Work Guide · 2026-05-06 · Reading time ~ 6 min
Myeonginjeon (名人伝) — The Master Archer Who Forgot the Bow
Nakajima Atsushi's 1942 fable retells a Liezi parable about three archers and the highest art: not shooting at all. Read 'Myeonginjeon' in Korean on Pagera.
Pagera Editorial
A man sets out to become the greatest archer in the world. At the end of his journey, he no longer touches a bow. He doesn't even remember what one is for. Nakajima Atsushi compresses an entire Daoist worldview into this single trajectory.
Source — The Yellow Emperor Chapter of Liezi
"Myeonginjeon" (名人伝, "Tale of an Expert") was published in 1942, alongside "Sangwolgi" and "The Disciple," in what amounts to Nakajima's strongest year. The source is a brief parable in the Liezi, "Yellow Emperor" chapter — three archers: the seeker Ji Chang, his teacher Fei Wei, and the true master Gan Ying who lives on Mount Huo. Nakajima takes the bare-bones original and adds inner life, time, and texture.
Three Stages of Training
Ji Chang, from Handan in the state of Zhao, sets out to become the greatest archer alive. He apprentices himself to the renowned Fei Wei, who gives him two preliminary tasks:
- Learn not to blink. Lying beneath his wife's loom for two years until even the shuttle whipping past his eyelashes provokes no flinch.
- Learn to see the small as large. A louse hung on a hair by the window, observed daily for three years, until it appears as wide as a cartwheel.
When Ji Chang finally takes up the bow, he never misses. And so a strange thought enters his mind: only Fei Wei stands between him and the title of greatest archer alive. Pupil and teacher meet in the wilds and shoot at one another. Both deflect every arrow. The duel cannot end. It is broken only by Fei Wei's quiet line: "There is one above me. Gan Ying, on Mount Huo. Until you meet him you will not really know."
The Old Man Who Doesn't Hold a Bow
Ji Chang climbs Mount Huo. The old man Gan Ying is not holding a bow. When asked to demonstrate his art, he draws an empty bowstring with empty hands — and a kite circling overhead falls from the sky. Ji Chang sees, finally, that all his own skill rested on a tool, on the bow itself.
This is the parable's destination: "Highest action is non-action; highest archery does not shoot" (至為無爲, 至射無射). The Daoist line at the heart of the original Liezi entry, dramatized.
Nine Years, and the Forgetting
Ji Chang stays on Mount Huo for nine years before returning to Handan. He never picks up a bow again. More than that: he seems to have forgotten what a bow is. Visiting a friend's house one day, he sees one hanging on the wall and asks, in genuine puzzlement, "What is this thing — what is it for?"
The friends are stunned. The greatest archer alive has at last forgotten the bow. Nakajima closes with one further line: from that day, the painters and musicians and craftsmen of Handan stopped feeling ashamed of their tools. Forgetting, the old Daoist message says, is the master's destination — and it spreads through Handan as an unspoken catharsis.
Why Read It Now
If "Sangwolgi" is the text of self-analysis, "Myeonginjeon" is its mirror — the text of self-emptying. That Nakajima wrote both in 1942, almost the same season, is striking. The tiger Li Zheng (a man who could not stop seeing himself) and the archer Ji Chang (a man who finally erased himself) form a pair of opposites in the same authorial breath.
For Korean readers there is a double interest: a 20th-century Japanese writer rewriting a shared East Asian classical text, and a parable about the gap between "very good" and "highest" that one old man, with empty hands, can collapse in a single gesture.
Read "Myeonginjeon" in Korean on Pagera.