Inuoumono (犬追物) was a Japanese sport that involved mounted archers shooting at dogs. The dogs were released into a circular enclosure approximately 15m across, and mounted archers would fire upon them whilst riding around the perimeter.[1]
Originally intended as a military training exercise,[2] dog-shooting became popular as a sport among the Japanese nobility during the Kamakura and Muromachi periods (1185-1573).[3] During this time it was briefly banned during the rule of Emperor Go-Daigo (owing to his concern for the dogs); however, this ruling was overturned by the shōgun Ashikaga Takauji at the behest of his archery teacher Ogasawara Sadamune.[4] The influential Ogasawara family were particular adherents of inuoumono; Sadamune's archery treatise Inuoumono mikuanbumi regarded it as fundamental to a warrior's training, and his great-grandson Mochinaga devoted five books to the subject.[5]
The arrows used in dog-shooting were usually rendered non-fatal, by being either padded[6] or blunted.[7] This modification to the original sport was suggested by the Buddhist clergy, as a way of preventing injury to the dogs used.[8]
Inuoumono waned in popularity during the sixteenth century and has been largely extinct as a practice since then. It was eventually banned outright during the reign of Tokugawa Iemochi. Occasional revivals have taken place: there is a record of the shōgun Tokugawa Ieyoshi viewing dog-shooting in 1842, and the sport was performed for Ulysses S. Grant during an official visit to Japan in 1879 (Grant reportedly expressed distaste for the practice).[9] The last recorded instance of dog-shooting took place before the Meiji Emperor in 1881.[3]