A photograph of Eugen Herrigel.

Eugen Herrigel. (Source) Eugen Herrigel, Zen in the Art of Archery, (English Edition), Kindle Edition, Sanage Publishing House, 2021, cover.

Eugen Herrigel was born in Lichtenau in 1884. After studying theology at the University of Heidelberg, he studied neo-Kantian philosophy with Wilhelm Windelband and Heinrich Rickert. He served in World War I for 5 years, that is, from 1914, the year after he was awarded his Doctor of Philosophy degree, until the end of the war. He then returned to the University of Heidelberg as a lecturer in philosophy, and in May 1924 (Taishō 13) he was invited to Tōhoku Imperial University as a lecturer and came to Japan with his wife Gusty. He taught philosophy and classical languages and received his Doctor of Letters degree in 1929 for his thesis “Die metaphysische Form” (“The Metaphysical Form”). However, what was decisive for him was that during his stay in Japan, he practiced kyūdō (Japanese archery) at the kyūdō dōjō (archery training school) of Awa Kenzō, who advocated “One Arrow, One Life” and “to see true nature in the shot (Shari Kenshō).” Five years later, he was awarded fifth dan (grade) in kyūdō. This is described in detail in his Zen in der Kunst des Bogenschiessens (Zen in the Art of Archery), published in Germany in 1948. His wife, Gusty Herrigel, studied ikebana (Japanese flower arrangements) and sumi-e (ink painting) under Takeda Bokuyō and received a master’s diploma. After returning to Germany, Herrigel succeeded Emil Lask as full professor at the University of Erlangen, where he taught philosophy and logic while deepening his studies of Japanese thought and Zen. After World War II, his new house in Erlangen was confiscated by the U.S. military, and in 1951 he moved to Garmisch-Partenkirchen, where he passed away in 1955 at 71 years of age.

When Herrigel was asked whether he would like to teach philosophy at Tōhoku Imperial University, he welcomed the opportunity to get “to know the country and people of Japan with especial joy,” if only because it held out the prospect of his making contact with Buddhism and hence with an introspective practice of mysticism.

At the University of Heidelberg—where Herrigel was teaching philosophy at the time—Wilhelm Windelband and Heinrich Rickert, who pioneered the philosophy of value and the philosophy of culture in the neo-Kantian tradition, were active. This Heidelberg School, (or, Southwest German School) with its emphasis on idiographic method, dominated Japan from the Meiji (1868–1912) to Taishō (1912–1926) periods.

After World War I, Herrigel often met and befriended Japanese philosophers who came on “pilgrimages to Heidelberg,” including Ōhazama Shūei, a translator of Buddhist selections published in Gotha, and Amano Teiyū, a Kant scholar who attended Herrigel’s lectures on Plato’s philosophy. Ishihara Ken, a historian of Christianity who was in Heidelberg at the time, later began teaching at Tōhoku Imperial University with Herrigel, and a close friendship was born between the two. In other words, even before Herrigel left for Japan, Heidelberg already had an established Japanese circle in the form of a reading group with German philosophers, and it was here that the idea of inviting Herrigel to Tōhoku Imperial University came about.

Herrigel’s classes at Tōhoku Imperial University originated with Kant, and included teachings about Emil Lask, H. Rickert, W. Windelband, and Hermann Lotze. Herrigel taught his Japanese students to read the original texts faithfully and to think for themselves, and to this end he often asked them to write papers on what they thought, to which he would sometimes add a longer critique than the original, thus demonstrating his attitude of devotion and passion to each problem, however small it was. He also diligently taught Latin and Greek texts to give them the foundation in the classical languages of Europe.

How Herrigel found his way to Zen in Japan is described in detail in his own book, Zen in the Art of Archery. He says, “Even as a student I had, as though driven by a secret urge, been preoccupied with mysticism, despite the mood of the times, which had little use for such interests. For all my exertions, however, I became increasingly aware that I could only approach these esoteric writings from the outside; and though I knew how to circle around what one may call the primordial mystical phenomenon, I was unable to leap over the line which surrounded the mystery like a high wall. Nor could I find exactly what I sought in the extensive literature of mysticism, and, disappointed and discouraged, I gradually came to realize that only the truly detached can understand what is meant by ‘detachment,’ and that only the contemplative, who are completely empty and rid of the self, are ready to ‘become one’ with the ‘transcendent Deity.’”

