Naginata

The naginata (なぎなた, 薙刀) is one of several varieties of traditionally made Japanese blades in the form of a pole weapon. Naginata were originally used by the samurai class of feudal Japan, as well as by ashigaru (foot soldiers) and sōhei (warrior monks). The naginata is the iconic weapon of the onna-bugeisha-archetype, a type of female warrior belonging to the Japanese nobility.

Naginata for fighting men and warrior monks were ō-naginata. The kind used by women was called ko-naginata. Since the naginata with its pole is heavier and much slower than the Japanese sword, the blade of the ko-naginata was smaller than the male warrior's ō-naginata in order to compensate for the lesser height and upper-body strength of a woman than an armoured male samurai.

A naginata consists of a wooden or metal pole with a curved single-edged blade on the end; it is similar to the Chinese guan dao or the European glaive. Similar to the katana, naginata often have a round handguard (tsuba) between the blade and shaft, when mounted in a koshirae. The 30 cm to 60 cm long naginata blade is forged in the same manner as traditional Japanese swords. The blade has a long tang which is inserted in the .

The blade is removable and is secured by means of a wooden peg called that passes through a hole in both the tang and the shaft. The shaft ranges from 120 cm to 240 cm in length and is oval shaped. The area of the shaft where the tang sits is the . The tachiuchi/tachiuke would be reinforced with metal rings , and/or metal sleeves and wrapped with cord . The end of the shaft has a heavy metal end cap . When not in use the blade would be covered with a .

The naginata have descended from the earlier hoko yari and was possibly influenced by the Chinese Guan Dao. It's difficult to tell when the naginata itself first appeared. Though often claimed as being invented by the sōhei during the Nara period, physical evidence of their existence dates only from the mid-Kamakura period, and earlier literary sources are ambiguous. The earliest clear references to naginata date from 1146 in the late Heian period, with one suggesting that the weapon may have been recent. Earlier 10th through 12th century sources refer to "long swords" that while a common medieval term or orthography for naginata, could also simply be referring to conventional swords; one source describes a naginata being drawn with the verb nuku, commonly associated with swords, rather than hazusu, the verb otherwise used in medieval texts for unsheathing naginata.

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