Registration to our much anticipated 10th Anniversary event has closed, and the countdown has well and truly begun!
The Australian Kyudo Association ('AKA') celebrates its 10th Anniversary in 2024 and is hosting the 2nd National Championships on Friday the 9th of August, and a 2-day Kyudo Seminar across Saturday the 10th to Sunday the 11th of August 2024.
Our 1st ever National Seminar and Taikai* (or championships) was held in Perth, hosted with assistance by the West Australian Kyudo Association back in 2019. The year after, COVID-19 had unfortunately disrupted our plans to host regular National-scaled events. The event for the 10th anniversary of the Australian Kyudo Association (AKA) this year in 2024, 5 years after the last event, would thus mark it as only the 2nd National Seminar and Taikai, hosted with assistance by the Victorian Kyudo Association.
About Kyudo
For those unfamiliar with Kyudo, 弓道 (Kyūdō) is the Japanese martial art of archery, characterised by the distinctive asymmetrical longbow. The goal of Kyudo, per All Nippon Kyūdō Federation (ANKF), is the state of shin-zen-bi (真善美), or "truth-goodness-beauty". Head over to our handy summary here to learn more about it: https://www.kyudoaustralia.org/about-kyudo
About AKA - Our story
Kyudo in Australia has come a long way since its introduction to our shores. While the practice of Kyudo has existed since the 1970's to early 2000's in Australia notably in Melbourne with the presence of Andre Sollier and others, it wasn’t until November 2009 where the ‘Kyudo in Australia’ Facebook page was created by passionate individuals.
Through this community, meet-ups and training were organised until the national association 'Australia Kyudo Association' was formed in August 2013, followed by various State associations. It wasn't until June and July 2014 that the inaugural Annual General Meeting took place and the National Council was formed, comprised of an executive committee and representatives at one per State. The association was later renamed and incorporated as 'Australian Kyudo Association Inc.' ('AKA') in January 2015, to which Kyudo in Australia has operated under ever since.
Based on the formation of the AKA National Council in 2014, AKA is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year in 2024. AKA was also recently accepted as a member country of the International Kyudo Federation ('IKYF') in December 2023. These are big achievements and significant milestones, and the Anniversary Event is the perfect opportunity to show Australia’s growth since our inception.
For more on AKA's history, head over to have a scroll of our timeline at About Us.
Championship
The championships to be held on the Friday, 9th August would include Individuals and Teams division, for both Australian and International categories.
For the Individuals competition, each archer will have 4 arrows in the Preliminaries for a chance to be placed as part of the Top 20 in the Finals, consisting of a further 4 arrows.
For the Teams competition, each team consists of 3 archers with 4 arrows per archer per round, for a total of 2 rounds in the Preliminaries. Each round per team will have 7 minutes and 30 seconds to shoot all 12 arrows by the 3 archers. The top 8 teams would go off head to head against other teams, with 4 arrows per archer, in a tournament style for the Finals. The winning Australian and International team would then face off against the sensei team for an exhibition match to cap it off!
Seminar
We are so excited and incredibly honoured to have multiple sensei taking the time to travel down to Melbourne, Australia for our big anniversary year and participate in Kyudo cultural exchange. We are very thankful to the following sensei who have generously given their time:
Takeuchi, Masakuni (竹内 正邦) | Kyoshi 7 Dan | Sendai, Japan
Yoneda, Tetsurou (米田 哲郎) | Kyoshi 6 Dan | Sendai, Japan
Stewart, Gregory | Renshi 6 Dan | Obihiro, Japan
Liu, Bin-Cheng (劉秉政) | Renshi 6 Dan | Taipei, Taiwan
Weng, Meng-Ching (翁孟晴) | Renshi 5 Dan | Taipei, Taiwan
This will be the largest group of shogo-ranked sensei Melbourne has hosted to date. In particular, we welcome Takeuchi-sensei back out to Australia since his last visit in 2019, and Gregory-sensei once again for his continuous support.
Takeuchi-sensei first travelled to Australia in September 2013 as the lead sensei for the first AKA Kyudo seminar in Sydney, and has continuously made trips out to Sydney since - this will be his first time in Melbourne. Gregory-sensei's first seminar in Australia was held in Melbourne in 2014, and have similarly held seminars in both Melbourne and Sydney since on a regular basis. The AKA greatly appreciates their contributions to Kyudo in Australia. It's incredibly meaningful for us to be able to have both of them come out to Australia once again, ten years and one IKYF membership later, to celebrate this milestone anniversary with us.
Attendance
Together with a significant group of instructors, we have attained one of the highest attendance figures recorded for a Kyudo event in Australia with a total of 75 people attending - 61 from Australia and 14 international friends will be joining us:
Australia
ACT - 3
NSW - 9
QLD - 1
VIC - 39
WA - 9
Overseas
New Zealand - 11
Malaysia - 2
Japan - 1
The AKA look forward to hosting a great knowledge exchange during this seminar and a great time at the taikai!

Victorian Kyudo Association Seminar August 2023. Image © 2023 Eric Chau. All rights reserved and unless otherwise noted, may not be copied, downloaded, blogged, distributed, or reproduced in any form without the express written consent of owner.
*Taikai = 'grand meeting' (ie. competition)
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