What's the deal with Japanese archery? Does holding your bow like that provide any benefit over the "normal" form?

>Does holding your bow like that provide any benefit over the "normal" form?
It is not so much that they hold the bow differently, they just start the draw from that raised position. I'd assume the other Anons are correct that it provided some benefit either from the shape and construction of the bow and or to horse archery, but then again I don't believe other horse archer cultures did it the same way. So it is probably mostly stylized ritual, which is fine. The way to get gud at archery is to practice exactly the same way over and over and over, this style certainly fits that requirement.

Braised Scallops are not Sushi google

this guy right here knows whats up.

I mean, look at modern fencing. That won't save you in a street fight. It's a sport. It's a traditional sport, but still a sport.

Neither are goddamn ham spirals or lettuce wraps, but google's brainweb is constantly being fed wrong info to fit patterns, because fuck you, it needs patterns to "learn." Stupid in, stupid out.

Most other horse archer cultures figured out the recurve bow.

Japan, for whatever reason, decided to use gargantuan bamboo greatbows with virtually no recurve out of laminated bamboo.

First, it allows a shorter person to fire a larger bow. Larger bow, more pull. More pull, the faster the arrow is launched. Faster = greater force at impact.

Second, the bow design, being asymmetrical, allows people to use a larger bow while on horseback or even while kneeling. Therefore pulling the bow while arrow is overhead stops the bottom of the bow from fouling on reins, saddle, horse mane or whatever.

Third, training for fast release. Firing from a moving horse is nothing like standard aiming and shooting. As a matter of fact, you can't aim while riding at a full gallop without stirrups. And even then I would find it exceedingly difficult. Therefore you design a way to fire that doesn't require it. Then train and repeat said training until you can actually hit something without having to aim. You will also note that most Japanese mounted archery is not done in the Mongol style of sit back and fire, then withdraw. Instead the Japanese tended to try ride by firings at high speed. Almost like joust but with arrows. Much shorter range then Mongol style. Rapid, reliable fire is more important to such a style.

Fourth and final. Tradition. Japanese love their traditions. Once they find a way that works, they stick with it until forced to change. They as a culture love the idea of repetition until perfection is achieved.

>They as a culture love the idea of repetition until perfection is achieved
Half-Nip here, can confirm, if my mother is any indication. She's a very traditionalist kind of woman, very set in her ways, which were her family's ways, which were just the way things were. Literally the only nontraditional thing she's ever done was come here to the US for university and wind up marrying a white guy.

Having an oldschool weeb for a dad was fucking weird while growing up.

>how do I bow

>I don't believe other horse archer cultures did it the same way

Most of them used much smaller bows. Raising the bow up high as you knock it helps you clear it from the horse.

it might not have occurred to them to recurve because the bow they had was good enough.

bamboo is some pretty awesome stuff.
still like the western short-bows more myself though.

like what this fellow is carrying, big enough to kill some dinner or defend the homestead and the flock/herd with but not large enough that it gets caught in doors or on clothes or other things.

That's the proper form in Japanese archery. You are supposed to allow the bow to rotate in your hand as you release the arrow.

of course they made the girl do that part

Like this.

Points deducted for failing to have arm fully outstretched and failing to have any rotation of the bow.

The sport of kyudo is entirely about form, even hitting the target is secondary.

Ahem.

youtube.com/watch?v=gcpHB-flwJQ

That's what caught me off-guard watching the sport in action. The winner of the horseback round struck only two of his targets on his best pass, whereas another got three, but had errors in form. Kind of speaks to the extent to which longbow archery went from military science to martial art to just shy of a religious practise.

Although I definitely see the training benefits of many of the forms. Espcially the particular competition that was about how many arrows you could have hit the same target in 24 hours. Toshiya, I think? It seems silly, but it was an excellent practise of consistent targeting, ability to continuously draw and loose for long periods of time, and just sheer physical stamina. Practising for a competition would make one a very good archer. Apparently the record holder got like 8000 hits out of 13000 shots at 120 metres. Even setting the accuracy aside, managing to loose 13000 arrows is something I can't process.

Their bows are asymmetric since japs can't into bow making.
Thus the specialized stance.

The yumi is specifically designed as a horsebow, hence the uneven design.

Lifting it up on the span, and moving it over on the draw, allows a full draw while sitting on a horse.

next question

...

>Can't into bow making
It's literally a specially designed bow for rapid firing from horseback. It is literally purpose made just for that.

What the Japanese can't into is Change on a societal level.

>What the Japanese can't into is Change on a societal level.
You mean like 'murrican Baby Boomers?

Worse. Boomers were actively encouraged to pursue goals for themselves.

The bow is balanced in such way it's pretty much counter-productive to shoot it "normally". Also, the bow was originally used to shoot from horseback.

Look at the size of the bows.
Try drawing them via any other pose, it can be tricky.

