After a heavy downpour came Kyoto Animation’s new October series, Tsurune, subtitled “Kazemai High School Kyūdō Club” in Japanese. It had taken its time: many other October shows were already on their second or even third episode. That evening I made myself a cup of tea, sat down at the computer, opened Bilibili (no paid membership needed for episode one), and switched off the comments scrolling across the screen. Then I settled in to savour this new show, so full of the flavour of Japan. To be honest, I’ve never been into anime with boys’ love undertones, and I don’t care about sales figures and all that either. I watched this one because I wanted to see how KyoAni would incorporate Japanese kyūdō culture into the meticulous detail characteristic of its animation. Having finished the first episode, I’ll draw on what I know about kyūdō to take a closer look. My impression of episode one was very good: the character introductions, the emotional groundwork, and, most importantly, the details. Kyūdō—Japanese archery—is a sport with a strong sense of ritual. Or you could say that, as it has developed up to the present, it is a ritual for people to watch and appreciate. A good kyūdō archer can judge your level by the tsurune, the sound of the bowstring at release. Practices so full of ritual are often closely bound up with a person’s state of mind. You may have the technique, but if you cannot get a grasp on your own “heart,” you will still be at a loss. KyoAni gives this full dramatic expression in the first episode: only when heart and body come together is it kyūdō.
When the bow and arrow first appeared as a weapon is now impossible to establish. But I believe it was very early—probably around the time humans began using spears. Leaving other factors aside, a bow is extremely simple to make: all you need is a length of wood with some spring to it and a tough material such as leather or strong plant fibre. An arrow is simpler still. Just sharpen the shaft and it can inflict injury. So the bow must date back at least to roughly the time humans first used bone and stone weapons, if not earlier. In the first episode of KyoAni’s archery show, that simplicity comes through in the coach’s remark that kyūdō needs three things: a bow, arrows, and a glove. Such simple objects, yet they are not easy to use. That, too, is part of the essence of kyūdō.
This is not the first time bows and arrows have appeared in a KyoAni anime: there was archery as far back as the summer arc of AIR. But Tsurune is different: as I said earlier, its bows and arrows are no longer used as weapons; archery has become a ritual. And a ritual is full of details that KyoAni needs to reproduce faithfully.
Types of Bow
There are several ways to classify bows by their construction and form. It is a fairly complicated system, not something that can be explained in a few words.
By construction, bows fall into two broad categories: self bows and composite bows. A self bow, naturally, has a body made in one piece from a single material, usually wood or bamboo. A composite bow has a body assembled from several parts, usually of different materials: wood combined with animal sinew and horn, for example, or wood, bamboo, sinew, horn, and perhaps even metal.
Because of their materials, composite bows generally store more energy than self bows of the same size. Put simply, they shoot farther. To compensate, self bows are usually made larger, allowing them to store more energy and increase their range. Large self bows are usually longbows. The famous English longbow and China’s own Tuvan bow belong to this category. Historically, longbows were mostly over 1.5 metres long, with some reaching two metres; today we generally call bows longer than 1.6 metres longbows. Of course, longbows can also be composite: they are not necessarily self bows.
Longbows are usually non-recurved. Both the English longbow and the Chinese Tuvan bow mentioned above are non-recurved wooden self bows.
These are only some broad categories; there are many others. If we classify bows by the length of their tips, short-tipped bows include Scythian, Turkish, Tatar, and Korean bows, while long-tipped bows include Xiongnu, Hungarian, Persian, Egyptian, and Indian bows. Group these together more broadly and they fall into a few main families, such as Turkish and Hungarian, since some differ only slightly.
Nowadays, many bows are conventionally grouped into the Turkish family, often simply called Turkish bows. There are also some more unusual bows, such as China’s “Qing-period bow,” the Qinghai bow, and the Mongolian bow. Although their forms are not identical, they share several striking features. They all have string bridges: when the bow is strung, a small projection on one side holds the string away from the bow’s body. Essentially, all these bows can be classified as Mongolian.
In archery today, bows are mostly grouped into Turkish, Hungarian, Mongolian, Korean, longbow, and Japanese bow categories. This classification takes both bow form and shooting practice into account. Of these, Korean and Japanese bows have the two most comprehensive systems of shooting technique.
Now let’s look at the characteristics of the Japanese bow, or yumi, in Tsurune.
In terms of length, the standard yumi measures 2.2 metres. The anime clearly shows how far a bow extends above the person carrying it on their back. I’ll use an overhead view to give a sense of its length. In terms of construction, the yumi is a composite bow; I’ll explain why below. In terms of energy storage, it is non-recurved.
