“Keiryu tenkara”and “Honryu tenkara”: novel paradigms outside Japan
One of the most interesting things that we can pass on from our trip is that, to date, pretty much all of the information that the west has heard about tenkara from Japan would come under the banner of “Keiryu tenkara”. This refers to the suite of tenkara skills that has been developed for fishing the slightly smaller tributary streams of mountain river systems – which are known as “Keiryu”. This is, actually, probably a really good thing – as we would argue that you really need to have a lot of these skills down solidly (and to understand the rationale that underpins those techniques) – before moving on to the diverse modifications. Otherwise, there is no “road map” through all the different tweaks and variations – it just appears to be a mass of random variants with every different option being entirely equivalent in efficacy. As with any modification to a technique, there are trade-offs (both in efficacy AND aesthetic preference!) to be made between different options. For each angler, there will always be one optimal compromise for each different angling challenge between precisely what you lose on the swings and what you gain on the roundabouts…
You can find the full article in our culture and history section
