Bow to Bow was filmed at Kibitsu Shrine in Okayama, which houses a school for archery. The opening scene shows a young man methodically preparing, aiming and finally firing an arrow at a target. This is followed by a scene where two men, one of whom is the artist himself, pluck archery bows, practising different techniques and positions to produce rhythmic sounds together. Finally, we see a man and a woman collaborate by dragging the archery bow across the strings of a contrabass instrument together, leading to them performing a duet on two contrabasses; one using the archery bow and another the conventional music bow. They perform an original composition by Nomura Makoto, and as this suite of performed acts comes together in this moment of rational composition, we are allowed space to ruminate on the homonymic nature of the word ‘bow’ (also a homonym in Japanese: Yumi). In this linguistic chance observation, Shimabuku poetically draws our attention to wider issues suggested by the bow’s innate potential for aggressive injury or aesthetic solace.