The mistakes are not in Yamada's paper, the mistakes are in Stevens' understanding of what Yamada is saying. I have yet to read the book in its entirely, but judging from the remarks that Tracy has appended, it seems that Stevens has misread Yamada in a very fundamental way.
Stevens seems to think that Yamada's paper is an attack on Awa's status or abilities as a Zen master. This was not the purpose of Yamada’s paper, and he did not address this question at all. So complaining that he did not write a paper about the greatness of Awa, that is, that he didn’t write the paper Stevens wanted him to write, seems a little silly.
Yamada was addressing three main questions, it seems to me:
1. Is Japanese archery generally understood as a form of Zen?
2. Was Awa’s Daishadokyo a mainstream understanding of Japanese archery?
3. Did Herrigel understand what he was being taught and did he present it accurately?
If I read Stevens’ comments correctly, it seems that he agrees with Yamada on points 1) and 2). Stevens does not argue with Yamada's assertion that Awa was unorthodox; nor does he take issue with Yamada’s contention that the masses of people in Japan do not practice kyudo as a form of Zen. Indeed he readily admits both claims but then dismisses both with a shrug. Stevens' subjective opinion regarding these facts does not make them any the less true, however. Yamada’s main purpose was to let his readers know that Herrigel’s interpretation of Awa’s idiosyncratic teachings is not the only way to understand kyudo. Stevens readily admits that most people do not practice kyudo as Zen, which is really all Yamada was saying, when you come right down to it. So he is fundamentally in agreement with Yamada, so far as I can tell. If so, then, what is the argument?
Stevens seems to be starting out from the position that Awa was a great archery master as well as a great Zen master and faults Yamada for not recognizing this. While it appears that Awa's approach to kyujutsu was unorthodox, I have seen video of him shooting, remastered from some old pre-war footage, and there is no doubt in my mind whatsoever that for all of his supposed eccentricities he was a superb archer. His skill is a matter of public record, and in spite of his differences of opinion with other masters of equal stature, he received his Hanshi (Master) ranking from the Dai Nippon Butokukai, the national martial arts organization of that time. So he was clearly no slouch, and I don’t recall Yamada calling him one.
So, one thing that is clear is that however much an oddball Awa may or may not have been, his skill was unquestioned. I don't think Yamada questioned Awa's skill; his only point was that Awa was unorthodox and that his understanding of kyujutsu, and his attempt to recreate it as something new and untraditional, met with opposition from the traditionalists. This fact, in and of itself, is utterly prosaic, it seems to me, and as I said, Stevens concedes this point.
But here we come to it. It is precisely Awa's reputation as an oddball that Stevens considers to be the proof of his authenticity. If one is convinced from the beginning that kyudo must be Zen, and that Zen is a kind of “crazy wisdom”, as Stevens seems to believe, then Awa, precisely because he was not mainstream, must be the only one who really understood the true spirit of kyudo and everyone else was not fit to carry his fundoshi. Indeed, this seems to be Stevens' opinion, if I read him correctly.
If one wishes to take this position one is free to do so, I suppose. However, it ignores the other masters, contemporaneous with Awa, who were his equals, in kyujutsu if not in "Zen". My teacher's teacher, Urakami Sakae, was one of these. The records of his skill as an archer are, so far as I know, equal to those of Awa. Based on what my teacher, his daughter-in-law, told me just a few weeks ago when I saw her in Japan, he scored a perfect 100 out of 100 shots certainly at least one time and achieved 99 out of 100 shots on any number of occasions (my teacher laughingly recalls her father-in-law saying wryly that "that last shot is really hard"). Urakami Sakae’s son Sunao, with whom I have had many a pleasant conversation, said that his father respected Awa’s spiritual insights and that Awa had a great respect for his father’s skill, which was, apparently, of an inordinately high order. Urakami Sakae received his Hanshi ranking from the Butokukai in 1927 (the same year that Awa did, I believe) when he was 45 years old and Awa was 47. So the fact that Awa was a good shot is not necessarily proof of his grasp of “Zen”, it is proof that he was a good shot.
