The Los Angeles Kyudo Kai

In 1973, Rev. Koen Mishima arrived in Los Angeles from Japan to minister at the Higashi Hongwanji Buddhist Temple. His family had practiced kyudo for many generations. Mishima Sensei practiced kyudo in the temple's basement by himself for quite some time; one day, as he practiced, he was photographed. Iwao Iwata saw that photograph displayed at an exhibition, and he became Mishima Sensei's first student. Eventually the two of them were joined by Rev. Hirokazu Kosaka Sensei, and an American man named Mike Stanley.

When Kosaka Sensei arrived as young monk his job was to interview the families of the deceased, he was to console them and to help document the life that had been lost. On one such interview when he asked what their grandfather liked to do, they responded, 'Kyudo'. After exclaiming that he too practiced kyudo, he was told that their grandfather had buried the bows and arrows from the original Los Angeles Kyudo Kai in the backyard of their family home, before the war. During the World War, The Japanese were being persecuted, rounded up and put into internment camps; their grandfather feared being caught with weapons, but hated to loose the legacy represented by this equipment; so he buried it in the backyard. Kosaka Sensei found the house, and in his monks robes, knocked on the door. The current owner of the home (a large dark skinned man), fearing a request for money, snatched the door open and shouted, 'Whattya want!' With his hands in gassho, Kosaka Sensei calmly said, 'There is buried treasure in your backyard, and I'd like to dig it up'. After a great conversation, and a meal of American Southern Style food an arrangement was reached. The local Japanese Gardner's Association came and dug up the yard to find the buried boxes, and then they re-landscaped the yard beautifully for the owner.

Kosaka Sensei also learned that members of the original Los Angeles Kyudo Kai still lived in Los Angeles. He met with them and discussed kyudo in the early days of the twentieth century. These men asked Kosaka Sensei, 'Please keep the memory of the Los Angles Kyudo Kai alive'. This is when Kosaka and Mishima Sensei decided to name their group The Los Angeles Kyudo Kai.

This is what Sensei was told:
Kyudo came to the United States from Japan in the early years of the twentieth century, reaching Los Angeles as early as 1908 with scattered individuals practicing around the city and the beginnings of a group called the Rafu (the local Japanese pronunciation of “L.A.”) Kyudo Kai. As early as 1916, Mr. Suda Chokei had founded the Los Angeles Kyudo Kai, and the group practiced together regularly. From 1920 to 1928, Mr. Miwa Tanechiko taught the Heike style of archery. Students met at a dojo located on what was then Jackson Street in Little Tokyo, near the intersection of San Pedro and First Streets. A second dojo was located in Boyle Heights on St. Louis Street, near Hollenbeck Park.

Vintage photographs and a collection of artifacts from the first dojo survive to this day. This includes the bows and arrows recovered by Kosaka Sensei and the maku (curtain) that hung in the original dojo.

World War II caused a grave and decades-long disruption in the practice of kyudo in Los Angeles. Because kyudo was considered a martial art, bows and arrows used by practitioners were seized as weapons by the federal government, and those that escaped confiscation were either burned or buried by their fearful owners. The Jackson Street martial arts center was closed and eventually demolished, and for the duration of the war, Japanese-Americans were relocated to internment camps. After the war, individuals resumed their practice in isolation without the help and support of an instructor, and there was no official kyudojo in Los Angeles.

In 1975, Mishima-sensei and Kosaka-sensei officially reinstated the old Los Angeles Kyudo Kai, and weekly taught a growing number of students in a variety of locations: from 1973–1978, at the Higashi Honganji Temple; from 1978–1981 in the basement of Koyasan Temple in Little Tokyo; from 1982–1992, in the beautiful wood-paneled church hall of the Nichiren Temple in East Los Angeles, at the corner of Fourth Street and Saratoga; from 1993–1999, in the Rafu Chuo Gakuen Community Hall on Saratoga. Today the Los Angeles Kyudo Kai practices at their Ikkyu Dojo in the Angels Gate Cultural Center in San Pedro.