Book Reviews: Zen in the Art of Archery

Author: Eugen Herrigel

Book Review: Zen in the Art of Archery

Reviewer: Kris Chapman

Over the past fifty years since its original German publication in 1948, Eugen Herrigel’s little book on the Zen influences in traditional Japanese archery (commonly called "kyūdō" in Japanese) has become a seminal text for foreigners seeking some insight into Japanese culture and has contributed to the conception of kyūdō as "Zen archery" in the West (Hurst 1998: 126-127). Like other popular works on Japanese society, such as Ruth Benedict’s wartime ethnography The Chrysanthemum and the Sword (1956), it has been translated into Japanese and the concepts it expounds reintegrated into the culture from which it was originally derived. In this review, my aim is to question Herrigel’s conception of kyūdō as being ‘like a preparatory school for Zen’ (1985: 23), arguing instead that most practitioners of Japanese archery are not driven by an aim of spiritual development. In this regard, it is useful to examine Herrigel’s work in the context of YAMADA Shōji’s vigorous critique of Herrigel’s mystical interpretation of kyūdō in his recent article entitled ‘The Myth of Zen in the Art of Archery’ (2001). Unlike Yamada, however, I do not seek to debunk Herrigel’s book, but rather to outline its limitations and thus also highlight the areas where Herrigel’s insights remain valid and relevant as a description of the practice of traditional Japanese archery.

Zen in the Art of Archery is based on Herrigel’s experience of six years of training with kyūdō master AWA Kenzō in Tokyo in the 1920s. As a student of theology and philosophy, Herrigel had developed an interest in the Christian mysticism of Meister Eckhart. It was his interest in mysticism that led Herrigel to become interested in Zen Buddhism. He was able to pursue this interest when, in 1924, he secured a lectureship at Tohoku Imperial University in Sendai teaching philosophy (Yamada 2001: 12). Indeed, Herrigel himself wrote: ‘I welcomed this opportunity of getting to know the country and people of Japan with especial joy, if only because it held out the prospect of my making contact with Buddhism and hence with an introspective practice of mysticism’ (1985: 27). On the recommendation of a colleague, Herrigel decided to take up one of the traditional arts as way in to Zen. He mentioned that he chose archery on the ‘completely erroneous assumption that my experiences in rifle and pistol shooting would be to my advantage’ (ibid. 28). Introduced to Awa by KOMACHIYA Sōzō, a professor of jurisprudence at Tohoku University who had previously been a classmate of Awa, Herrigel began taking lessons from Awa with Komachiya acting as an interpreter between teacher and student. Herrigel trained for four years practising close-range shooting at a makiwara (straw-butt), struggling to master a natural release of the arrow, before being allowed to move on to target shooting. Herrigel’s account of training is tied in with a romanticisation of shooting as a spiritual quest and an Orientalism that exoticises kyūdō practice (cf. Cox 1998: 8-9), for example, he asserted.

By archery in the traditional sense, which he esteems as an art and honours as a national heritage, the Japanese does not understand a sport but, strange as this may sound at first, a religious ritual. And consequently, by the ‘art’ of archery he does not mean the ability of the sportsman, which can be controlled, more or less, by bodily exercises, but an ability whose origin is to be sought in spiritual exercises and whose aims consists in hitting a spiritual goal, so that fundamentally the marksman aims at himself and may even succeed in hitting himself (1985: 14).

Yamada contextualises Herrigel’s viewpoint well, clearly demonstrating the strong influence of Awa’s rather idiosyncratic interpretation of archery as a religion on Herrigel’s thinking. Although regarded as eccentric by many of his contemporaries, Awa established an organisation called Daishadōkyō (Great Doctrine of the Way of Shooting), which although not based in Zen (Awa himself had never undertaken Zen training) was influenced strongly by Buddhist ideas (Yamada 2001: 11). Zen in the Art of Archery is thus infused with comments about aspiring not to hit the target, but rather struggling to attain an egoless state in accordance with the "Great Doctrine" (Herrigel 1985: 78-79). In this regard, Herrigel went to Japan in search of a mysticism which he readily found and read into the style of teaching adopted by Awa. It is important, however, to acknowledge that this was (and is) not a standard interpretation of kyūdō practice. While aware of such discourse, most students in Japan enjoy the social atmosphere of practices and train to improve their technique rather than their characters. Indeed, the "spiritual" dimension of archery seems to be somewhat more emphasised outside of Japan, most probably because of the strong influence of Herrigel’s work (cf. Yamada 2001: 2-3).

Despite its overt mysticism, Zen in the Art of Archery does include many passages in which Herrigel offers insightful descriptions of the personal experience of archery training. He evokes well the physical and mental struggle to master form and understand technique, writing in a way that is accessible to non-practitioners while expressing failures and successes that are readily familiar to those who train. The following passage exemplifies this well.

