Introduction
In my previous essay, “Kyudo Is the Outlier of Martial Arts: On Collective Meta-Cognition and the Lost Plurality of Directions,” I argued that kyudo lost its internal plurality of directions through the unification process from the Meiji era to the postwar period, and as a result, has fallen into a state where it can no longer recognize its own historical choices as choices.
This essay takes that argument one step further.
What kyudo lost was not only its combative dimension or its plurality of directions. Kyudo has also pushed outside its awareness the fact that the bow, as a physical object, is materially built upon the killing of animals. And it is this cognitive gap that forms the structural foundation of the reflexive response that labels “combat archery” and “hunting archery” as “barbaric.”
Let me state the conclusion upfront. The self-image of kyudo as a “clean practice” unrelated to killing is incompatible with the fact that kyudo’s equipment is made from the death of deer. And the structure in which practitioners call those who speak of the bow’s connection to killing “barbaric” — while remaining unaware of their own dependence on killing — represents the deepest layer of the self-recognition deficit within the kyudo world.
1. Observing the “Barbarism” Response
When the terms “combat bow” or “hunting bow” are raised within kyudo circles, the reaction follows the same pattern as the vegetarian-type ideological structure discussed in the previous essay.
“Isn’t that just the art of killing?” “Don’t defile the bow.” “That’s something entirely separate from kyudo.” — These are responses I have encountered repeatedly, and they can be observed as standardized discourse within kyudo communities on social media.
One could dismiss these reactions as matters of individual sensibility. But what I want to ask here is why this reaction is so widely shared. A response pattern that has become established at the collective level, rather than as individual preference, has a structural foundation.
In the previous essay, I discussed the process by which kyudo institutionally deleted its combative dimension and redefined that deletion as “elevation.” What this essay addresses is the fact that this deletion and redefinition collides with the material reality of kyudo’s equipment.
2. What Are Kyudo’s Tools Made Of?
Kyudo practitioners use the following equipment on a daily basis. Let me list their materials.
Yugake (shooting glove) — Deerskin. The most intimate piece of equipment, in constant contact with the archer’s hand. The object closest to the body in all of kyudo is made from the skin of a deer.
Nigirikawa (grip leather) — Deerskin. The leather wrapped around the grip section of the bow. When an archer touches the bow, what lies between their hand and the bow is the skin of a deer.
Nibe (glue) — The traditional adhesive used to bond the bamboo and wood of a bamboo bow. The nibe used in traditional Japanese bow-making is derived from deer.
Yahane (fletching) — Feathers from eagles, hawks, pheasants, turkeys, and other birds. Traditional Japanese arrows presuppose the death of birds.
Tsuru (bowstring) — Synthetic materials are mainstream today, but historically, silk and animal-derived materials were also used in addition to hemp.
In short, kyudo’s basic equipment system has bamboo — a plant material — as its skeleton, while the killing of deer runs through it as a structural thread. Between the archer’s hand and the bow, there is always deerskin. What makes the arrow fly is a bird’s feather.
This is not an abstract ethical debate. It is a concrete, material fact about the provenance of the objects right in front of you.
3. The Bow and Hunting Cannot Be Separated
If we return to the history of the bow as a tool, the connection between the bow and hunting is self-evident.
The oldest evidence of bow and arrow use dates back approximately 60,000 years to Sibudu Cave in South Africa (Lombard & Phillipson 2010). The period during which the bow served as a hunting tool is far longer than the period it served as a weapon of war, and incomparably longer than the period it has been used as an instrument of sport.
4. Unconscious Killing — What Kyudo Practitioners Do Not See
Here I want to enter the core of the problem.
Kyudo practitioners do not kill deer. But the tools of kyudo are built upon the death of deer. Most kyudo practitioners are not aware of this fact. It is precisely because they are unaware that kyudo can maintain its self-image as “a clean practice unrelated to killing.”
Let me describe this structure of unawareness more carefully.
When a kyudo practitioner purchases a deerskin yugake, what sits on the shop shelf is a “yugake,” not “the skin of a deer.” Through distribution and the market, the causal chain is dispersed, and the perception of “I’m just buying a product” naturally takes hold. The process of killing and the process of using are completely separated. Neither the face of the one who kills nor the face of the deer enters the archer’s field of vision.
But structurally, every yugake sold still requires a deer. Moreover, in kyudo, the competition rules stipulate that the yugake must be made of deerskin. This is not a matter of individual preference. Anyone who practices kyudo must use deerskin as an institutional requirement. In other words, the institution of kyudo itself structurally demands the killing of deer.
This contradiction appears in its most concentrated form in the figure of the kyudo practitioner who, with a deerskin yugake on their hand, declares: “Combat archery is the art of killing” or “Don’t defile the bow with hunting.”
5. “Clean Kyudo” as Moral Laundering
Let me describe this structure in more general terms.
When a community morally abhors killing while materially depending on the products of killing, the community maintains its moral identity by placing those who carry out the killing in a socially subordinate position. I call this three-stage structure — abhorrence, dependence, subordination — “moral laundering.”