“But—how does one become a mystic?” Nowhere did he find anything approaching a satisfactory answer to his own question. In the first place, the mystical experience cannot be induced by any planning on the part of man. “No matter how much I stared at it, I found myself confronted by locked doors.”

Thus, for him, the chance to visit Japan was, in essence, a chance to experience the tradition, practice, and masters of Zen as a unique mystical experience preserved in Japan. It is not surprising, therefore, that upon arriving in Japan, he was determined to fulfill his wish. The first obstacle he encountered, however, was that the Japanese would not let him practice Zen. They reasoned that no European had ever seriously concerned himself with Zen, and since Zen repudiated the least trace of “teaching,” it was not to be expected that it would satisfy him “intellectually.” And he was not able to succeed in making them understand that he wished to devote himself to Zen specifically in a non speculative manner. “Thereupon I was informed that it was quite hopeless for a European to attempt to penetrate into this realm of spiritual life—perhaps the strangest which the Far East has to offer—unless he began by learning one of the Japanese arts associated with Zen.”

Herrigel therefore chose the art of archery among arts, based on his “erroneous” assumption that his experiences in rifle and pistol shooting would be to his advantage. He asked his colleague Komachiya Sōzō for an introduction, and with his help also as an interpreter, he was able to become a student of Awa Kenzō, who had once turned him down because he did not want to have a foreign student. Awa Kenzō, 45 years old at the time, had a dōjō in Higashi Nibanchō, Sendai, and was an honorable Dainippon Butokukai kyūdō instructor and had Dainippon Kyūdōkan eighth dan. Awa Kenzō, whose yell at the moment the arrow leaves the bow was as fierce as a lion’s, was revered as a great archer who preached “the unification of the universe and shooting” It is said that his archery had been becoming more and more philosophical around the time when Herrigel became his student (from Afterword, Nihon no kyūjutsu, trans. Shibata Jisaburō).

In Zen in the Art of Archery, Herrigel organized and developed his own kyūdō experiences through reflection over these 5 years of apprenticeship. In it he describes how the contradiction between the rational “I” with a will and the irrational “It” was sought and explored in search of a possible answer, and lost in skepticism and despair, and further sought again and again. It was a process in which each stage of progress brought new contradictions and anxieties, as if it were that of negative theology, and this one European disciple was shaken each time, resulting in an intense conflict between master and disciple. It was the trajectory through which a single philosopher, over a period of years, defied logic with logic, without half-hearted and ambiguous compromise, and was also a process that was only possible through a holistic master-disciple relationship based on total, mutual respect.

The big crisis came in the 4th year, when Herrigel was still not able to make the “unconscious loosing of the arrow” that his master demanded, and he began to get impatient. Herrigel forgot the master’s warning that “we should not practice anything except self-detaching immersion.” After turning all the possibilities over in his mind, he came to the conclusion that “the fault could not lie where the Master suspected it: in the absence of purposelessness and egolessness, but in the fact that the fingers of the right hand held the thumb too tightly. […] And ere long I had found a simple and obvious solution to this problem. If, after drawing the bow, I cautiously eased the pressure of the fingers on the thumb, the moment came when the thumb […] was torn out of position as if spontaneously: in this way a lightning loose could be made and the shot would obviously ‘fall like snow from a bamboo leaf.’ This discovery recommended itself to me not least on account of its beguiling affinity with the technique of rifle-shooting.”

Almost every shot went off to his way of thinking. At the same time, however, the precision work of the right hand demanded his attention. It did not mean that he was in a position to let off the shot “self-obliviously and unconsciously.”

The very first shot he let off after the recommencement of his lessons was, to his mind, “a brilliant success.” “The loose was smooth, unexpected. The Master looked at me for a while and then said hesitantly, like one who can scarcely believe his eyes: ‘Once again, please!’ My second shot seemed to me even better than the first. The Master stepped up to me without a word, took the bow from my hand, and sat down on a cushion, his back towards me.”

