Sorry to the folks who asked about this and didn't get an answer; I was expecting to write this a couple of days ago, but family medical stuff happened. Is there anywhere I can go to trade in my parents? Maybe for a PS4 or something?
Also, thank you for the kind words; I'm glad somebody actually read it, as I wasn't sure that would happen!
Anyway.
Japanese bows. They look... odd, if they're not what you're used to. As previously observed in this thread, the bottom section is one-half the length of the top, unlike the bows developed by more-or-less everyone else on the planet. I warned NaturalHazard in a PM that the answer to this question is likely to be unsatisfying, and that's true, but the
reasons why the answer is unsatisfying are interesting
Honestly, it wasn't a fair question for me to pose in the first place. To save you some reading if you don't really care about the context: "nobody knows, not really". There you go, don't bother with the rest
For those who are interested, here are some of the commonly-given explanations for why the
yumi - Japanese bows - are such an odd shape...
Because HorsesThe idea that yumi are asymmetrical in order to make them easier to use on horseback is repeated fairly often in texts which don't specifically deal with the subject (yet another example of historians repeating stuff because they don't care about the subject matter but can't not-address it), but it doesn't stand up.
Firstly, the Japanese are recorded as using asymmetric bows in the
Gishi Wajin-den, a passage about Japan in the Chinese Wei Chronicle. This is a history compiled in the third century; several centuries before any attestation can be found of mounted archery in Japan. However, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, particularly at this chronological remove, so...
Secondly, and in my view more importantly, the yumi sucks as a design for a mounted bow, which is something people generally don't mention (although it is easier to use than an English longbow in the same circumstances). The feats achieved by Yabusame mounted archers, hitting targets while at a gallop, are more "despite" than "because of" the bow. From an archery-focused point of view, the extended upper limb means that the bow tends to tilt 'forward' in the hand upon release (indeed, permitting this action is the technique taught in kyudo) and is an extra thing to be compensated for while moving. The disparity between the limbs also means that there is a much stronger tendency for the bow to twist in the hand if the string isn't released cleanly and perfectly in line with the bow; something rather difficult to achieve on a charging horse.
From a rider's point of view, well, you have to ask yourself about the wisdom holding a stick extending more than a yard above your head while controlling a horse solely with your knees and concentrating your vision entirely on your target rather than, say, any tree branches you might be riding under.
All in all, not the design you'd come up with if you were thinking about a bow to use from horseback, which is why nobody did
Because ReligionHere's another one: the yumi is designed to have a short lower limb so that the bow can be shot from kneeling in Shinto temple archery...
Um, no. The yumi's shape predates Shinto. By a lot.
If you like the "kneeling" theory, here's a more superficially plausible one for you:
Because Hunting Quote:...explanation for the asymetrical design of the Japanese bow is that the Yayoi [period] archers highly prized bows of great length. An exceptionally long bow made quite an imposing weapon because it appeared a great deal more powerful than a shorter bow of comparable strength. But because of the small stature of the Yayoi people and the probable tendency for the Yayoi hunters to shoot from a crouched position, there was a practical limit to the length a center-gripped bow could be. Thus, as the length of their bows increased, the Yayoi archers had to lower the grip in order to be able to shoot effectively.
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Hideharu Onuma,
Kyudo: the Essence and Practice of Japanese ArcheryHuh. Yeah. One or two problems with that...
In warfare I could just about get my head around the idea that a more imposing bow is useful for frightening the enemy... But in
hunting? Who do you think they were trying to impress; squirrels?
Question: why would you shoot from a crouching position?
Answer: because you don't want to be seen.
So... waving a really big attention-grabbing stick several feet over the top of your head is probably not the effect you're looking for. It just doesn't make sense, again, for a hunter to design a bow that way; particularly when compact Chinese laminated recurve bows were introduced to Japan sometime just after 300 A.D. (primarily for court rituals) and - despite hunters generally being a practical bunch the world over - they kept using the yumi anyway.
Another issue with this explanation is that it didn't happen anywhere else to speak of.
It's sometimes claimed that the Hidatsa tribe (Native Americans) used asymmetrical bows, but - and I'm absolutely prepared to be corrected on this if anyone has a source - the pictures I can find of surviving artifacts don't appear to me to indicate that asymmetry was a deliberate and conscious design choice. The bows look, rather, "as close as they can be to symmetrical, given the particular material being worked with at that time". Certainly there's no regularity or uniformity to the asymmetry (if that makes sense), such as is found in Japanese bows; it's more like the Hidatsa bowyers made the best bows they could out of whatever they were working with, and if that meant an uncentered grip, so be it.
