Blonde Girl With The Longbow

In Japan, long bamboo and wood laminated bows (yumi) became important to mounted samurai warfare (Yabusame). Modern Japanese archery (called kyūdō or kyujutsu) still uses this style of bow. Modern yumi can be made of fibreglass or carbon-fibre, as well as of the traditional wood/bamboo laminate. Yumi are recurved bows, and have the unusual characteristic of being off-center. That is, the lower arm of the bow is shorter than the upper arm; this is useful when the bow is used from horseback, so that the archer can turn without the bottom of the bow hitting the horse. But this grip position was not set on this reason. It emerged before bowing on a horse got to be widespread.
In the Middle Ages the Welsh and the English were famous for their very powerful English longbows, used to great effect in the civil wars of the period and against the French in the Hundred Years' War (with notable success at the battles of Crécy (1346), Poitiers (1356) and Agincourt (1415).
The first book in English about longbow archery was Toxophilus by Roger Ascham, first published in London in 1545 and dedicated to King Henry VIII.
Although firearms supplanted bows in warfare, wooden or fibreglass laminated longbows continue to be used by traditional archers and some tribal societies, for recreation and hunting. A longbow has practical advantages compared to a modern recurve or compound bow; it is usually lighter, quicker to prepare for shooting, and shoots more quietly. However, other things being equal, the modern bow will shoot a faster arrow more accurately than the longbow.