Junji Miyata saw the dramatic evolution of the modern Western archery equipment to participate in the World Archery Championships 1967. He was interested in the background how Modern western archery and the archery equipment have replaced traditional Western archery and modern bows and arrows. He wanted to know whether modern archery and traditional archery were closely related or completely different. Until the beginning of the 20th century, western archers still used traditional bows, and Easton made traditional arrows. However, Easton, the modern shaft manufacturer, now has a large share of the current aluminum / carbon arrows, which had greater performance than traditional ones, for western archery, and also for Kyudo.
Junji Miyata was fortunate enough to receive an interview request from BBC right after the championship in 1967, and the meetup from Mr. Don Gould, senior coach of Grand National Archery Society in England, which was the opportunity to exchange the traditional British archery and Kyudo.
Junji Miyata was interviewed on BBC in UK
The interview mainly focused on Kyudo and traditional Kyudo equipment, so he explained using traditional bamboo bows and arrows (Junji Miyata was Renshi - Rokudan at the time).
The meetup exchanging the British traditional archery and Kyudo in Poole, UK
At the meetup in Poole, the Mayor of Poole and Mr. Burt Orlan, the British Traditional Longbow champion ,who was a member of the British Longbow Society of traditional British archery, were also invited. Junji Miyata and the members from British traditional archery had demonstrations of their own traditional shootings and exchanged bows and arrows with each other and also performed trial shooting.
Junji Miyata realized through discussions that Western archery evolved based on the Western concept of sports contests, and that the longbow tradition was passed on to modern archery through the British Grand National Archery Society. In other words, even in the modern archery bow equipment, such as FRP bows, aluminum / carbon arrows, which seems to be completely different from traditional ones, Junji Miyata found that various things were inherited from traditional archery to modern archery.
Seeing this fact, Junji Miyata found the possibilities of development of Japanese Kyudo bow, based on the FRP bows Junji Miyata made for the championship in 1967 for the purpose of help to inherit traditional Kyudo. His motivation to introduce FRP bows for Kyudo was mainly to inherit traditional Kyudo properly. Even in Japan, the environment in Kyudo had changed dramatically from medieval age, and Junji Miyata thought the new FRP Kyudo bow would be suitable for Kyudo in modern age.
Junji Miyata demonstrated Kyudo performance with the traditional bamboo bow and bamboo arrows in the exhibition in the World Archery Championships 1967
