ending the use of stimulants and other doping—at least in view of the public—to excite the horses.

The changes made to the Age-Uma in the last couple years were significant enough for the EPMRP to call off their formal campaign. But some spectators still wince at the treatment of the horses during the festival, indicating that certain issues have yet to be addressed to everyone’s satisfaction.

On the other side of the coin are the traditionalists. The Age-Uma festival dates back hundreds of years and is important enough for the government to declare it an Intangible Cultural Property of Mie Prefecture. If traditions are altered to accommodate every new wave of political correctness, are they really being maintained in their true form? Are they in danger of becoming sterilized versions of the past, cleaned up and made palatable for the modern world and thereby losing any real authenticity? It’s certainly something to ponder while watching the drunken revelry of the event.

The festival starts mid-morning and the running of the horses gets going in the early afternoon on both days. A smaller annual Age-Uma Shinji is held in Inabe, further west of Tado, on the first Saturday and Sunday in April.

Getting to Tado: take either a JR or Kintetsu train from Nagoya Station heading west to Kuwana in Mie Prefecture. An express train will take about 20 minutes; add another 10 or 15 minutes if it’s a local. At Kuwana Station, transfer to the Kintetsu Yoro Line. Get off at Tado Station and take a local bus to the Shrine. The trip from Kuwana Station to Tado Shrine will take about half an hour, not including transfer time.

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