The origin story is a thousand years old: Taira no Masakado, the warlord, released wild horses on the plains of what is now Chiba and trained his soldiers to chase them down. The ritual migrated north, took root in the coastal region of Fukushima, and has been performed there ever since — through wars, through disasters, through everything the twentieth century brought to Japan's northeast. Soma Nomaoi takes place across three days and multiple venues in Minamisoma and Soma. The centerpiece is the mounted procession and cavalry race at Hibaragahara, where around four hundred warriors in full armor — lacquered helmets, ancestral banners streaming behind them — ride at speed across the open ground. On the final day, the oldest rite: white-robed men chase a released horse into the grounds of Soma Kodate Shrine and capture it with their bare hands, offering it to the gods. This is the Hamadori coast of Fukushima. The same landscape that absorbed the earthquake, the tsunami, the meltdown of 2011. The festival did not stop. That, too, is part of what it means.