So, last weekend I had the opportunity to observe an interesting Japanese cultural phenomenon. No, it wasn’t the annual naming of the Pokemon, or the release of a new version of Hello Kitty. Rather, it was the annual yabusame exhibition at Hachimanjingu Shrine in Kamakura, Japan.

For those of you who don’t know, yabusame is the Japanese martial art combining horseback riding with archery, and the event was a lot of fun to watch. The archers are dressed in period clothing—circa 1100 A.D., Japan—and their horses fitted out similarly, making it a very colorful and lively event.

The event starts behind the scenes, so to speak, as the archers drink sake and make prayers for success. Already getting good, right? Drinking and shooting passes many a country night back home as well! Much ceremony and pageantry continues—the event does take place at a shrine after all—until finally the crowd gets to see the archers for the first time.

The horsemen parade the length of a long dirt track, along which sit all the spectators. The track is roped off for safety, of course, and each archer gets a chance to see the three target stands spaced nearly evenly along the side of the track, a few meters away. Nobody is allowed to sit behind the targets, obviously, but the boys setting up and replacing the targets sat close enough to make me—as a novice archer myself—very nervous!

The contestants took turns running their mounts down the track at full tilt, releasing a single arrow at each target, a square sheet of solid pine board. The crowd roars as the archer passes by and strikes the target, or suddenly goes quiet in a reaction oddly similar to a dropped pass in football when he misses, but the contestant races on, drawing and nocking another arrow in preparation to engage the next target, and then the next.

All-in-all, it was a lot of fun to watch, though I’ll admit the combination of shooting while riding has me aching for an opportunity to try it someday! That would be truly comical to watch, I’m sure, but you can bet that from now on I’ll be on the lookout for my next chance to look foolish while undoubtedly having a great, never-to-be-forgotten time.

While the sport of yabusame began in the 1100s during the Kamakura Shogunate, that date can be quite misleading for the uninformed. You see, the image of the samurai that most westerners carry in their hearts and minds—the single-minded devotee to his sword and swordsmanship—was a much later development. The original Japanese warriors were archers . . . and yes, they were generally mounted. In fact, they weren’t referred to as samurai at all until the 900s A.D., the word samurai not really becoming the equivalent of bushi—literally “warrior”—until the 12th Century.

Still, the exhibition itself, aside from reminding me of the equestrian roots of Japan’s samurai class, brought to mind once again just how old this society and culture really is. Japan and its neighboring nations in Northeast Asia seem especially old in comparison with the United States and Europe.

I know what you’re thinking, Europe is the “Old Country”, how can I lump Europe in with the United States as seeming relatively young? Well, think about it for a second. When did the nations that dominate and represent modern Europe coalesce as nations? Take, for example, England, whose ethnic makeup and cultural identity wasn’t complete until the Norman Conquest of 1066 A.D. France was really “born” with the establishment of the Carolingian Empire in 800 A.D. Germany was not established as a nation until the crazy late date of 1871, though German culture became distinctive from that of the Franks (actually a German tribal confederation) in the 5th and 6th Centuries A.D. Still, Germanic culture remained fairly consistent from its first appearance in Roman histories about 100 A.D.

Japan, as a nation-state, can be identified from Chinese historical sources as early as the First Century A.D. Japan’s northern neighbor, Korea, had an established, identifiable culture and nation state in place well before Han China’s invasion in 108 B.C. And China . . . well, what can you say . . . a distinct Chinese culture is reliably documented as far back as 1500 B.C., but may go back another 600 years or so.

All that being said, as a dedicated fan of history, I have to say I find very appealing the desire to keep old traditions alive. The yabusame exhibition was a reminder to all those present of where the Japanese people come from, and all their ancestors who went before, ultimately bringing them to the place of prosperity they know today. Though only a small percentage of the Japanese population were ever included in that elite class, Japan today doesn’t exist without the samurai of Medieval Japan and, by extension then, the mounted horse archers who preceded them. This is a part of their history, and the Japanese are right to take pride in the progression of their culture and society over the past 2,000-plus years. The same can be said of Korean and Chinese cultures, old beyond Western reckoning.

In the United States, we see people who work hard to preserve the legacy of our short, if action-packed, history. These are often embodied in historical societies who struggle to maintain Civil War battlefields and keep Revolution-era buildings standing. But this cause is served just as nobly by a dedicated corps of battlefield re-enactors, those much-maligned disciples of whatever conflict has beguiled them, who spend countless hours researching, and untold amounts of personal treasure, investing in exactly the right brass button for the uniform they are wearing at any given time. These folks, like the colorful horse archers I witnessed at Kamakura, are working hard to keep the legacy of the past alive, and I applaud their effort.

The past is important, for every culture, every society. This is not to say that any nation’s history is squeaky clean, as history remains, above all, the story of humanity, and humans make mistakes. Still, the whole point of studying history is to learn from it and, hopefully, avoid those same mistakes in the future. You can’t do that if you bury the past, or white-wash it to the point that the mistakes are no longer as ugly. While this practice makes it easier for the modern person to swallow, it also strips away the very lessons that give the study of history its reason for being in the first place.

Will there be people who support the “wrong” side of history, upholding the sometimes horrible and horrifying mistakes made by their ancestors? Undoubtedly, as we are all blessed with freedom of thought and speech. But that way of thinking isn’t addressed by burying what happened or pretending that certain individuals and their decisions never took place.

The samurai were, above all, brutal overlords who held the absolute and nonnegotiable power of life and death over anyone in a lower class. Throughout the period of their ascendancy, untold numbers of Japanese—and later Chinese, Korean, and Ryu Kyu people—died as a result of their glory-driven, self-indulgent actions. And yet, there at Kamakura I was able to see a people interested in and, to a certain degree, proud of their past—regardless of the blemishes—and this was encouraging to see.

History is a teacher, not a rock against which we should bash the heads of today’s transient slate of political rivals. It is our responsibility as people to learn from the mistakes of history, castigating those who acted dishonorably, but upholding those examples of human behavior that are commendable and worthy of emulation. History holds both lessons for us, but we only learn them when we take the time to dig in and find out for ourselves what really happened.

M. G. Haynes