Bamboo and haze wood, glued together. A Miyakonojō bow is built by laminating bamboo and haze with animal glue, and because the materials are unlike each other, they dry and warp at different rates once they have been joined into one piece. A long part of the work therefore comes after the gluing, in bringing the shape back to where it needs to be and holding it there. The workshops let you watch that stage, which is the one nobody expects to be the interesting part and which turns out to be. A strung bow describes a clean curve, but the curve is not carved into the wood; it emerges from the combination of materials behaving exactly as they naturally do against one another. Once you know that, it makes obvious sense that two bows of identical dimensions are never quite the same object in the hand.

Archers choose by feel for that reason and always have. Kagoshima is about an hour away by car through open country. The town has hospitals and shops, and housing is generous and comparatively cheap, which is the ordinary compensation for the distance.

Strength and flexibility do not usually coexist in a single material, and every bowyer in history has had to deal with that fact. Haze is the tree that also yields the wax used in candles, and the same species turns up in two completely unrelated trades in this part of Kyushu. A bow takes months to settle after it is made, during which it is adjusted repeatedly. Most of what a bowyer does, in the end, is wait and then correct. A bow resolves it by refusing to use one material, and this is a good place to watch the resolution being made by hand.