Kyudo

I had to prepare a little speech about Kyudo for my Japanese class the other week. It was something which I knew nothing about, so I did a little research on the net. I found it really interesting.

Kyudo means 'Way of the Bow' in English. The bow is made of bamboo, is 2 metres long and asymmetrical. There are eight steps in the shooting process: place the feet, position the body, ready the bow, etc., and all should be performed in one graceful movement.

This photo shows archers at some of the stages of the shooting process: readying the bow (2nd archer from left), drawing the bow (4th from left), the full draw (left-most), and just after the release (3rd from left). (Many thanks to Vernon Fowler for the use of his excellent photo.)

I'm sure this is not easy, but perhaps it seems that there is not too much to learn, just from a technical point of view. However, in fact kyudo is all about developing the spirit: the goal is to give oneself over completely to the shot. I think this is a great lesson: many people have such busy lives these days, and there are so many distractions. If we can really focus on the current task then we can achieve so much more.

Of course, this is really relevant to playing trumpet - or indeed any instrument. (As I recall, this is the central idea from the book, The Inner Game of Music.) When we play, we should aim to give ourselves totally to the current performance, and try not to be distracted by, for instance, an earlier mistake, or the difficult passage coming up, or the girl jiggling at the front of the audience. (Having said that, I really don't want to discourage any girls from jiggling at the front - but it would be OK if they wouldn't mind continuing to jiggle in between the songs).

I really liked the words of Hideharu Onuma sensei - a kyudo master who I was reading about at www.kyudo.com. He said: "When shooting, sometimes we will hit the target but miss the self. At other times we will miss the target but hit the self. Our purpose, though, is to hit the target as the self and hope that the sharp sound of arrow penetrating paper will awaken us from the so-called 'dream of life' and give us real insight into the ultimate state of being."