Quote:
Originally Posted by Katsunami
In feudal Japan, it was forbidden by law to be left-handed, at least when you were samurai. Wikipedia says that many people are still forced to convert to right-handedness:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bias_ag...-handed_people
Strangely enough, being left-handed would have been an advantage for writing Japanese as far as I can see, because you start at the right side of the page. |
It could have to do with the art of writing. I took a class when I lived there--and I forget the name of it, but the characters require a special brush and you end the characters with a certain fade that shows the brush strokes. This effect is much harder to achieve using your left hand because you are crossing your body--so you have a tendency to cut the strokes short or not "feather" them correctly. Each of the symbols taught have certain pressure points--fat lines, skinny lines and then these feather up strokes to end (in many). I did just fine with my left hand, but the teacher used to try and get me to use my right so that I could finish with a flourish (it's just not as impressive when doing it across your body.)
Sadly I didn't get to take samuri training
so I can't speak to that.
When I tried with the...archery club (sorry, can't remember what kind of bow) I never got past the "hold" part. The entire first part of the class was pulling the bow and holding it in position to strengthen the arms. We would pull and hold for what seemed like hours. This was all done at first without an arrow. Then when we had an arrow it wasn't tipped. Not that my arrows would have gone anywhere. Just getting that thing pulled back was hard enough and after standing there holding it for an eon, I wasn't likely to care about AIMING!!!!