“Yabusame,” or horseback archery, is just what it says on the tin: archery performed while riding a horse.
Viewed from an emperor-centric historical perspective, what was the Kamakura Period like? As the Shogunate moved its seat of power to Kamakura, Emperor Gotoba gathered many samurai from the Kinki region under the same roof. The reason: a horseback archery contest, one for which around 1,700 samurai showed up.

However, this was all just for show. The hidden reason was to gather samurai to defeat the Kamakura Shogunate. Emperor Gotoba would, however, lose his war and die in exile on the Oki Islands.