On May 13, the 20th Japan Day took place on the banks of the Rhine in Düsseldorf. The Neandertal Kyudo Club also celebrated an anniversary, as we, too, have been participating in Japan Day for 20 years.

It began with a makiwara session at the Old Harbor. In the years that followed, up until 2010, we presented kyudo on the lawn at the Reuter Barracks. What began as a festival bringing together the Japanese community and the residents of the Düsseldorf region evolved into an event with a much larger catchment area and a growing number of visitors. This placed entirely new demands on safety, so since 2011 we’ve had a booth on the lawn at the State Parliament. At 1:00 p.m., a half-hour demonstration took place on the sports stage along the Rhine promenade. As in previous years, Hakushinkai Düsseldorf e.V. supported us with Iadio demonstrations. At the end, the Naginata club from Leverkusen paid us a visit and also gave a brief demonstration of their art.

The weather held up well, except for a brief rain shower just before 6:00 p.m. During that shower, a gust of wind blew our arrow-catching net over, giving us a good reason to end the demonstration right on time.

A heartfelt thank you to all club members and volunteers for their efforts that day.

You can find photos from the day in the picture gallery.

Automatically translated by DeepL