Plaque reads “One Arrow, One Life” (Issha Zetsumei 一射絶命)
April 18-19, 2026. The lovely Miyako Ishiguro Kyoshi (Youtube channel: kyudo love) joined us from Japan to lead the International Kyudo Seminar at Florida Budokan (Eustis, Florida). This was my first taste of the Dai Nippon Kyudo Kai style (hassetsu and taihai).
History and Philosophy
Kyudo is practiced as a form of “meditation-in-motion” to enhance my Zen practice, just as iaido (swordsmanship), shodo (calligraphy), and other Zen arts (ceramics, flower arrangement, Japanese flute) can embody the same focus on posture, breathing, and concentration. I started practicing kyudo in 2005 with Byakko Kyudojo (Boston, MA) in the Heki Ryu Bishu Chikurin Ha school founded in about 1600. Here is a brief history of my school (taken from the OKO Kyudo Europe website).
Seven Coodinations (Shichido 七道)
While many kyudo schools use an Eight Coordinations system (Hassetsu 八節), the Chikurin Ha style traditional breaks down the steps into Seven Coordinations (Shichido 七道). In actuality, the core steps are identical with slight variations and nomenclature. Zanshin is not counted as a coordination in Chikurin Ha, but is actually the 8th coordination in most other styles. Here are the steps in Shichido:
Hitote (一手)
Much of kyudo practice consists of shooting at a straw target (makiwara) only 2 meters away in order to develop technique (ji). This kind of practice does not require arrows to have feathers because there is no significant “flight” involved. However, there is a form of long distance practice at 28 meters that is called Hitote or One Hand (一手), referring to a set or pair of two arrows, specifically the haya (first arrow, clockwise spin) and otoya (second arrow, counter-clockwise spin) shot consecutively. I have developed a hitote sequence that is a hydrid of the Heki Ryu Bishu Chikurin Ha and Chozen-ji School of Kyudo (Tenryū-ji line of Rinzai Zen). The latter focuses on kyudo practice as a means of enhancing Zen practice. Ji (technique) has to give way to ri (universal principals) to manifest Buddha-nature and to strive towards shari kensho (seeing one’s True Nature through the shot). I also use the hara breathing technique explicitly incorporated into Chozen-ji kyudo training and that is foundational to the very physical form of Rinzai meditation practice of the Tenryui-ji lineage and a powerful way to focus the mind at the tanden (tanden soku).
Here I demonstrate standing short-distance hitote (2-arrow shooting sequence) that is a hydrid between the Heki Ryu Bishu Chikurin Ha with which I began my kyudo practice, and the training style developed at the Chozen-ji School of Kyudo (practiced at a Rinzai Zen monastery founded by Omori Sogen Rotaishi). Chikurin Ha is the style practiced by Awa Kenzo, the kyudo master introduced to the West by Eugene Herrigel in “Zen and The Art of Archery.” Chozen-ji focuses even more on kyudo practice as a means of enhancing Zen practice. The sequence is done entirely standing, there is a mato wari (“cutting the mato“) to symbolize the severing of the dualistic mind, and the otoya is held by the 4th/5th fingers of the right hand while shooting the haya rather than leaning the otoya against the leg as in Chikurin Ha. If the grip of the bow hand (tenouchi) is done properly, the string (tsuru) will rotate about 240 degrees counterclockwise as the centrifugal force spins the bow (yugaeri), so that the tsuru ends up near or actually hitting the back of the hand. I also use the hara breathing technique explicitly incorporated into Chozen-ji kyudo training and that is foundational to a very physical form of Rinzai meditation practice, since this is my training lineage and a powerful way to focus the mind at the tanden (tanden soku).
My bamboo yumi was made in 2005-2006 by Don Symanski, whom I believe is the only master bow maker in the US trained by Kanjuro Shibata Sensei XX (former head of the Heki Ryu Bishu Chikurin Ha). At intensives I attended in North America, Sensei would sit on the platform in a folding director's chair. Invariably, a kyudoka would begin plying him with questions. He would say, "Talk too much. Shoot!" I think in the West we tend to "consume" martial arts--aiming for that black belt in a year's time. In Asia, it is a life long spiritual practice. The current head of Chikurin Ha is Kanjuro Shibata Sensei XXI based in Kyoto, who is still actively making bamboo yumi.
I got the idea of shooting from across the pool from my time at a kyudojo in Japan where the azuchi was built 28 meters away from the platform, but on the other side of a pond over which ya flew so gloriously. It is actually a test of concentration and overcoming fear and other ego concerns as obstacles to action. It is wu-wei (absence-action) at the most profound level--improvisational action in which one moves as the generative source--as the Cosmos unfurling its possibilities.
I am also shooting with a pair of bamboo ya that I fletched with feathers harvested from the left and right wings of a sandhill crane that died this spring in the nature preserve below my home. It is an honor to continue to give these wings flight every day.
The Role of Breathing into the Hara
My Zen practice in the Tenryū-ji line of Rinzai Zen through my teachers at Chosei Zen in Wisconsin has allowed me to intuit an important role for breathing in shichido that is not specifically addressed in traditional Heki Ryu styles of kyudo. In essence, every coordination can be paired with an inhalation to initiate abdominal hara breathing followed by a slow and complete exhalation. The sensation is identical to hara breathing in sitting meditation (zazen). A single slow breath cycle is especially important from the start of uchiokoshi (IV) through hanare (VII). A quick inhalation begins while raising the bow in uchiokoshi, while a slow exhalation continues from hiki tori through kai. Pushing down into the hara is what creates the expansion of the chest that allows for a full draw and the proper attainment of kai. And it is the final push that triggers hanare. Without proper breathing, hanare will be weak and the shot will have no ki because tanden shoku (breathing gently and quietly in meditation with concentration on the tanden) is not achieved.