>What the Japanese can't into is Change on a societal level.
But it's simple. Just do the revolution. And remember to call it "restoration" instead.
Alternatively, nuke them.

That's exactly what I'm talking about. Japan doesn't ever do the whole "gradual advancement of society" as an ongoing process. If shit works, they just keep doing it until something comes along that forces them to go all "Grorious Nippon" and radically shift from one way of life to the another within a matter of a few short years. It's how you go from feudal shithole rice fields and matchlocks to full 20th century industrialization overnight, but why they still have a fucking Whaling industry.

You do realize that the Japanese were kept abreast of firearms technology throughout the Edo period, right?
They didn't just keep using matchlock rifles until 1868.

That was an exaggeration on my part, you understood my point.

Yeah, after I posted I thought that I should have included a bit where I do mostly agree with what you said. It's just my autism speaking

I remember when I lived in Japan and didn't realize at first what was the deal with all the schoolgirls walking around with those huge ass ridiculous thin boxes on their backs. Turns out they were carrying their bows.

So who's going to preserve Japanese culture now that they're going to just give up and stop having kids?
youtube.com/watch?v=nkcKaNqfykg

Weebs.

Actually important question

Samurai were originally a class of horsearchers and spearmen

Why the fuck did an Island filled with mountains and horse-unfriendly terrain get dominated by a cavalry warrior class

>horse archers
>almost no flat plains

Superior Nippon tactics folded over 1000 times

The Japanese aren't particularly known for practicality. Efficiency, sure, but not practicality.

Samurai is just another word for armed nobility military.
I am sure you have the intelligence to inference the rest.

Logic doesn't apply in Japan

There is nothing wrong with commercial whaling desu, really the only problem with Japanese whaling practices is that they're trying to camouflage it as scientific whaling.

I'm sure that there are plenty of other remote islands that also practice cannibalism&incest.

A man on a horse can still dominate a man on the ground even in small fields. The samurai were the upper class and were just the people who could afford horses. The vast majority of an army wasn't riders. I imagine part of it is cultural, tied to them importing much of it from China.

One only needs to take a look at their performance during WW2 to see this.

Japs are basically the faggots who go Lawful Good Paladin in the Evil campaign. Or the Cleric who only preps Turn Undead for wolf-slaying

Don't know much about Japanese style, huh?

As far as I know, whaling barely if ever turns a profit in this day and age and not just because there are a lot of laws around it. There's very few whale products in demand and it's a highly labor intensive business. Whaling is largely used as a bribery/money laundering scheme for dirty officials in Japan, at least as far as I know.

Disgraceful.
More evidence that feudal japan would auto-lose any battle against medieval Englishmen. Could the Shogun muster several thousand stout yeomen all trained and armed with longbows? No. All he could muster were untrained rice-workers and horse thieves to support his handful of fighting men and their aides.

I mean, feudal Japan could muster rifle men. So they'd have that over the Eternal Anglo.

Nothing morally wrong with whaling, but it's archaic as fuck, which was my point. The modern world says "no whaling," and Grorious Nippon responds with "but our history, desu" and continues to whale.

Not the user you're responding to, but arquebuses weren't rifled.

You know damn well what I meant. Hand guns are rifled but we don't call them rifles.

Technically correct. Not actually refuting anything, just commenting on a tangent.
Long firearms without rifling have a name, carbines; but you're not referring to the guns themselves, but the soldiers who shot them. There's a term for those, too: arquebusiers.

>my little user can't be this autistic!

I thought carbines were shorter firearms occupying a sort of intermediate step between full long guns and pistols, and rifling wasn't a factor in the classification?

>Pedantry is autism
Powerfully stupid, desu.

>carbines don't have rifling

I'm sorry what? Carbines are just shortened versions of long arms.

>almost no flat plains
Those few flat plains are where almost everybody lives though. Just like how the relatively mountainous France (though not to the same extent of Japan to be fair) became the shining jewel of chivalry.

Longarms with no rifling are muskets, famalam. Carbines are simply short barreled longarms, regardless of rifling.

Neck yourself

Because it's not part of the classification. The other user is just stupid.

Still good enough against MOUNTAIN-dwelling Enishi.

Also
>England
>All flat plains
>Shitheads never developed any cavalry
vs
>Poles
>All flat plains
>Shitheads developed ONLY cavalry

So nice geographical determinism you have there, moron.

>neck yourself
I assume in some part of the world this means "hang yourself" and not "make out with yourself."

Your assumption is correct, now continue with dying

Are you seriously trying to mock Polish calvary? Go watch anime instead of trying to defend Japan with that shit, weeaboo

Damn, they all really do live in Tokyo.

