Yari

[kronckew]

picked up this yari head via ebay last night a lot cheaper than i expected. it is shown in the picture on a three foot dowel of the wrong size. after earlier conversations with the vendor, i learned it was not tanged like most but socketed, which was as far as i know a bit unusual (?). anyway, i will order a 2 meter pole for it when i measure the socket & black lacquer it, etc.

i seem to remember that naganata and yari hafts had a flat area near the grip to aid in edge alignment, i would assume vertically for the nags and horizontal for yaris?

thanks in advance for any info, these are somewhat outside my past area of knowledge.

[estcrh]

Originally Posted by kronckew

picked up this yari head via ebay last night a lot cheaper than i expected. it is shown in the picture on a three foot dowel of the wrong size. after earlier conversations with the vendor, i learned it was not tanged like most but socketed, which was as far as i know a bit unusual (?).

A yari with a socket instead of a tang is called "fukuro yari", they are not that unusual, if you do a search using that term you will find other examples.

[kronckew]

thanks. i'm a bit relieved. however real or repro, i'll love it and pet it and hug it and squeeze it and name it george*... i am a happy monster.

especially if it has a temper line


i got the bunny rabbit, not the duck

[David R]

Apparently the Satsuma Clan had a liking for Fukuro Yari because they were easier to re-shaft than the tanged type.
According to one of the curators at Leeds Royal Armoury a batch were also made for the Shogunate Army during the Bakamatsu period, ie the period when Japan's isolation was ending.

[kronckew]

i'll look for a broad arrow i will give it a bath in orange juice in honour of the clan.

[Timo Nieminen]

Originally Posted by kronckew

i seem to remember that naganata and yari hafts had a flat area near the grip to aid in edge alignment, i would assume vertically for the nags and horizontal for yaris

Naginata hafts were oval-section, not round. That gives the edge alignment (also stronger with less weight in the direction needed when a cut hits something more solid than expected).

I don't know how common flat areas were/are on yari hafts. I've seen hafts without such, even for yari you might care about blade alignment with. (Equilateral triangular section and square section yari might as well have round hafts; you won't care about blade alignment. Also often cavalry lances, so the "usual" flat area near the butt won't be near the hand.)

[estcrh]

Originally Posted by Timo Nieminen

Naginata hafts were oval-section, not round. That gives the edge alignment (also stronger with less weight in the direction needed when a cut hits something more solid than expected).

I don't know how common flat areas were/are on yari hafts. I've seen hafts without such, even for yari you might care about blade alignment with. (Equilateral triangular section and square section yari might as well have round hafts; you won't care about blade alignment. Also often cavalry lances, so the "usual" flat area near the butt won't be near the hand.)

The kikuchi yari I have seen were mounted on a round half, if any yari were to have been mounted on an oval haft you would expect it to have been kikuchi yari since that have a flat knife like blade.

[Timo Nieminen]

Originally Posted by estcrh

The kikuchi yari I have seen were mounted on a round half, if any yari were to have been mounted on an oval haft you would expect it to have been kikuchi yari since that have a flat knife like blade.

I don't know of any yari with oval hafts. Round, round with small ridge (Knutsen, "Japanese Polearms", calls this "pear shaped"), and polygonal.

The "flat area", I guess, refers to having one side (matching the flat of a flattened sankaku yari) of the round haft planed flat near the butt. Hanwei makes a point of this in their ad copy for their reproduction yari, and their yari indeed are so. However, their haft is also uniform in thickness, not tapered like typical yari hafts, so their hafts are not so representative of historical examples.

Is it correct to say that kikuchi yari are yari because they're mounted like yari, rather than being mounted like naginata (in which case, they'd be short straight naginata)?

[kronckew]

excellent info.

i'll try to find an appropriate tapered haft. like a long bo.

if i find a locally made one, it will of course be an english long bo.

[estcrh]

Originally Posted by Timo Nieminen

Is it correct to say that kikuchi yari are yari because they're mounted like yari, rather than being mounted like naginata (in which case, they'd be short straight naginata)?

Timo, here is what Ian Bottomley has to say about this very subject.

Its strange but yari as such were not really popular until the late Muromachi / Momoyama. Kikuchi yari, probably named after te Kikuchi family who were big noises in Higo province, were however used before other types and you come across references during the Kamakura and probably the late Heian when the most popular staff weapon was the naginata. I've pondered on this and suggest that kikuchi yari are really a type of naginata that you can thrust with - in other words they are essentially naginata in general form but without the curve. Ian Bottomley

[Timo Nieminen]

To simplify, we could say that until mid-Heian, spears (hoko) were the most popular polearms, mid-Heian to early Muromachi naginata, and mid-Muromachi onwards, spears (yari). Possibly accompanied by changes in battle from close-order, to open-order, and back to close-order. It's a bit complicated, because
(a) "hoko" is also used to mean "polearm" in general, as well as a hoko spear,
(b) "naginata" is literally "long sword", 長刀, and might refer to long swords in literature. References to drawing naginata (rather than "removing") might mean sword, not polearm.

At the time when naginata appear to have been the most popular polearm, polearms weren't that popular (the Mongol Invasion Scrolls have a couple of naginata, but the dominant weapons are bow and tachi (as a sidearm). So perhaps it isn't a case of naginata replacing spears for a while, but rather that spears just stopped appearing on the battlefield, and the few naginata had no competition.

Also, Kamakura naginata appear to have been much straighter than late naginata, and should not be hard to thrust with effectively. Looks like the more curved naginata appear when the yari does - instead of a single cut/thrust polearm, we have more a division into specialised cutting and thrusting polearms.

Don't know what any of that means for kikuchi yari. I haven't seen a kukichi yari blade of more than tanto length, so they're not much like early naginata.

Here's an Edo period socketed kikuchi yari: http://www.e-sword.jp/sale/2013/1310_4035syousai.htm ; compare with fukuro naginata and you see a clear difference: this yari has a round socket, and fukuro naginata have oval sockets.

(Karl Friday says the difference between hoko and yari (other than sockets vs tangs) is that hoko have grippy hafts (spiral wrapped, not smooth) while yari have smooth hafts. You pool-cue thrust with a yari, not with a hoko. See "Samurai, Warfare and the State", and http://www.e-budo.com/forum/showthre...ting-technique for his comments.)