Soma-Nomaoi is a festival that recreates a battle scene from more than 1,000 years ago. It is annually held for 4 days from July 22 to 25 in Haramachi City, Fukushima Prefecture, in the eastern part of Japan. In this historical event, 600 mounted samurai in traditional Japanese armor, with long swords at their side and ancestral flagstaffs streaming from their backs, ride across open fields. Soma-Nomaoi has been designated an Important Intangible Folk Cultural Property.

Photo: A young woman (C) clad in samurai costume leads other local poeple as she rides her horse during a parade at the annual Soma Nomaoi festival in Minamisoma, Fukushima Prefecture, on July 28, 2012. The traditional full-scale festival kicked off for the first time after the accident of the Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Power Plant following the massive earthquake and the tsunami on March 11, 2011. (Photo by Toru Yamanaka/AFP Photo)

Lesser Horned Owl (Bubo magellanicus) is seen at the meadows of Patagonian valley in Santa Cruz, Argentina on December 21, 2024. Lesser Horned Owl is a large owl of the genus Bubo found in southern South America, with its distinctive “horns”, black-rimmed face and heavily striped abdomen. (Photo by Mehmet Emin Yogurtcuoglu/Anadolu via Getty Images)

In this 1997 photo released by the International Fund for Animal Welfare, a seal hunter, right, threatens a cameraman with a knife during the filming of a seal hunt in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, Canada. “Huntwatch”, a documentary by the organization about the fight to end commercial seal hunts, premieres in September 2016 on Discovery. The producers say it includes grainy but powerful archive footage that had languished in the basement of the group’s headquarters on Cape Cod for nearly five decades. (Photo by Richard Sobol/IFAW via AP Photo)

Several beaches along South Florida's Atlantic coast line were closed after thousands of sharks were seen migrating in the waters. The sharks were migrating from Boca Raton to Jupiter since the beginning of March, marine biologists told NBC Miami. Photo: A spinner shark swims just offshore on Midtown Beach in Palm Beach on Tuesday. (Photo by Jeffrey Langlois/Palm Beach Daily News)

A boy and a woman run across a railway track as a train approaches in Chengdu, Sichuan province, China, October 8, 2015. Many residents disregard sign prohibiting this kind of illegal crossing and choose to do so to save time, local media reported. (Photo by Hao Fei/Reuters/Western China Metropolis Daily)

Tourists take a “selfie” as demonstrators burn a trash container during a May Day rally in Barcelona, Spain, on May 1, 2014. Tens of thousands of workers marked May Day in European cities with a mix of anger and gloom over austerity measures imposed by leaders trying to contain the eurozone's intractable debt crisis. (Photo by Manu Fernandez/Associated Press)

Latin dancing featured on the opening day of the 98th Blackpool Dance Festival in the Empress Ballroom in the city’s Winter Gardens on May 28, 2024. (Photo by James Glossop/ The Times & Sunday Times)

A handout photo made available by the World Press Photo (WPP) organization on 13 February 2017 shows a picture by Rossiya Segodnya photographer Valery Melnikov that won the Long-Term Projects – First Prize award of the 60th annual World Press Photo Contest, it was announced by the WPP Foundation in Amsterdam, The Netherlands on 13 February 2017. Caption: Civilians escape from a fire at a house destroyed by an air attack in the Luhanskaya village. (Photo by Valery Melnikov/EPA/Rossiya Segodnya/World Press Photo)