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This present book is not a treatise on Japanese archery in general, but a short statement of the aims and methods of archery as practiced in Japan, or at any rate as it has been taught to me. For there are many schools of archery in Japan with all sorts of different traditions. Some emphasize one thing, others another, but on the whole it would seem that they really differ only in nonessentials—small tricks of technique and matters of ceremonial form. When it is a question of holding at full draw and the release, for example, they are all in agreement and indeed could hardly differ.

Accordingly the reader may be sure that he has here a fair presentation of a typical style of Japanese shooting, which, in its fundamental aspects, does not differ materially from other styles of Japanese, or indeed Oriental, archery.

To the Westerner by far the most interesting thing about the archery of the Far East is the fact that in both China and Japan the string is still drawn to a point well behind, as was done in the old English archery of Roger Ascham's time. That this is an advantage in some ways will, I think, be plain from the diagrams which show the two positions, drawn as if seen from a point directly above the archer's head. The first diagram illustrates the American full draw, and shows how the elbow of the draw arm must form an obtuse angle with the line of the two shoulders as long as the string is not drawn well behind the ear.