KYUDOU
Aiming for a Spiritual Goal
[SESE SENSEI]
-----by BOB JOHNSTNE PHTOS by JOSE A CALDEIRA
"The bow draws him"
With quiet detachment and grave dignity,Sese Sensei fits the arrow,
raises his arms slowly and brings the bow to eye level.
He then stretches the string to a trembling tension and takes aim.
Thwack! But hitting the bullseye is not the point of KYUDOU.
For the master archer is shooting for a spiritual target.
Sese Sensei
When we left for Europe last summer, Sese Sensei insisted on driving us
the 60-odd kilometers from Tokyo to Narita airport.
He'd just got back from playing golf in the British Open and was eager to tell
about it.
Arriving at the airport,he drove right up to the terminal,parked outside,
helped us in with out luggage, then insisted on coming in with us for a cup of coffee.
I was worried about leaving the car there. Sure enough, twenty minutes later,
when we came back, there was a policeman standing next to the offending vehicle.
looking angrily around for its owner. Sese Sensei dashed off to deal with the situation.
The last we saw, the policeman was leading him away,for all we knew to be charged.
When we got back from Europe, Sese Sensei was the first person to phone us.
"What happened to you after we left?" asked my wife,anxiously.
"I made a new friend,"came the reply.
Sese Sensei makes friends easily. He does it deliberately,his goal being to meet at least
40 people a day. He believes that in life you have "one meeting, one chance."
When traveling, he positively relishes getting lost,because it gives him the chance to meet the local people.
When you meet Sese Sensei for the first time,you find his smile too friendly to resist. So you smile back.
Whether pulling 20 kilos of tension in his bow (above).
practing the martial art of tai-chi(right),
horseback riding or playing the stock market.
Sese Sensei performs enthusiastically and successfully.
Sese Sensei loves to talk. As he bounces from topic to topic,ideas,observations,theories come tumbling out of him,
punctuated by regular fits of giggles. When he speaks English,the results can be, to put it mildly,unusual.
Nonetheless, propelled by sheer vitality,he invariably manages to get his meaning across.
I remember one time when he brought back a panda glove-puppet from a trip abroad. He wore it everywhere he went--in trains,
in elevators,in the street--making its little arms wave at people,making them laugh.
On the other hand, he also has power, but like most really powerful people, he does not throw it around. In fact,
I have seen him use it only once,in a bar,when a couple of drunken rowdies
began singing an inappropriate song. He silenced them without even raising his voice.
I first met Sese Sensei two years ago. He was giving weekly lessons in tai-chi, the ancient Chinese martial art,
at the company where I worked. Though his name is actually Sese Koichi, I use the word sensei, which means "teacher"
in Japanese, because that is what I always call him.
When I saw Sese Sensei doing tai-chi that first time, what impressed me most was the expression on his face,
an expression of utmost dignity, of calm detachment. Wouldn't it be great, I thought to myself,if I could achieve an expression
like that.
An hour's tai-chi leaves you wonderfully relaxed and refreshed. It also makes you thirsty. Sese Sensei and I fell into the habit
of having a few post-session beers at a nearby tachinomiya(literally: stand-up drinking place).
Thus I have found out more and more about this remarkable man.
Sese Kouichi was born 49 years ago in the southern Japanese island of Kyushu. His father died when he was only two years old, whereupon his mother,
a nurse,took him back to her native Ehime.
At school he was mad keen on sports, baseball in particular. Age 18, he joined his father's old firm, a weaving company. As a young man,
he played the stock market with considerable success, using the proceeds to build a house for his mother and, subsequently,one for himself.
He took up golf, throwing himself into the game with characteristic enthusiasm, getting up before dawn and traveling great distances to practice.
He was transferred to Tokyo where, one day in 1963 he heard a radio program about Eugen Herrigel, the German professor of philosophy who took up KYUDOU
(Japanese archery) to learn about Zen, subsequently writing about his experiences in the classic Zen in the Art of Archery.
Sese Sensei had to have the book. He called a bookstore, asked them to stay open until he got there. Needless to say, they did. Today,
more than 20 years later, he still carries a copy of the book aroud with him, referring to it frequently.
What interested him most was its emphasis on the importance of proper breathing. According to Sese Sesei, breathing is the prime example of our
ability to respond instinctively to stimulus. We need oxygen, so we brearhe in.
If we can learn to apply this simple principle of stimulus and response to other areas, he reasons,we can lead healthy lives.
Sese Sensei's awareness of the importance of breathing was reinforced a little later by his discovery of tai-chi chuan. Tai-chi is,
in the version practiced in Japan at any rate, a series of 24 consecutive movements designed to promote a healthy balance between body and mind.
The professor who brought tai-chi to Japan some 20 years ago describes it as "Zen in motion." Sese Sensei, one of his first pupils.
agrees; Zen for him is not sitting for endless hours of cramped cross-legged meditation in some drafty old temple.
Zen and the art of golfing
Rather, he believes that Zen is better achieved through action,whether it be tai-chi, playing golf or just walking down the street.