Applied to kyudo, it looks like this:
- Abhorrence: The use of the bow for combat or hunting is morally abhorred as “the art of killing” or “barbarism”
- Dependence: Deerskin yugake and grip leather, animal glue, and bird-feather arrows continue to be used materially
- Subordination: Hunters and combat-oriented martial artists are positioned outside the community as “practitioners of killing arts” or “those who defile the bow”
When all three stages are in place, kyudo can maintain its self-image of “abhorring killing” while enjoying the products of killing on a daily basis.
This structure is not unique to kyudo. In the previous essay, I pointed out the isomorphism with vegetarian-type ideological structures, but at the level of moral laundering, an even broader isomorphism can be confirmed. The history of meat-eating societies discriminating against slaughterhouse workers; the current state in which industrial plant-based food renders invisible the deaths of wild animals through agricultural land conversion and the labor of farmworkers — all of these can be described using the three-stage structure of abhorrence, dependence, and subordination. Kyudo merely performs this commonplace social mechanism in an extremely condensed form within the narrow space of the dojo floor.
6. The History of the Leather Industry and Kyudo
Following the material provenance of the equipment leads to an even deeper layer.
Japan’s leather industry has historically been deeply tied to the burakumin (discriminated communities). The tanning industry in Himeji is a representative example; the Edo-period social hierarchy concentrated leather work as “defilement” within specific social groups (Tsukada 1987). As Harada Nobuo (1993) demonstrated, since Emperor Tenmu’s meat-eating prohibition (675 CE), Japanese society maintained a dual structure as an institution: publicly abhorring meat consumption while actually consuming it, and socially subordinating the groups who bore the labor of its production.
This historical lineage persists in the distribution of deerskin. When kyudo positions itself as “a clean practice far from killing,” that “cleanliness” is sustained by a dual structure. First, by delegating the labor of killing and butchering deer to someone else. Second, by inheriting, as-is, the social structure that has historically discriminated against those who bore that labor.
7. Not Individual Hypocrisy, but an Institutional Problem
Here, one point must be clearly distinguished.
The argument of this essay is not an indictment of individual kyudo practitioners as hypocrites. It is a structural analysis, not a moral accusation of individuals.
I myself use a deerskin yugake and draw a bow bonded with glue. I am not critiquing from outside this structure; it is precisely because I am inside it that I can see and describe the problem.
The structure that Hannah Arendt described as the “banality of evil” — a structure in which injustice operates through institutional arrangements without individual malice — applies here as well. Individual A, who purchases a yugake, need not be a “bad person.” The problem is not individual A’s intention, but the cognitive barrier that the institution of kyudo has erected between the fact of killing and kyudo’s self-image.
It is because this barrier functions that kyudo practitioners can remain indifferent to the fact that their yugake is made from the death of a deer. Because they can remain indifferent, there is no psychological resistance to calling those who speak of the bow’s connection to killing “barbaric.” The structure absolves the individual, and the absolved individual reproduces the structure.
8. Anticipating the Counterargument — “Is Hunting Unnecessary in the Modern Era?”
Here, I want to preemptively address a counterargument that is naturally expected against this essay’s reasoning.
“Hunting in prehistoric times was necessary for survival. That much is understood. But in the modern era, there is no need to hunt deer with a bow. Meat can be bought at the supermarket, and deerskin is available on the market. This cannot serve as material to affirm bow hunting.”
This counterargument is legitimate. I accept it. Hunting with a bow in the modern era cannot be justified by the necessity of survival.
However, this counterargument does not precisely capture the point of this essay. What this essay asks about is not the “necessity” of hunting.
The point of this essay is awareness.
Kyudo practitioners depend on the killing of deer while failing to recognize that fact. The killing process is delegated to others, rendered invisible through distribution, and the self-image of “a clean bow unrelated to killing” is maintained without knowing what death their yugake is made from. This is the structure I have been describing throughout this essay.
Then where is the pathway that breaks through this unawareness?
Prehistoric hunters killed for survival. They did not even need to be conscious of the weight of killing — because it was the very condition of their existence. Awareness was inseparably built into necessity.
Modern kyudo practitioners depend on killing that is not for survival. But that killing is hidden on the other side of distribution, and there is no occasion for awareness. As long as there is no awareness, the structure of moral laundering continues to operate.
Herein lies the meaning of hunting with a bow in the modern era. It is not for survival. The necessity of survival has long since been lost. But it has meaning as an act of bodily reclaiming the killing upon which one depends.
It should be noted that in Japan, hunting with a bow is prohibited by law. This essay does not recommend any action that contravenes this legal regulation. However, the grounds upon which this prohibition was established and the historical circumstances through which it came about constitute a problem worthy of independent examination, which I intend to address in a separate essay. Here, I proceed on the premise that countries and regions where bow hunting is legally permitted do exist in the world.
Shooting a deer with a bow. Blood flows. Butchering. Eating the meat. Using the skin. — This series of experiences is a pathway through which the causal chain behind every time a kyudo practitioner puts on a deerskin yugake — indeed, the fundamental causality and interconnectedness we bear as living beings — becomes known not as abstract knowledge, but as bodily fact.