I cannot think back to those days without recalling, over and over again, how difficult I found it, in the beginning, to get my breathing to work out right. Though I breathed in technically the right way, whenever I tried to keep my arm and shoulder muscles relaxed while drawing the bow the muscles of my legs stiffened all the more violently, as though my life depended on a firm foothold and secure stance, and as though, like Antaeus [a Greek god], I had to draw strength from the ground (1985: 35-36).

Indeed, at one point he defines the "spiritual" element of shooting as ‘a concentration of all the physical and psychic forces’ (1985: 60); based on this limited definition of spirituality his descriptions capture well the physical, mental, and emotional balance required to shoot not only accurately, but with good form. The "spiritual" release in fact refers to one which is unforced and natural.

Herrigel emphasised mushin (no-mindedness) as the state which an archer should aspire to realise during shooting. He tried to express this notion of egoless integration of action and intention by citing Awa’s statement that it is not "I" that shoots, but instead ‘"It" shoots’ (1985: 73). Yamada is highly critical of this interpretation, suggesting that recording Awa’s doctrine as ‘"It" shoots’ demonstrates Herrigel’s crucial misunderstanding of Awa’s original Japanese statement. Translating the phrase ‘"It" shoots’ (‘"Es" schieβt’ in German) back into Japanese, Yamada suggests that Herrigel might have placed his own mystical interpretation on the simple statement "sore deshita" ("That’s it."), which was merely a teacher’s acknowledgement that his student had done something right (Yamada 2001: 25). Yet such a criticism based on a literal re-translation of a German phrase back into Japanese could well be seen as being an excessively rigid interpretation designed to reflect unfavourably on Herrigel. Given the ambiguities of translation, while the phrase ‘"It" shoots’ may not be a literal translation of Awa’s words, it could have been Herrigel’s attempt to express in his own language Awa’s expression of an idea summarised well by kyūdō teacher Liam O’Brien kyōshi: ‘The shooting gradually become embodied and in the highest level of practice, the presence of an independent agent is not apparent. There is not a person performing the shooting, there is just the shooting itself’ (emphasis mine, 2003: 8). There is a distinction which can be made between the transitive hanasu (to let go / release) and the intransitive hanareru (to get free / be released), which shares a common root with the word for "release" (hanare). The idea that the arrow is not intentionally "let go" by an archer, but rather naturally "gets free" reflects an understanding that the aim is to reach a level where it is not "I" that shoots, but simply ‘"It" shoots’. While it may not be a translation of Awa’s exact words, Herrigel does manage to portray this message.

Yamada’s article provides a useful counterpoint to Zen in the Art of Archery serving to contextualise the mysticism present in the text by examining the discourses that Awa propounded at the time when Herrigel was his student. It is important, in this respect, to realise that Zen in the Art of Archery is an account of one man’s experience and interpretation of Japanese archery. The growing popularity of the book over subsequent decades both inside and outside of Japan has, however, given it a rather archetypal status that it does not necessarily deserve. The authority of the work lies in Herrigel’s ability to describe his individual experiences of archery practice; likewise, it is the individuality of his perspective that limits the books scope. Herrigel’s experience of kyūdō was obviously not standard, neither was his focus on the mystical elements of spirituality. While there is obviously a shared discourse between Zen and traditional Japanese archery, there is no inherent link between the two. Acknowledging this, it is possible to read Herrigel’s book as an ethnographic text, providing insight into a culture of archery situated in a specific time and place.

References

Benedict, Ruth (1954) The Chrysanthemum and the Sword: patterns of Japanese culture, Rutland, Vermont; Tokyo: Charles E. Tuttle Company.

Cox, Rupert A. (2003) The Zen Arts: an anthropological study of the culture of aesthetic form in Japan, London: RoutledgeCurzon.

Herrigel, Eugen (1985) Zen in the Art of Archery, trans. by R.F.C. Hull: London; New York: Arkana Penguin Books (first published in English by Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1953)

Hurst, G. Cameron III (1998) Armed Martial Arts of Japan: swordsmanship and archery, New Haven; London: Yale University Press.

O’Brien, Liam (2003) ‘Zen in the Art of Archery – A Practitioner’s View’, talk delivered at the Buddhist Society, London November 2003: available on-line at http://www.kyudo.org.uk/zen_art_archery.pdf, accessed on 19/9/05.

Yamada Shōji (2001) ‘The Myth of Zen in the Art of Archery’ in Japanese Journal of Religious Studies, 28 (1-2): 1-30, available on-line at http://www.nanzan-u.ac.jp/SHUBUNKEN/publications/jjrs/pdf/586.pdf, accessed on 19/09/05.