If the equestrian events at the Olympics whetted your appetite for all things horsey, you might like to know about yabusame. Yabusame (流鏑馬) is traditional Japanese horseback archery and is one of its most exciting spectator events.

Although you can see yabusame festivals all over Japan, the festival in Tokyo's Toyama Park 戸山公園 is one of the best known. Come mid-October, residents of Shinjuku ward are usually gearing up for the annual festival.

An archer in suikan (水干 the garb worn by nobles in feudal Japan) gallops down a 255-metre-long (280 yd) track on horseback. He mainly controls his horse with his knees, as he needs both hands to draw his bow and shoot his arrows.

As he approaches the targets, he brings his bow up and draws the arrow past his ear before releasing it with a cry of 'In-Yō-In-Yō' 陰陽陰陽 ('darkness and light'). He fires three special "turnip-headed" arrows at three wooden targets from a distance of 200 metres. The arrows are blunt and rounded in order to make a louder sound when they hit the targets.

Toyama Park is near Takadanobaba 高田馬場, a neighbourhood that has been associated with horses since the Edo period. There used to be a large paddock in Takadanobaba where samurai would practice their horsemanship and archery skills. The name of the neighbourhood, which means 'Takada's paddock', comes from Her Highness Takada, who was the wife of Tokugawa Ieyasu, the founder and first shogun of the Tokugawa shogunate.

It is said that the first yabusame festival in Takadanobaba was performed in dedication to the Anahachiman-gū Shrine 穴八幡宮 in nearby Waseda in 1728 as part of a prayer ceremony performed to bring good fortune to the successor to the eighth shogun, Tokugawa Yoshimune. The shrine is just a short walk from Toyama Park and you can see a statue of a yabusame horseman outside its main entrance.

Ordinarily, the yabusame festival in Toyama Park is held on Health and Sports Day at the end of October, but 2021 is no ordinary year, and in common with most festivities, this year's festival has been cancelled to prevent the spread of coronavirus. But not to worry - there's always next year!