Let’s sum up the yumi’s characteristics.
Under the classification outlined above, the Japanese yumi is a non-recurved longbow made of bamboo, measuring over two metres.
The yumi is a very unusual bow, first of all because its body is asymmetrical. If we take the grip as the centre, its upper section is much longer than its lower section. This shape is rare worldwide. As far as we know, only a few other bows have it, including the ancient Xiongnu bow from China and the Yanghai bow from the Western Regions. Both of those, however, are composite bows with some degree of recurve.
Another unusual feature of the yumi is that, although it is made chiefly of bamboo, it consists of several layers joined together. Generally speaking, its body has three parts: the inner bamboo on the string side, the central core, and the outer bamboo. The yumi is therefore a non-recurved composite bow.
Of course, everything develops over time. The Japanese yumi has not been made from a single material throughout its history.
Our own Chinese historical work, Records of the Three Kingdoms, says of the Wa people in its account of the Eastern Peoples: “Their weapons are spears and wooden bows. The wooden bows are short below and long above; their bamboo arrows have tips of iron or bone. What they have and lack is the same as in Dan’er and Zhuya.”1 This shows that the Japanese of the Han and Wei periods used wooden bows, already asymmetrical, with a long upper section and a short lower one. It also shows that the bow was an indigenous Japanese weapon, unaffected by outside cultural influence. The Japanese call this bow the maruki-yumi.
Around the tenth century, Japan saw the emergence of the fusedake-yumi, made from a combination of wood and bamboo. This developed in the twelfth century into the sanmaiuchi-yumi, with its three-layer bamboo-and-wood structure. By the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the Japanese had begun wrapping bamboo around a wooden core to make the shihōchiku-yumi. Finally, in the late Sengoku and early Edo periods, they completed the development of the higo-yumi: a bow made chiefly of bamboo, requiring complex craftsmanship, with different processes and methods for each layer. This is also the modern Japanese bow’s…2
The dimensions of the yumi used in Japanese kyūdō today follow the Edo-period standard of seven shaku and three sun, or about 221 centimetres. It is billed as the world’s longest bow. Its grip sits one-third of the way up from the lower end.
A bow with upper and lower sections of unequal length is much harder to learn to use than an ordinary bow. Without lengthy, systematic training, you are liable to injure yourself and will struggle to achieve a high hit rate. Its extraordinary length also places considerable demands on how it is carried and on the shooting posture. Unfortunately, its power to wound and kill leaves much to be desired: it has difficulty penetrating even Japan’s own ō-yoroi armour. Japanese bows therefore saw no large-scale development in ancient warfare. Eventually, the difficulty of learning and training with them, their high maintenance costs, and other factors turned them into equipment for an aristocratic sport, with greater emphasis on form, bearing, and spiritual and cultural meaning.
Japanese Kyūdō
Japanese kyūdō currently has the most comprehensive system of archery practice in the world. The Japanese themselves say that this system was heavily influenced by Chinese culture. It is also the archery discipline with the largest membership in the world, with as many as 120,000 formally registered members. That is why there are so many people in the anime’s kyūdō club.
By purpose, Japanese archery falls into two broad categories: ceremonial archery, also called “civil archery,” and military archery. These emphasise ritual and practical combat respectively. By form, there are three categories: mounted archery, foot archery, and temple archery (dōsha).3
Mounted archery involves samurai shooting from horseback while in motion. Its ritual and competitive events include yabusame, kasagake, and inuoumono—the last involving the pursuit of dogs—collectively known as the three mounted archery events. The ritual rules of yabusame are said to have been first established by the emperor in 896, the eighth year of Kanpyō. Later, under the Tokugawa shogunate, the Ogasawara family of archery practitioners drew on their inherited archery texts to reformulate the rules in 1724 and 1728. Today, yabusame is an important part of ceremonies at shrines throughout Japan.
Foot archery, in contrast to mounted archery, originated in the shooting of infantry archers in warfare. It therefore places greater emphasis on shooting technique, with relatively little ritual.
Temple archery is said to have originated in 1156, when a samurai at Sanjūsangendō, part of Rengeō-in temple in Kyoto, shot an arrow all the way from the south end to the north—about 121 metres—and hit the target. After that, archers regularly gathered at Sanjūsangendō to test the power of their shots in contests known as tōshiya. These contests later spread elsewhere. Famous venues included the western corridor of Tōdaiji, about 106 metres long, and Edo’s Sanjūsangendō, about 122 metres long. Various events subsequently developed: ōyakazu, in which contestants shot continuously for a day and a night to see who could send the most arrows the full distance; and the thousand-arrow and hundred-arrow events, in which the winner was whoever sent the greatest number through out of a fixed total.