I say this only to emphasize that a third party viewing both of these archers from the outside would most likely be hard pressed to see any significant difference between them. Of course, what impressed Herrigel so deeply was Awa's phenomenal accuracy. I will leave others to ponder the apparent contradiction between Herrigel insisting that where the arrow flew was of no significance and being astonished to the point of immobility at Awa’s seemingly magical accuracy (again, Yamada did not question that “The Target in the Dark” episode actually happened; he only questioned Herrigel’s interpretation of it, introducing statements from Awa’s most senior disciple that Awa had dismissed it as “a coincidence”). At the risk of being thought coy, I will say that accuracy of this level is definitely gained through something that transcends what most people consider “aiming”. Kyudo people will understand this easily. But this facility is not gained through a complete neglect of technique and a blithe disregard of where the arrow is pointing, as Herrigel seems to say. Such a thing is simply not possible. I do not believe for a moment that Awa did not teach Herrigel technique; I think Herrigel simply chose not to talk about it. This gives readers an entirely mistaken impression of what kyudo is and who Awa was.
All of this being said, the only question of any real relevance here is whether kyujutsu must necessarily be "Zen". Stevens insists that Awa was a great "Zen" master and had a profound understanding of "Zen". Yet at the same time he takes no issue with Yamada regarding the fact that Awa never once formally studied Zen. So, it is quite obvious that Stevens' understanding of "Zen" is different from that of most people's. Indeed, his notes indicate that one can be a great "Zen" master without ever once ever having had any formal training whatsoever (such a deal). Also, I don’t recall Yamada ever denying that Awa had some sort of “enlightenment” experience or denigrating that experience. His only question was what meaning should be ascribed to it.
I have to repeat again that when one says something is "Zen", most people will naturally and automatically assume that it is part and parcel of the formal practice of Zen Buddhism. Writers in the West who have been influenced by garden variety commentary on kyudo commonly assert that it was invented by Zen priests for purposes of meditation or some such rubbish. And as I have said before, I cannot count the number of people who have come to my dojo looking for this kind of effortless Zen magic only to be crushed when I tell them they have to practice proper technique really, really hard for a really long time in order to understand it. To an experienced marital artist there is no contradiction between hard practice and the eventual attainment of effortlessness, but to people with no frame of reference these two things are mutually exclusive. In kyudo, teachers always say that one must “transcend technique” or “forget technique”. One cannot transcend or forget something that one has never learned. One learns it, then one forgets about it. But people who don’t know budo normally understand Herrigel to mean exactly what he seems to be saying: that technique in any form whatsoever has nothing to do with “real” kyudo. It is primarily this tendency to misunderstand kyudo in this way against which Yamada was arguing. He wanted people to know that Herrigel's kyudo was not the only kind of kyudo there is. Again, Stevens does not disagree with this.
So the issue here is: just what is "Zen", exactly? Unless one can arrive at a mutually agreeable definition of the term, no rational discussion is possible (or is a rational discussion about "Zen" a contradiction in terms?). Judging from Stevens' comments regarding crazy Zen grannies and vagabonds, it appears that anyone can understand "Zen". Tracy and I have been over this before, but when a definition gets this subjective, there is simply nowhere to go. It's "Zen" if you want it to be "Zen". Since Stevens seems to share this opinion, by his definition Awa was a "Zen" master even though he never actually studied Zen in any formal way. But what proves his understanding of “Zen”? The fact that he used a lot of Zen phrases or that he was a crack shot?
It is true that Awa used a lot of Zen aphorisms in his lectures. To paraphrase Stevens: this is news? Regardless of what Herrigel may or may not have understood by this, Sakurai Yasunosuke, Awa’s disciple and the foremost authority on his life, states bluntly that Awa did not teach kyujutsu as Zen (from Yamada):
"Awa did use the expression 'bow and Zen are one.' Nonetheless, he did not expound archery or his shado as a way leading to Zen. Regardless of how Herrigel acquired that impression, today when many Japanese have the same misunderstanding we should not place the blame on Herrigel. Rather the responsibility must be placed squarely on our own Japanese scholars who have failed to clarify the difference between the arts of Japan and Zen."
