The story
Soma Nomaoi in Minamisoma
Soma Nomaoi is a spring festival in Minamisoma and Soma City, Fukushima, tracing its origins over a thousand years to warrior Taira no Masakado's mock cavalry exercises using captured wild horses. Roughly 400 to 500 armored riders, many descended from the historic Soma samurai clan and wearing genuine heirloom armor, gallop across open fields in a nationally designated Important Intangible Folk Cultural Property.
More than a thousand years ago, the warrior Taira no Masakado, remembered as the founding figure of the Soma clan that would rule this stretch of Fukushima Prefecture for centuries, is said to have staged military exercises in which wild horses stood in for enemy soldiers, capturing them and later offering the animals to local deities as a form of ritual thanksgiving.