In addition to breathing, Sese Sensei's other great fascination is timing,especially as it relates to his first love,golf. For years, he has been
collecting and analyzing data on top pro golfers. He has found that their bachswings aveeraged 0.8 seconds.
A doctor pupil of his told him that this time corresponds well with the average pulse rate. Obviously,then, the best players instinctively
synchronized their swings with their own natural rhythm.
Armed with this information, Sese Sensei set out to invent a way to enable would-be Arnold Palmers and Tom Watsons to do the same as their heroes.
What he came up with was a metronome-like gadget, the difference being that his machine pointer travels the full circle.
By adjusting the speed of the pointer, the golfer can establish the timing that suits his swing best.
To market his invention, in 1972, Sese Sensei quit his job and set up his own company,the Japan Timing Laboratory.
In addition to selling timers, Sese Sensei taught golf and wrote articles for golfing magazines. He also found time to become a qualified master
of tai-chi and take up KYUDOU. He's taken to traveling each year to play in the British Open. He does it because it's enormous fun.
Last year, Sese Sensei came back from his trip to Britain with a new enthusiasm, horsback riding, which he practices at a race track near his home.
I had given him the address of some friends of mine who breed horses on a farm outside a small Scottish village called Kirriemuir. When he went to
visit them, he showed them tai-chi; in return,they stuck him in the saddle,and off he went. He hasn't been the same since.
Hours of Practice
But it is when he is pacticing KYUDOU that he is most impressive. Once when I arrived at the KYUDOU-jo (archery place),
Sese Sensei had already been practicing for seceral hours. He had been there, in fact, at six a.m. to prepare for his session by cleaning the place and meditating.
He asked me to take some pictures of him shooting. It was only when we went down to collect the arrows from the target that I noticed that both were lodged in the bullseye.
Sese Sensei was delighted: this was the first time he had had two consecutive bullseyes.
Not that hitting the target is what KYUDOU is all about. Far from it. According to Eugen Herrigel, "Archery to the Japanese is a religious ritual whose aim consists in hitting a spiritual goal."
The idea is to learn not so much how to shoot as how not to shoot. The master archer can no longer tell whether he draws the bow or the bow draws him. Herrigel's teacher,the legendary Awa Kenzo,
insisted that the archer should be taken by surprise by his shot.
Make of these paradoxes what you will, KYUDOU is an impressive ritual to watch.
The archer steps to the front of the shooting platform, kneels and bows deeply to the target.
He fits one of the two arrows he carries to the bowstring, holding the other parallel,
but pointing it in the opposite direction. He rises,then slides his white-stockinged feet wide-apart to secure a firm base. He raises his arms above his head, then brings the bow
slowly down to eye-level, pulling back the string. For several seconds a trembling tension is maintained.
Then thwack! The gloved right hand bursts open, is flung back. The arrow is gone.
The archer remains rooted to the spot for a few moments, then looks away, kneels, fits the second arrow, rises, lets fly again, finally turning away from the target and leaving the way he came. Total time taken: one-and-a-half minutes.
Even at full stretch, with a tension of up to 20 kilograms on the bows, the archer's arm and shoulder muscles remain completely relaxed. How? the key is breathing. As the bow is drawn,
KEY to control is BREATHING
the archer inhales deeply, forcing his lungs to expand. At the instant of release, there is an explosive outrush of air, sometimes taking the form of a loud shout. Because KYUDO places relatively few demands on the archer's strength, he can go on shooting for long periods.
Sese Sensei reckons that in the course of a day he will loose several hundred arrows.
Zen Temple
KYUDO's inherent dignity is accentuated by the placid beauty of its surroundings.
We were once at the Zen temple of Enkakuji, just north of the ancient seaside capital of Kamakura, 40 minutes or so from Tokyo by train. The weather was excellent.
The shooting platform was in a small wooden building to the left of the main temple gate.
On one wall hung two bows given by Awa Kenzo to Eugen Herrigel (although,in fact, Herrigel never practiced here).
Behind, on an upper level, were a changing room and an altar loaded with offerings. There were silk-wrapped bows and racks of wicker quivers everywhere. In a corner was a small exquisite flower arrangement.
The target was about 30 meters or so away, protected by a tiled roof and an awning on which were written characters intended, presumably,to aid concentration.
As you looked toward the target you could see, perhaps a quarter of the way down, three rocks protruding from the ground, reminiscent of the ones in the famous rock gardens of Kyoto. On either side lush vegetation--bamboo, camellia, flowering
shrubs--bent in toward the center. Leaves rustled,birds twittered and the sounds of trains passing in the distance served somehow only to reinforce the seclusion of that enchanted little world.
The morning wore on. A sprightly octogenarian arrived, taking great interest in the camera equipment, apologizing politely for getting in our way (when,of course, it was we who were getting in his way). He told us laughingly that, at his age, he could no longer shoot as much. Yet he stepped to the front of the platform, and hit the target.
Meanwhile, Sese Sensei continued practing.----(SCANORAMA October 1984)
[RETURN]
[Kepler's Golfing]=( English ABSTRACT)
[Zen Golfing]=( Japanese ABSTRACT)
[Kyudo-Awa Kenzo]=( Japanese ABSTRACT)