Archery as a martial art, and Japanese bows

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In my neck of the woods (uh, literally) it's more common to think of archery in terms of bow hunting, but also as a minor in sport archery as well. And my experience when I was younger was primarily in bow hunting and practice toward that end then in the sport, though I did spend some time in archery club in high school. What is less known however, is that archery was actually primarily a martial art, and when it evolved into sport, the sport came from from practice for this. Hunting with a bow, though it did exist, and still does exist in traditional contexts as well as modern, was actually not it's main use generally speaking-a good example of this is the English Longbow/warbow. Bow hunting was illegal then (and to my knowledge, still is today), yet, for a time archery practice was mandatory, and that was for preparation for war. That isn't something that we often think about when we think of "martial arts"-yet it is somewhat curious, because when we in the West think of martial arts, we generally tend to think of Eastern Martial Arts as opposed to Western Martial Arts (HEMA) or even Modern Military training or even boxing-we will think of Kung Fu, or Japanese forms such as Karate, Judo, Kendo, Iaido...and yet, within Japanese Martial Arts, there exists a form which is completely about the way of the bow; Kyudo. Their bows look very different then ours tend to be-they draw them very differently then we do, but as I've often said that archery is almost like meditation for me, this actually seems to embody that mindset. I've noted sometimes this paradoxical feeling, that this brings me a peace and calm, and yet at the same time knowing full well that this originally was (and in some cases still is) a tool for warfare and protection-but that's another topic. Anyway, this was a short video I came across tonight I found when I was researching the Japanese Yumi: I just figured I would actually share it, because it's a slightly different take on the discipline and views it as a discipline.