The next day Mr. Komachiya informed him that the Master declined to instruct him any further because Herrigel had tried to cheat the Master. Herrigel desperately explained to Komachiya the reason he had hit upon such method of loosing the shot. “On his interceding for me, the Master was finally prepared to give in” and the lessons finally resumed. The Master’s attitude was as casual as if nothing had happened, but Herrigel’s bow was back to square one, not taking a single step forward.

Weeks went by without my advancing a step. At the same time, I discovered that this did not disturb me in the least. […] Whether I learned the art or not, whether I experienced what the Master meant by “It” or not, whether I found the way to Zen or not—all this suddenly seemed to have become so remote, so indifferent, that it no longer troubled me. […] Then, one day, after a shot, the Master made a deep bow and broke off the lesson. “Just then ‘It’ shot!” he cried.

More than 5 years had passed since Herrigel had started the lessons, and upon receiving his fifth dan, the master handed over his best bow to the foreign student who was soon to leave Japan.

After his return to Germany, Herrigel received an honorary doctorate from Tōhoku Imperial University. Friedrich Kaulbach, one of his students and professor of philosophy at the University of Münster, wrote: “I received understanding and important advice for my doctoral thesis under Eugen Herrigel in Erlangen. He had started out in the neo-Kantian tradition, but had fundamentally left that world during his stay in Japan. Now he is a Zen Buddhist at heart.” After World War II, D. T. Suzuki already 83 years old at the time, visited Herrigel.

Zen in the Art of Archery, published in 1948, was based on a lecture, Die Ritterliche Kunst des Bogenschiessens (The Knightly Art of Archery), presented to Germans at the Berlin chapter of the German-Japanese Society in 1936, twelve years previously. This manuscript first appeared in the magazine Japan (Zeitschrift fur Japanologie) and in the same year (1936) a Japanese translation by Shibata Jisaburō was published in the magazine Bunka (Culture) edited by the Literary Society of Tōhoku Imperial University, and was published in hardcover by Iwanami Shoten in 1941. In 1982, a revised edition was added to the Iwanami Bunko (Iwanmi classics in paperback) collection.

It is no exaggeration to say that many Germans and other Europeans first became able to imagine the mystical world of Japanese Zen through Herrigel. Zen in the Art of Archery, first published in Konstanz, was taken over by Otto Wilhelm Barth Verlag publishing in Munich in 1951, and reached its 20th edition. It was translated into Dutch in 1951, into English in 1953, and into French and Italian, and has continued to attract people’s attention up to the present.

Dear good old friends,

The one life that had always kept the tranquility of mind with its constant contemplation, passed away on April 18. Like petals falling from a tree, quietly and calmly, my dear husband is buried in a mountain grave in Partenkirchen. We laid him to rest in his last resting place, dressed in his much-loved Japanese silk kimono. […]

The letter “From Mrs. Herrigel to Japanese Acquaintances,” May 10, 1955

Herrigel’s main writings:

Zur Logik der Zahl, (The Logic of Numbers) (1921)

Urstoff und Urform (Raw Material and Form) (1926)

Eine Auseinandersetzung mit Kant, Bd. 1: Der mundus sensibilis (A Duel with Kant) (1929)

Die metaphysische Form (Metaphysical Form) (Doctoral dissertation submitted to Tōhoku Imperial University, 1929)

Die ritterliche Kunst des Bogenschiessens (The Knightly Art of Archery) (1936), a transcript of a lecture given under the same title, (trans.) Shibata Jisaburō, Shōwa 16 (1941), Iwanami Shoten, (New edition, Shōwa 57 (1982)

Zen in der Kunst des Bogenschiessens (Zen in the Art of Archery; Yumi to Zen) (1948) (See List of Original Works and Translations)

Der Zen-Weg (The Method of Zen) (Collection of posthumous manuscripts) (1958)

Bruno Taut

Das japanische Haus und sein Leben (The Japanese House and Its Life) (1936)