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Naginata

By Seth Brodbeck ⋅ March 17, 2008 ⋅  Email this story ⋅  Print this story ⋅ Post a comment

Last Friday, a pair of naginata practitioners came to JCMU and showed us some basic techniques. The stance that a naginata practitioner uses is almost identical to the stance used in Western fencing, only reversed so that you can place your right hand lower on the shaft. Thus, naginata users stand with their left shoulder facing their opponent and lead with the left foot while the right foot is turned 90 degrees to the right. The footwork for moving forward and backward is identical to fencing as well. That’s more or less where the similarities end.

For starters, the footwork with a naginata also includes steps to the left or right, unlike Western fencing which only moves back and forth. That’s before you get to the major differences between a foil or epee and a 1.5 meter long wooden shaft with a 1 meter curved “blade” (wood in the sport version, of course, with plastic covering the end) on the end.

The basic naginata attack involves stepping forward with the right foot as you bring the naginata back over your head, then stepping forward with the left foot as you bring it down at your opponents head or leg. The sensei also showed us a basic two swing attack pattern.

Historically, the naginata was used as an anti-cavalry weapon and, during the Edo period especially, by women of the samurai class to defend their homes.

The naginata is a well balanced weapon, and so it is easily used to swing as well as to stab, which gives it an advantage in open spaces where it can be swung to threaten multiple opponents at once. The added reach and leverage provided by the long shaft was also useful when facing larger, stronger opponents.

In Japan, the naginata is a weapon mostly practiced by women, thanks to its heritage as a weapon of female samurai, and both of the sensei who came to demonstrate and teach us were women. It is an international sport, however, and in other countries male practitioners are more common. I believe the last international naginata competition was held in Belgium, with a Japanese woman winning second place.