Rude.
Correct understanding of carbine, but lacking the correct term for the general category to which arquebuses refer, smoothbores.
Close enough that I'll let it pass. Carbines are considered long arm firearms.
There are many different types of longarms without rifling, including shotguns and the aforementioned arquebuses. Polite.
Psst. Not everyone curious about regional differences in language is that one guy. I'm glad you don't actually have the power to wreak ill on anonymous posters on the internet, your false positives would do quite a bit of harm.

I'm a Pole, that's for starters. Second, work on your reading comprehension, you fucking cunt.

Because Nobody lives in the mountains.

Archer who doesn't practice Japanese archery here.

Just wanted to let you know that that method of draw allows you to PUSH with the arm holding the bow while PULLING with the arm holding the arrow, as seen in Now, practicality-wise, I can't tell you if there's any benefit to doing that when you're trying to kill someone. It helps you from keeping one arm from tiring out, though, so there's that.

>shoot more arrows before you get tired
Seems beneficial enough.

Martial arts are 100/100 martial. Even the weirdest movement has an actual application to real life situations. Sometimes it is heavily coated in a martial art's aesthetic, but at the core there is no useless movement in any kung fu routine, japanese kata, or any other sort of fighting technique.

Also
>Spaniards
>develop the tercio
>literally the worst formation you could use in the mountains of Spain
>but it's fucking God-tier in France

>Sometimes it is heavily coated in a martial art's aesthetic
The "art", you might call it.

Also you're full of shit.

>literally the worst formation you could use in the mountains of Spain
How is pike-and-shot useless in hilly, mountainous land where you can easily cover your flanks?

Tercios aren't just any pike-and-shot. It's a particularly massive, clumped-together, extremely unmanoeuvrable type of pike-and-shot.

Also the whole point of them is to cover your flanks.

Reminder that the Japanese used asymetric bows long before they switched to horse archery.

Reminder that other people are using asymetric bows as well. It's far from unique.

I thought the whole point was to tarpit the enemy in your flanks so you can pick them off with cavalry you have hiding somewhere nearby?

>never developed any cavalry
what the fuck are you smoking you polish bastard.

japs are fucking tiny, gnomes would probably use bows in the same way

The point of the tercio is to protect guns from cavalry (and other soldiery) with pikes, and to protect pikes with guns. So your guns fire, and then if people attack the tercio the guns all get behind the pikes, and the pikes rek shit.

Because of the dragon-tooth formation other tercios will now begin firing into the people attacking the first tercio, and yes, into the flanks. But this is just a way of preventing people from attacking the flanks; they would get shot to pieces. And the pikes were there in the first place to protect the first tercio's flanks. The tercio is a very defensive formation.

You also have stuff like halberdiers/zweihanders/rodeleros to play a supplementary role, breaking up push-of-pike, and cavalry as a primarily counter-cavalry measure among other things, but those are the less integral parts of tercio.
He's not saying the English literally never had cavalry you immense mongoose. He's saying we focused on infantry tactics, which is true. The English usually fought on foot, with bills and in specialised armour, and surrounded by bows/guns -- it was actually proto-pike-and-shot.

well excuse me for interpreting what he said literally, especially when he used the word "never" when calling out the English

>well excuse me for interpreting what he said literally
I keep forgetting the high density of autists on this board.

>England
>All flat plains
>Shitheads never developed any cavalry
Come one, it was an entirely reasonable assumption. You're the one defending it, if anything.

Assuming someone else mad an unreasonable assumption is not reasonable. If someone says something that sounds incredibly stupid (like, I dunno, "England never had any cavalry EVER"), they probably didn't actually say it.

>actual retard logic

>of course I can't misread a comment. It's much more likely everyone else is just completely retarded.

Karate will be in the Tokyo Olympics, so I do wonder how this is going to go.

Funny thing, in the 12 in FBI penetration test the Yumi passed it and the longbow didn't, surprised face on the British bowmen in that test.

But muh folded 1000 times yew bow!

>surprised face on the British bowmen in that test.
Yeah I'm assuming that's bullshit.

There's a part of my country known for their awesome and wild horses and their militia on horseback back to the Roman times, it's also fucking muntany and rainy as fuck to the point even today is hard as fuck to bring roadways and trains there.

It balances the use of your back muscles allowing a weaker person to pull a higher pounding of bow than they would manage using the western style.

In western style you hold the bow with your weak arm then pull the string back with your strong arm and it is kind of like starting a lawnmower, some people would argue the western style is more efficient because your strong side is worked harder. Also many coaches think the method in OP's pic is not as safe(maybe a throwback from formation archery) because if you fuck up your arrow is already horizontal/pointing slightly up.

The form in your pic is actually terrible for accuracy, they don't have good stances or any anchors, Korean archery is vastly superior to Japanese archery.

PS I am no good at archery but have trained with the UK olympic team and one of the best longbow coaches on the planet (geographic luck).

Europeans are like rock paper scissors, Spain > France > Germany > Britain > Spain

See