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Zongshuo Wei
Kyongson Park
ENGL 106
9/21/2014
Traditional Martial Arts? Modern Competitive Sports?
When people are talking about some kinds of sports, they always focus on aspects like the
rules, the players and the equipment. Few of them will try to find the origin of these sports. But,
in fact, it is quite interesting to trace back to the medieval ages or even former eras to find out
how these kinds of sports started and developed. For example, there are evidence shown that
ancient Egyptians, Greeks and Chinese used to use sticks to hit balls for fun which can be
considered as the ancestor of hockey and golf. But now, in this project, I am not going to cover
all the sports areas which is impossible because it is so wide-ranged. My topic is examining the
relationship between traditional martial arts and modern competitive sports.
This is a very complicated topic which means there can be so many factors that can
influence the development process such as wars, cultural exchanges, technology developments
and the converts of ideologies. However, that is exactly where the glamour of this topic comes
from. From doing researches and writing essays on this topic, I can learn a lot about history,
sociology, engineering and even anatomy which can broaden my horizon and improve my
understanding about those kinds of martial arts and sports. Furthermore, this topic is not only for
my own entertainment and improvement, but also for the progress of the training system of some
specific sports and the protection of many ancient martial arts which are important parts of the

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traditional culture. Although many martial arts today have already converted into forms of
competitive sports, the philosophies of them always remain the same in these hundreds or even
thousands of years. So, maybe we can get some new inspiration about how to deal with those
changes in the 21st century.
In this project, I will focus on the relationship between two kinds of martial arts and their
later generations which are ancient battlefield archery skills and modern target archery skills,
kenjutsu(ancient samurai sword art) and modern kendo. I have been practicing both ancient
archery skills and modern archery for five years since I entered high school. When I first walked
into the archery field, what I was thinking was just how to hit the target. Then during the practice,
I started to realize that what the modern archers are working on is just trying to hit the yellow
ring and get good scores which can never adapt to the ancient battlefield situation. For example,
both the archer and his/hers enemies' horses were running in a high speed instead of just standing
in one position like the targets we use in competitions. What's more, if a soldier shot his arrows
in a modern target archery style which is just like slow motion, he/she would definitely got killed.
Then, I read some historical documents like Martial Arts: How to shoot a bow)
and The Art of Archery) to find out the difference between those two kinds of
shooting styles. That's the main reason that I shoot in both of these two styles. What happened in
kendo is quite different. Two years ago, I started to come into contact with ancient sword art. I
practiced several times with my friends but I was not satisfied with my skills, so I went to kendo
to get more systematic training. The main reason I chose kendo is that kenjutsu academies are
very rare in many cities while kendo academies are very common. Then I tried to compare those

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two different kinds of sword fighting skills in many aspects like the footwork, the way to swing
the sword and different hitting positions. What made me surprised was that there are so many
differences between kenjutsu and kendo which are both Japanese martial arts. After that, when I
received the task of this project, this topic about archery and sword art came to my mind
immediately.
What I want to find out in this project is not only the main factors of the transformations of
those martial arts but also more details about the differences between the styles we are using in
tradition martial arts and modern competitive sports. Then several questions can be drawn to the
front. Is modern archery and kendo totally useless in training soldiers in feudal times? On the
other hand, are those traditional martial arts still worth learning today? To find out the answers to
these questions, maybe I can get some ideas from my kendo sensei (kendo teacher) or some
senior students who are practicing in higher levels. After analyzing the results, maybe I can
develop a more efficient way of training or make improvements on the equipments which will
definitely help to promote the development of the modern competition systems and the
protection of the traditional cultures.