What matters is the cognitive difference that arises between those who have undergone this experience and those who have not. When someone who has killed a deer with their own hands grips a yugake, the provenance of that yugake registers as a bodily reality. For someone without that experience, the yugake remains a “product.”
In other words, hunting with a bow in the modern era is neither a regression to prehistoric times nor a restoration of survival methods. It is a circuit that converts the structural sin of unawareness into awareness.
9. The Reach of Awareness
The schema of “unawareness is a sin, and awareness is its resolution” may at first glance appear morally flat. But what I call “awareness” here is not mere acquisition of knowledge.
That kyudo’s equipment is built upon the death of deer can be understood as “knowledge” by reading this essay. But knowledge alone does not dissolve the structure of moral laundering. This is because knowledge does not have the power to bypass structural blind spots in cognition.
The meaning that the act of hunting deer with a bow holds is precisely here. It is not a justification of hunting as a “correct act.” It is an act of bodily making visible the relationship to killing that the kyudo practitioner carries — but does not see.
To continue using a deerskin yugake after becoming aware is a viable stance. Since kyudo’s competition rules require deerskin, the use of deerskin for those who continue kyudo is not individual preference but an institutional premise. What should therefore be questioned is not the choice of equipment, but whether awareness exists regarding what death that equipment is made from.
And the current state of the kyudo world is one in which this awareness is institutionally absent.
10. What Is Truly “Barbaric”?
With the argument thus far in mind, let us return to the opening question.
There are kyudo practitioners who call “combat archery” and “hunting archery” barbaric. Those practitioners wear a deerskin yugake on the hand that grips the bow.
The hunter shoots a deer with their own bow, butchers it themselves, uses the skin. They experience the moment of killing with their own body. They bear the weight of taking a life bodily. Whether that act is necessary for survival is not the issue here. What matters is that awareness of killing is structurally built into the act itself.
The kyudo practitioner does not kill the deer. They receive the skin of a deer killed by someone else, as a product. They perform a “clean practice,” and the killing process is outside their field of vision. Awareness of killing is institutionally excluded.
Extending the vegetarian-type ideological structure analogy from the previous essay, the kyudo practitioner’s “barbarism” label is precisely isomorphic with the ideological vegetarian who calls meat-eaters “barbaric” while depending on the killing inherent in industrial agriculture.
Which is “barbaric”? I do not intend to render a binary judgment here. However, there is an ethical asymmetry between the stance of being aware of killing and bearing it, and the stance of rendering killing invisible while enjoying its products and condemning others. If what makes the latter stance possible is unawareness, and if what institutionalizes that unawareness is the structure of modern kyudo, then it is that structure itself that should be the object of critique.
11. Conclusion — Looking at the Yugake
In the conclusion of my previous essay, I wrote about the act of offering a mirror to kyudo. This essay, too, is a mirror.
But whereas the previous essay’s mirror reflected kyudo’s historical choices, this essay’s mirror reflects kyudo’s material reality. Deerskin, deer glue, bird feathers — these are not ideas but objects, and they are actually present in the kyudo practitioner’s hands right now.
That kyudo was purified into a “Way” is respected as a historical choice. This was stated in the previous essay, and this essay maintains the same position. However, the stance of mistaking that purification for “the original form” and excluding the bow’s historical connection to hunting and warfare as “defilement” is a stance that is only possible by not seeing what death one’s own equipment is made from.
It is the institutional arrangement that makes this “not seeing” possible that I most wish to criticize.
And the significance of hunting with a bow in the modern era lies in bodily breaking this “not seeing” structure. Not through the necessity of survival, but through the recovery of awareness. Hunting is not a regression to prehistoric times. It is the act of opening, through bodily experience, the door of cognition that kyudo has institutionally kept shut.
Seeing is not the imposition of suffering. I am not saying that every time you put on your yugake you must recall the death of a deer (that belongs to individual choice). But if the institution of kyudo constructs its self-image on the premise of not seeing, then it needs to be questioned.
In the next essay, I intend to discuss how to draw the bow after accepting the fact of killing — a practical vision for restoring the connection between the bow and hunter-gatherer culture.
References
- Lombard, M. & Phillipson, L. (2010). “Indications of bow and stone-tipped arrow use 64,000 years ago in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa.” Antiquity 84(325), 635–648.
- Harada, N. (1993). Rice and Meat in History: Food, the Emperor, and Discrimination [歴史のなかの米と肉]. Heibonsha.
- Tsukada, T. (1987). Studies on the Status System of Early Modern Japan [近世日本身分制の研究]. Hyogo Buraku Issues Research Institute.
- Arendt, H. (1963). Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. Viking.
- Douglas, M. (1966). Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo. Routledge.
- Girard, R. (1972). La Violence et le Sacré. Grasset.
This essay is a sequel to “Kyudo Is the Outlier of Martial Arts: On Collective Meta-Cognition and the Lost Plurality of Directions,” examining how the self-recognition deficit identified in the previous essay collides with the material reality of kyudo’s equipment.
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