Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 2.djvu/158

JAPAN forces confronted the army of Ashikaga Takauji at Hyōgo, just before the fight that shattered the Imperialists. Shigeuji, one of Yoshisada's captains, shot an osprey through the wing as it soared with a fish in its claws, so that the bird fell alive into the Ashikaga camp. A cry of applause rose from both armies, and Takauji shouted an inquiry as to the archer's name. "I send it to you," replied Shigeuji, stringing an arrow on which his name was inscribed and discharging it at one of the enemy's watch-towers, three hundred and sixty paces distant. The shaft pierced the tower and wounded a soldier within.

As a final illustration of the power of the Japanese bow, a feat may be mentioned which had much vogue from the twelfth century until recent times. In Kyōtō there is a temple called the "hall of the thirty-three-pillar spans" (san-jusan-gen-do). On its west front is a veranda one hundred and twenty-eight yards long and sixteen feet high. Evidently to shoot an arrow the whole length of this corridor where so little elevation can be given to the shaft, requires a bow of great strength, to say nothing of truth of flight. In 1686 Wada Daihachi succeeded in sending 8,133 arrows from end to end of the corridor between sunset and sunset, an average of about five shafts per minute during twenty-four consecutive hours. The feat sounds incredible, but it was nearly equalled at a later date by Tsuruta Masatoki, an archer in the train of the feudal 132