When Eugen Herrigel takes a post at a Japanese university, his philosophy lectures are only a side interest. He is there to learn Zen from a Master, and his discipline is archery. After two years, Herrigel can barely draw his bow; after four, he can shoot arrows, but not aim them. After six years, he can at last claim Zen mastery. But what, precisely, has he learned?Herrigel charts his progress through the weeks, months and years of practice; through the sweat and tears of effort and frustration; through the succession of strange analogies with which his teacher explains the nature of his goal and how to achieve it - without effort. Published eighty years ago, this first European attempt to explain the Zen path to lay-people was an extraordinary bestseller in its time - and remains iconic to this day.



Eugen Herrigel (1884-1955) was a German philosopher and university lecturer. He taught at Tohoku Imperial University in Sendai, Japan, from 1924 to 1929, and swathes of European readers were subsequently introduced to concepts of Zen discipline thanks to his writings about this experience. Jefferson Chase is the world's leading translator of German historical non-fiction with roughly sixty books to his name. They include Volker Ullrich's seminal two-volume biography of Hitler, which was named one of Time Magazine's 10 best non-fiction books of 2020 and won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Biography. It was also named a book of the year by the New York Times, the Times Literary Supplement and The Times. Among the other authors he has translated are Götz Aly, Wolfgang Schivelbusch and Thomas Mann. Chase lives in Berlin.



'Zen in the Art of Archery gives an impeccable narrative of spiritual insight. ... It began a journey of profound change for me.'



'A wonderful little book'



This simple but moving book helped me understand more deeply and surely the practice of Zen than any other.



'The bond this book implies between Zen and the arts is serious, and it has prevailed in the popular Western imagination for 50 years or more.'