Japanese archery is strange, just because of how ritualized the whole thing.
In Britain, it just historically went (at least for poor Welsh/Englishmen): “Right, lads! First one to turn that knight into a pin cushion gets his horse!”
I would not be surprised if it could be blamed on the Zen Buddhism approach, or archery being connected to the nobility/samurai.
Everyone and anything old is ritualized over there.
That’s exactly what it can be blamed on.
I wonder if some national trauma made the Japanese so ritualistic and rigid
The invention of the Samurai (probably, I don’t know)
Probably the Samurai ruining everything, like them banning commoner ownership of blades so they could cut down peasants with impunity.
Japanese military tactics and weapons really did develop in isolation, so much so that they were really only useful against other Japanese.
Such as the battles in Cagayan in 1582 showed.
Wow. There’s humiliation, and then there’s this.
Yeah. I also think the thing could be skewed more in favour of Spain since the ronin force was a mix of ronin and pirates as well.
Maybe their katanas were only folded 999 times?
Also, Japanese tended to separate the “art” from the “combat-ready craft” much more than us in the West are used to.
As the actual applicability of the craft went away, it withered and died, while the contemplative, meditative art continued on with various social connotations.
Easiest for most people to consider: look at Judo versus Jujitsu. Judo is the ritualized one, jujitsu is the combat one. If it’s a -do ending, it’s the ritual.
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