Kanjuro Shibata XX
On-yumishi Kanjuro Shibata XX (御弓師 二十代 柴田 勘十郎 "Shibata Kanjūrō" born 1921 in Kyoto, Japan, died on 21 October 2013 in Boulder, United States) was twentieth in a line of master bowmakers and a "kyūdō" teacher of the "Heki Ryū Bishū Chikurin-ha" (日置流尾州竹林派) tradition. Beginning in 1980, Shibata founded over 25 "kyūdōjō" in the United States, Canada and Europe. Career. Shibata served as the Bowmaker to the Emperor of Japan from 1959 until 1994, when his adopted son, Nobuhiro, was recognized as the 21st in the Shibata lineage and assumed the duties of Imperial Bowmaker . Teaching style. In Japan, Shibata became concerned that his students were too fixated on merely hitting the target, and were treating "kyūdō" as a sport rather than a meditative art. He felt they were becoming too competitive. Shibata thus represents a view of "kyūdō" different from the All Japanese Kyūdō Federation (ZNKR) and Japanese Budō Association. Rather than as a meditative art, ZNKR promotes "kyūdō" as a traditional budō art combining equally both physical and mental development. These differences led Shibata to exclude his tradition from the official Japanese "budō" associations. In 1980, Shibata accepted an invitation from Chögyam Trungpa  Rinpoche to come to the United States and teach "kyūdō", and founded the "Ryūkō Kyūdōjō" (龍虎弓道場 "dragon-tiger archery practice hall") in Boulder, Colorado; it is now called the Zenko Iba. Shibata did not rank his students (i.e. no belt or "dan" system), and there was and is no testing or contests within the schools he founded.