In the early Edo period, the Tokugawa shogunate’s system of alternate attendance also gave archery masters from the various domains frequent opportunities to compete at the Sanjūsangendō halls in Kyoto and Edo. At the Edo hall, anyone who took first place and held the highest record could earn the title “Number One in Edo.” This kept a steady stream of competitors coming.
The coming-of-age ceremony held at Kyoto’s Sanjūsangendō today evolved from temple archery’s tōshiya contests. Temple archery played a considerable part in the development of Japanese archery.
What we see in the anime is clearly temple archery. Judging by eye, and drawing on my experience, I would put the shooting distance in KyoAni’s archery show at about sixty metres. It could not be on the scale of Sanjūsangendō.
To sum up, the kyūdō in Tsurune is competitive temple archery, full of ritual. The bows are non-recurved composite longbows, belonging to the category of modern Japanese yumi.
Finally, let’s turn to the closing part of episode one: the stages of kyūdō. I think many people will have heard of the “eight stages of shooting,” or shahō hassetsu.4 Minato Narumiya certainly follows them in his demonstration at the end of the episode. But an expert can see that, because of his state of mind, he does not fully embody the essence of those eight stages.
【Ashibumi】Taking the Stance
This is the stage of standing at the shooting position with the bow in hand, facing the target with the feet apart, ready to shoot. The focus here is on the feet. The requirements assume that the bow is held in the left hand. They specify how far the arrow-holding right hand should be from the waist, the distance and angle between the feet, how the toes grip the ground and with how much force, and the procedures for opening the stance in one step or two, among other things. All of these have extremely detailed requirements, so I am only giving a brief outline of the eight stages here. Learning kyūdō properly is very difficult. Minato does not strictly follow its requirements in the anime; he merely observes the formalities of walking into position.
After taking the stance, the archer begins to stabilise and adjust the upper body. At the same time, the lower end of the bow is raised to the left knee and the bow is brought to the front. The focus at this stage is on the upper body.
The bow is drawn and the arrow pulled back in preparation for shooting. This stage is further divided into three parts: torikake, setting the drawing hand on the string; tenouchi, arranging the bow-hand grip; and monomi, directing the gaze towards the target. There are also two forms: the frontal stance of ceremonial archery and the oblique stance of military archery.
Nock the arrow on the string and raise both hands high. Here there are two forms: the frontal raise, following frontal nocking, and the oblique raise, following oblique nocking.
Begin drawing the string with the arrow nocked, extending both hands and bringing the arrow to the line of sight. There are three forms of drawing apart: two follow the frontal raise, originating in ceremonial and military archery respectively; after the oblique raise, there is still just one.
Kai: Concentration
Once the draw is complete, the archer begins to aim. The arrow rests against the right cheek, between the nose and the lips. KyoAni has paid attention to that detail: the arrow touching the cheek. It appears on screen for only a second; I wonder whether everyone watching noticed it.
The arrow is shot. In Chinese archery, we usually call this safang, “release.”
Zanshin: Remaining Mind
This is the state after the arrow has been released. At this point, hold a particular posture for several seconds, allowing mind and body a moment’s pause together. The mental state is called zanshin, written 残心, “remaining mind”; the bodily state is also zanshin, written 残身, “remaining body.” In fact, then, this stage places more emphasis on the archer’s attitude and the way their inner state shows itself after the shot. Personally, I consider it an exceptionally important stage, and one of the essentials of kyūdō.
For genuine zanshin, look at Masaki Takigawa’s demonstration at the Yata no Mori kyūdō hall. His movements meet kyūdō’s requirements. But as I said at the start, this is not just a question of technique; it is also a question of one’s state of mind. What Minato lacks is that “heart,” so his shooting cannot count as kyūdō in the full sense.
Having written this much, I can more or less guess where KyoAni will take the story. It will turn to the search for that “heart,” eventually bringing the protagonist to practise kyūdō in the full sense, and even to a higher level. That will be the emotional side of the story. I think kyūdō suits KyoAni as a subject. Leaving the script aside, simply recreating kyūdō in such detail takes the kind of patience that only KyoAni brings to its animation. Add to that the Japanese culture already woven into the studio’s work, and the high-school club setting: both are KyoAni strengths. KyoAni is back on its home turf—school life—so I’ll look forward to what comes next. There aren’t many anime about kyūdō, and I’m watching this one to enjoy the archery. I hope KyoAni has a little surprise in store for me.