正射正中 seisha seichū Correct Shooting, Correct Hit

正射正中 is the maxim of Japanese archery: shoot correctly, and the hit follows. It tells the archer to attend to the form, not the target. The idea is far older than the four characters, and Japanese archery books quote it from the Confucian classics. This form says correct twice. The kyūdō federation writes 正射必中, seisha hitchū, correct shooting, certain hit, the common form, and the two mean nearly the same.

A kyūdō maxim of the 1930s, in print from 1936, when the archery teacher 桑村常之助 set the four characters as a page head in his handbook; the idea it compresses, that correct shooting brings the hit, is the Record of Rites' and Mencius's, and the archery federation writes the maxim 正射必中.

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