Читать книгу Kyudo The Japanese Art of Archery онлайн

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He lent me a weak bow of his own to begin with and brought his own makiwara or straw-tub, a great cylindrical bundle of straw tightly bound together and sometimes fitted into a tub, into which the beginner shoots end-on from a distance of four or five feet, using a blunt featherless arrow until his form is so nearly perfected that he can be trusted with real arrows.

It was hard work. Months slipped by, and still I stood before the makiwara ceaselessly discharging arrows (the featherless variety) into it, and pulling them out again, while Mr. Nasu stood to one side commenting freely on each shot. Some days everything would go wrong. Some days he would note a considerable improvement. Gradually, very gradually, I learned to keep the grip on the bow so relaxed that the bow on being released began to show a tendency to turn in the hand. Day by day this tendency grew stronger. Soon the string would describe a half circle and the bow would fetch up with the back facing straight towards me; and all the time Mr. Nasu saw to it that I did nothing with my hand to help it turn. The turning of the bow in the hand is not prized so much because of its beauty but because it is a phenomenon that naturally occurs when the grip of the bow hand is exactly as it should be. It took several months to come, but at last it did happen that the string came round smartly and struck me on the back of the wrist, and soon this was happening regularly.