What is one supposed to do with such a statement? The only conclusion to which we can come is that Herrigel was mistaken. While Awa may have used Zen terminology it must have meant something other than what Herrigel took it to mean. Or Herrigel was right and Sakurai was wrong. Take your pick.
Again, I want to emphasize that believing that Herrigel misunderstood Awa and so presented all of kyujutsu as Zen even though it was not, which was Yamada's main point, has nothing to do with Awa and is not a statement denigrating Awa or his teachings. It is simply the assertion that Herrigel got it wrong.
Personally, I believe that Awa simply emphasized certain aspects of kyujutsu that had always been there, bringing them to the foreground and explicitly making them the foundation of his teaching. Again, this is neither here nor there. Different teachers emphasize different things, and they often argue about it. But they all do it within the context of the art of shooting a bow, on the fundamentals of which there is broad agreement. The problem with Herrigel is that he gives his readers no context for understanding Awa’s apparently nonsensical statements (“do not aim at the target”, “the arrows do not carry because they are not spiritual enough”, “just wait at the moment of highest tension” etc.). These things can easily be understood for what they really mean by an experienced kyudo person. They are, in a sense, the psychological foundation of technique and can only be understood through technique. But people who do not know kyudo will simply have no idea what they really mean within the context of kyudo, which is the only place they have any value or meaning.
Like Yagyu Munenori in the Heiho Kadensho, Awa simply used the vocabulary of Zen to elucidate certain things that are inherent in kyujutsu. That is, he used Zen as a metaphor to explain kyujutsu. But I do not believe for a moment that by doing so he intended to create the kind of “Zen” archery that Herrigel appears to be talking about, where this is turned on its head and kyujutsu is used as a metaphor for Zen. This is where most “Zen archery” devotees make their mistake. Once concepts specific to kyudo are decontextualized, generalized, extrapolated to other things, or used as disembodied metaphors, they can be taken to mean practically anything. This is why I put no stock in opinions about kyudo held by people who are not themselves practitioners of kyudo. For the same reason, I never discuss aikido. I do not know anything about it, and so doing so would be presumptuous.
Finally, I find myself very perplexed and disturbed, to put it as mildly as I can, by Stevens' completely unjustified attempt to paint Professor Yamada, whom I know personally and with whom I have had many pleasant conversations (in Japanese), as a racist simply because his research leads him to believe that Herrigel did not understand the Japanese language. This is a grave charge. Yamada did not say anything as preposterous as claiming that Herrigel was congenitally incapable of understanding Japanese because of his race, and no matter how I look at it, I simply cannot understand how Stevens could come to such an astonishing conclusion. He seems to be projecting some sort of deeply felt resentment, but about what I cannot say. Indeed, I find the vituperativeness of his comments very disturbing, coming as they do from a prominent aikidoka and the author of books such as “The Way of Peace” and the “Art of Harmony”.
In any case, it is a fact that Herrigel required the services of Komachiya as interpreter. If Herrigel and Awa understood each other, why was he there? Subsequent research by Yamada has shown that upon his return to Germany Herrigel submitted a statement to the Nuremburg police to the effect that his understanding of Japanese was quite low and that he could not read or write it. So Stevens’ insistence that Herrigel must have been able to understand Japanese must be discounted. He has no way of knowing this. Herrigel may have understood a few words of Japanese and Awa may have picked up a few German phrases (as Komachiya’s memoirs make clear), but it is a huge leap to assume that therefore Herrigel and Awa could clearly understand one other. I am sure that Stevens must know from his own experience that the real spirit of budo cannot be transmitted solely through pidgin and pantomime.