Yumi

Origins

Long bows gripped below the center appear in Japan very early — bronze bells of the Yayoi period, about two thousand years ago, show archers holding bows in this way — and the asymmetric long bow became the standard Japanese war bow. Early bows were made of a single piece of wood; from about the eleventh century makers began to laminate bamboo to the wood, and by the Muromachi period of the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries the classic yumi, built from strips of bamboo glued around a wooden core and bound, had taken shape. The early samurai of the tenth to thirteenth centuries were above all mounted archers, and their code of conduct was known as kyūba no michi, the way of horse and bow.

Design & Construction

A yumi is about seven feet three inches long — seven shaku three sun is the standard length — and the grip is set roughly a third of the way up from the lower tip. The asymmetry is usually explained as a way of allowing so long a bow to be used from horseback, since the shorter lower limb clears the horse's neck, and it gives the bow a characteristic smooth draw and a distinctive release. The laminated bamboo and wood construction, glued with a natural adhesive and wrapped with rattan or cord, makes the bow light and fast while resisting the humid Japanese climate. The archer draws the string back past the ear, a long draw, using a glove with a stiffened thumb, and the arrows are long, made of bamboo, and fletched with feathers.

Combat Use

For the early samurai, archery from horseback was the decisive skill. Battles of the Genpei War were often described as duels of mounted archers, and the Tale of the Heike records famous shots, such as Nasu no Yoichi's arrow at a fan held on a Heike ship. When the Mongols invaded in 1274 and 1281, Japanese warriors faced archers with shorter, more powerful composite bows like the Mongol Composite Bow and new massed tactics. In the Sengoku period of the sixteenth century, foot archers fought alongside spearmen and arquebusiers, and the bow's faster rate of fire kept it on the battlefield even after the matchlock arrived in 1543.

Legacy

The yumi's military life ended with the long peace of the Edo period, but archery became an art of self-cultivation, and the ritual practice of kyūdō grew from the military schools of the medieval period. Mounted archery survives in yabusame, a ceremonial Shinto display in which archers on galloping horses shoot at wooden targets. Master bow-makers still build traditional bamboo yumi by hand, and kyūdō is practiced across Japan and in clubs around the world — making the yumi one of the few medieval war bows still in daily use.