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Shoji Yamada writes in Shots in the Dark that Japanese archery can be divided into two categories:

• ceremonial archery (reisha)
• military archery (busha)

Ceremonial archery is concerned with the ritual aspects of kyujutsu and was the exclusive domain of the Ogasawara School (which also developed into a etiquette school).

[Toshiya event (Hall Archery) at Sanjusangendo, Kyoto, photo by LanceXiao]

Military archery can be further divided into three categories:

• foot archery (hosha)
• equestrian archery (kisha)
• hall archery (dousha)

Foot archery regards foot soldiers on the battlefield, who under the stress of battle have to be able to pierce Japanese armor at a distance of about 30 meters. They also needed a death-defying spiritual fortitude.

Equestrian archery was the technique of shooting a bow from horseback. It focused on how to ride and manage a horse while carrying and shooting a bow. It lives on in a ceremonial way in present-day yabusame.

[Toshiya event (Hall Archery) at Sanjusangendo, Kyoto, photo by LanceXiao]

Hall archery concentrated on a contest called toushiya. Archers competed who could shoot the most arrows down the entire length of the outside veranda of Sanjusangendo. This veranda is 120 meters long by 5 meters high. In the Edo-period the toushiya was furiously contested by various feudal domains. A lot of prestige was involved. There were two types of competition:

• ouyakazu: archers had to shoot for 24 hours (!) to see who could shoot the most arrows down the length of the veranda;
• hyakusha-gake: archers would should one hundred arrows to see who could shoot the most arrows down the length of the veranda.

[Toshiya event (Hall Archery) at Sanjusangendo, Kyoto, photo by LanceXiao]

In the gangway at the back of the altar in Sanjusangendo some parafernalia of the winners have been exhibited. The record for ouyakazu was set in 1686 when Wasa Daihachirou from the Kishu Domain shot 8,133 arrows the whole length of the veranda out of a total of 13,053 shots. This was a hit ratio of 62%! You will find traces of arrows which missed their target on the pillars of the hall.

Hall archery was a great spectacle and lives on in the colorful Toshiya event held at Sanjusangendo annually on January 15 (but now in the courtyard instead of the veranda!).

Modern kyudo, by the way, is mainly based on foot archery.

[Information gleaned from pp. 59-61 of Shots in the Dark by Shoji Yamada (University of Chicago Press, 2009 - I will write a review of this book in a future post]