On January 18, 29 Mato archers and 4 Makiwara archers gathered in the gymnasium at the Gymnasium am Neandertal to welcome the Year of the Snake. This set a new record. In addition to members of the host club, guests from many kyudo groups in North Rhine-Westphalia were in attendance.

To kick off the event, Hannelore Heid-Dauner (5th dan), Reinhard Kollotzek (5th Dan), and Uta Scholten (3rd Dan) performed a Hitotsu Mato Sharei as part of the Yawatashi—the opening ceremony. In this ritual, three archers shoot at a target in a formal sequence of movements. Afterward, the other participants joined in, firing their first two shots in a less complex but equally formal format in teams of five.

The Mato Asobi—target games—that followed had a more relaxed and cheerful atmosphere. The Neanderthals had once again gotten creative, decorating numerous imaginative targets with a wide variety of snakes, making the event quite challenging. Even for beginners, there were challenging tasks set up in front of the makiwara at a distance of two meters.

During the breaks, everyone was able to refuel with the donated delicacies. Those present dug in heartily, so fears that there might be too much left over proved unfounded.

At the end, things got really exciting again. There were several strong contenders for the win with similar scores. The shot at the moving target would decide the outcome. The first archer was a little overzealous and damaged the little cart holding the mato with her arrow. So the target had to be placed on an arrow catcher as usual. When evaluating the hits, a folding ruler was used; Thorsten’s arrow from PSV Bottrop was 2 millimeters closer to the center than the others, which secured him the victory. Justin from Hürth took second place, and Urban from Aachen came in third.

It was a long day, but everyone agreed that they had a great time.
(Photo: Peter Hornig, Düsseldorf)

Automatically translated by DeepL