Imagined kyudo and skin response: Katsube 1964

This is the fifth part of a Japanese series from the 1960s on the electrodermal response, the changes in the skin's electrical activity linked to emotional arousal, during sporting movements. Here the authors recorded this response and breathing while kendo and kyudo practitioners of different levels imagined their own technique with eyes closed or watched a film of their discipline. For kyudo the participants were 15 members of the Nagoya University club: 4 graded archers (one 4th dan, one 3rd dan, two 2nd dan) and 11 with at least a year of practice, up to 1st dan.

In kendo, as in the sports the same authors had studied before, the more experienced reacted more. In kyudo the opposite happened. When imagining shooting an arrow, the four graded archers showed no clear electrodermal changes, while only four of the other eleven stayed almost flat; in the breathing of the graded archers a slow exhalation of 4 to 5 seconds stood out at the end of the imagined shot, whereas in the less experienced the changes were marked but had no fixed timing or shape.

When watching a master shoot four arrows, the graded archers again showed little electrodermal reaction but a very distinctive breathing pattern: in one case, from just before the drawing of the bow through the release and zanshin, there was no inhalation and a slow exhalation lasting 14 seconds, repeated identically for all four shots. Among the less experienced, the electrodermal response was unclear in seven and marked in four, and breathing changed noticeably in seven, but without so clear a pattern.

Each participant entered the laboratory alone, rested for three minutes and began once the spontaneous electrodermal activity had settled. In the first task they had to imagine, eyes closed and without moving, shooting an arrow as in training, saying quietly when they started and finished. After a minute's break they watched an 8 mm black-and-white film of a kyudo master performing the shot four times, with the instruction to watch it calmly, as at the cinema. The kyudo sessions took place between 3 and 9 March 1962.

The electrodermal response was measured with a TKK device and electrodes on the index and middle fingers of the right hand, breathing with a tube placed on the chest. There are no figures and no statistics: the traces were compared by eye, group by group, and the results are described in words, with a few example traces and a count of how many people showed clear or unclear changes.

This is a descriptive study with no quantitative measures and no statistics. The distinction between clear and unclear reactions is the authors' judgement of the traces, and the most interesting finding, the 14-second exhalation, is shown for one graded archer and then extended to the group in a single sentence. There were four graded archers, between 2nd and 4th dan, and the group comparison mixes experience with age and any other difference, because nothing else was controlled.

The conditions are far from shooting: a shot is imagined or watched, not performed, and the film showed someone else. Electrodermal recording in those years used instruments and conventions different from today's, and reading it as emotional arousal is an interpretation. The authors' explanation, that in kyudo experience leads to less reaction because the discipline asks for shooting without inner disturbance, is an appealing hypothesis that the study does not test.

The study is interesting mainly for what it shows about breathing. In the graded kyudo archers, simply watching the master shoot was enough to bring out a fixed pattern: no inhalation from just before the draw and a long, slow exhalation through the whole final phase, up to zanshin. Kyudo explicitly teaches archers to coordinate breathing with the phases of the shot, and this trace shows its imprint even when the body is still and the shot is only watched.

For archers in other disciplines this is an observation, not a rule: it concerns kyudo, four people and a watched shot, and says nothing about how Olympic or compound archers breathe. Likewise, the finding that the more experienced reacted less when imagining the shot fits the idea of a shot performed with less emotional arousal, but on these numbers it remains a historical hint.