Where else might we find a short people who used long bows? Why... the early mediaeval Welsh! Although their bows were not as long as the English longbow eventually became, many of them at least approached the yumi in length (while the people themselves were only a little larger than the Japanese in average height, although more heavily built). They did not deliberately make bows with an uncentered grip, though; despite "using them for hunting", "being short" and "wanting (for whatever reason) longer and longer bows as time went on".
So, a bit of a backwards argument against this "crouching to shoot" technical theory I would advance is: we seem to be saying that if there is a major advantage to making these off-center bows, the Welsh didn't spot it, in hundreds of years. Or we're saying that if there
isn't an advantage to it, the Japanese didn't spot that there isn't, for hundreds of years. I am cautious about any historical explanation which requires an entire race of people to be inadvertently dumb (deliberately dumb, or merely hidebound for some reason, is a different matter) about something they're heavily invested in culturally for centuries at a time, so I tend to believe there's something else going on here.
Because MaterialsAnother popular one, this. The notion is that the original bow was made from a thin sapling, and because the sapling was thicker at the base than at the top, the grip was lowered to achieve a balanced draw.
Hmmm.
This fails as an explanation on a number of counts. The first is "requires people to be dumb for a long time". I can't seriously imagine, for a moment, that a culture capable of producing exquisite cast bronze bells hundreds of years before the birth of Christ, and incredibly elaborate pottery two thousand years before that, would have trouble with the concept of using a spokeshave to shape a stick into a uniform diameter.
Leaving that question behind for a moment, the other significant failure is that the
maruki-yumi - the earliest type of Japanese longbow, nearly six feet in length - which appeared around the 3rd century B.C.,
was symmetric.
Yes, the original Japanese longbow had a centered grip. This is rather a kick in the 'nads to the too-dumb-to-whittle theory, isn't it? At some point, it was
decided - by what mechanism, we can only guess - that the asymmetric bow was the proper form. Despite the many cultural incursions throughout Japan's history and the many different types of bow they were exposed to, the elevation of the yumi above all other styles of weapon doesn't ever seem to have been discussed. It just
was.
If that weren't persuasive enough, it should be noted that from about the 9th century onward, yumi were not self bows but laminates; the exposure to Chinese bow-making techniques didn't convince anyone to abandon the yumi, but to begin to make their own curious style of bow with new materials and methods. They graduated over time from self bows of catalpa wood, to two-piece laminates of wood and bamboo, to three-piece, to wooden-cored bows surrounded by bamboo, to a three-piece laminate core surrounded by wood and bamboo (!), to...
Well, anyway, this is a far cry from a people too reactionary to modify their approach merely because someone put a string on a sapling a thousand years before and called it good.
So... if all the technical explanations (and I have to say, these are generally beloved of military historians) fail, what does that leave us with? Here's my offering:
Because "Japanese"Let me say this right up front: I would in no way consider myself a serious student of Japanese history and culture, and am absolutely prepared to be flat-out contradicted by someone who really knows their stuff. But here goes, anyway...
Quote:One is not polishing one's shooting style or technique, but the mind. The dignity of shooting is the important point.
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Kanjoru Shibata Sensei Quote:...synthetic materials should be avoided in the practice of kyudo. Practicing with them can be likened to using plastic tableware at a formal dinner party. It will serve the same purpose as fine china but will greatly detract from the beauty and elegance of the event.
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Hidehara OnumaSamurai armor. War fans. Katana. Kusarigama. Nōdachi. The Japanese seem to me to admire a difficult thing done well, far more than a simple thing done effectively, and every almost every traditional item, whether associated with warfare or not, appears to take both craftsmanship in its making and virtuosity (and philosophy) in its use to the greatest possible heights, regardless of practicality. You might say that they love to make things difficult for themselves, although that's over-simplifying.
The aesthetics of a thing - and the aesthetics of using the thing - seem to take precedence over whether or not that thing is "better" than others they have encountered, or whether other things can be mastered more easily, or can be produced more quickly or with less skill.
So you know what I think?
I think the Japanese longbow - the yumi - is that curious, asymmetric, graceful shape... because they found it more beautiful, and therefore more perfect, than any other bow they encountered in the long history of its use. It's not a military historian's answer, but it's the one that feels right to me in the context of the people who have clung to it through all these centuries.
Sorry there wasn't a better punchline