Pole arms that had no European counterparts were also gekken and yagara-mogara. Gekken had a raven-beak-shaped point and another crescent-shaped point (turned outward). Gekken allowed to grab the warrior by the neck and throw him off the horse. Or punching in the neck, which was also not good enough, even in spite of the armor. The jagara-mogara (or its kind of tsukubo) was a real T-shaped rake, the upper part of which, bound with metal, was completely studded with sharp thorns. There was certainly no such weapon in the arsenal of European knights, but the samurai did not hesitate to use it. True, again, not so much in the war as in the peaceful Edo era, in order to take the criminal alive.
Such Japanese weapons as combat sickles, which were a blade in the shape of a crow's beak, which were fixed on the shaft at a right angle, deserve special mention. Such a sickle (coma) on a long handle, in skilled hands, turned into an extremely dangerous weapon. Naigama (or roku-shakugama - "sickle six shaku long") had a shaft up to 1.8 m long, and o-gama ("big sickle") - up to 1.2 m. These types of weapons are often found on drawings of the XII - XIII centuries, and accordingly they are mentioned in the chronicles. They used this weapon in order to cut the legs of horses, and in the navy as crimps and even to chop off seaweed, which made it difficult for boats to move in shallow water. However, such a weapon could also be used as a European pick. Toei-noborigama had a length of 1.7 m and had an L-shaped pommel in the form of a narrow ax with a lower edge sharpened like a sickle. In any case, the same peasants, for example, could very easily arm themselves with such sickles, tying them to long bamboo shafts.
However, a sickle with a handle with a chain attached to it - nage-gama or kusari-gama - was also included in the arsenal of the samurai and was used by them to defend castles and fortresses: it was usually thrown from the wall at the besiegers, and then dragged back with a chain. In the hands of a skilled warrior, this weapon could also be very effective. Kusari-gama was used by both samurai and legendary ninjas. And you could unhook the chain with a striker from the sickle and … use it as a flail!
The shafts of short Japanese spears and, like all other polearms, were made of oak, for long ones there was light bamboo. They were painted black or red to match the color of the armor. For the arrowheads - which, by the way, was not typical for Europeans at all, varnished scabbards were invented (unless the absolutely incredible Jagara-Mogara did not have them for quite objective reasons!), Often inlaid with mother-of-pearl and, in addition, a cloth cover that protected them from rain … The shaft was also inlaid with mother-of-pearl in the area of the tip. Including even the sode-garami. And, by the way, it should be noted here that the spears of the Japanese ashigaru were the longest in the world (up to 6, 5 m!), That is, longer than in Europe, and significantly!
Throwing darts were also known in Japan, and again, many of them were considered female weapons! For example, an uchi-ne dart is about 45 cm long and has an arrow-like plumage. He was held on special holders above the door. In the event of an attack, it was enough to reach out to grab it and throw it!
But such a weapon as the naginata, firstly, was also considered a sword (although in Europe it would have been unambiguously called a halberd!), And secondly, also a female weapon! The samurai's daughters, when she got married, were given a whole set of such "halberds" as a dowry, and the girls took the course of fencing on them long before marriage. However, women also used naginata after getting married, although not all, of course. History has brought to us the name of Tomoe Gozen - one of the few female samurai who fought with men on an equal footing. So, in the battle of Awaji in 1184, in which she participated together with her husband Minamoto Yoshinaki, seeing that the battle was lost, he ordered her to flee and leave. However, she risked disobeying him and rushed at the enemy. She wounded one of the noble samurai with a naginata, pulled him off the horse, and then completely pressed him to her saddle and cut off his head. Only after that did she obey the order of her husband and leave the battlefield, where Yoshinaka himself died!
And here is what Heike Monogatari reports about Tomoe Gozen: “… Tomoe was extremely beautiful, with white skin, long hair, charming features. She was also a skilled archer, and in sword fighting alone was worth hundreds of soldiers. She was ready to fight a demon or a god, on horseback or on foot. She had an excellent knack for taming unbroken horses; unscathed down the steep mountain slopes. Whatever the battle, Yoshinaka always sent her forward as his first captain, equipped with excellent armor, a huge sword and a powerful bow. And she always performed more valiant deeds than anyone else in his army …"
Of course, there were simply huge naginata for men, and its heavier variety - bisento with a much more massive blade, which could completely cut off the head of not only a man, but also a horse. Thanks to their wide sweep, they cut the legs of horses with their help, and then finished off the riders after they fell to the ground. Until the end of the Heian period (794 - 1185), it was the weapon of the infantry and warrior monks (sohei). The noble warriors (bushi) appreciated it during the Gempei war (1181 - 1185), which became a kind of transitional era between the Heian and Kamakura eras (1185 - 1333). At this time, it is used especially widely, which in a certain way even affected samurai armor. So, the suneate leggings appeared because it was necessary to somehow protect the warrior's legs from this terrible weapon. It also manifested itself during the Mongol invasions (1274 and 1281), and in everyday life, the naginata played an important role as a weapon with which a woman could protect her home.
An equally important weapon of women was the kaiken dagger, with which they never parted, but hid it in the wide sleeve of their kimono. It should also have been used to protect the home, but mainly to commit a purely female seppuku in critical circumstances, which was performed by hitting the carotid artery with a kaiken!
However, women from samurai families also learned to wield a sword, and the cases when they used it in battle are known from history. However, they are also known from historical novels, although it is very difficult to say how much everything described corresponds to the historical truth. Well, not only women used daggers. They were also in the arsenal of the samurai, and not only the wakizashi short blade paired with a long sword, which was considered by no means a dagger, but a sword, but also such original "gizmos" as tanto and aiguchi..
The tanto had a normal size tsubu and looked like a miniature version of a short sword. Aiguchi (literally - "open mouth") usually did not have a handle wrapped, so the skin of a stingray or shark that covered it was very clearly visible. Without tsuba, he did not have sepp washers. It is believed that the tanto dagger was worn by those samurai who were in the service, and the aiguchi - by those who retired (seemingly as proof that they are capable of something, because the dagger, even without a guard - still a dagger).
Kabutovari (the first hieroglyph for "helmet" and the second hieroglyph for "breaking") is a forged metal curved club with a pointed end and a sharp toshin edge, as well as hokoshi-hi and kuichigai-hi with a small kagi hook at the base of the tsuki - handle. The latter protects the hand from the blows of the opponent, and in addition, when attacking the opponent, he could cut through the soft tissues of the body, even through a kimono. The invention of this weapon is attributed to the legendary gunsmith Masamune.
The samurai also used an original stylet - hativara, which, unlike its European counterpart, had a curved blade not straight, and even had a sharpening on the inner, concave side. With such thin blades they pierced each other's shells in hand-to-hand combat, but they also had double-edged blades with a fuller attached to the traditional Japanese handle - yoroidoshi-tanto, and its blade was very similar to the tip of the Japanese spear su-yari. Another "sharpened in reverse" example of Japanese bladed weapons was the dagger kubikiri-zukuri. His blade had a large curvature and also had a sharpening on the concave side, and the point was completely absent. The word "kubikiri" is translated as "head cutter", so its purpose is clear. These daggers were worn by the servants of the noble samurai, whose duty was to use it to cut off the heads of dead enemies, since they were "battle trophies." Of course, it was used in this way in ancient times, but by the 17th century, kubikiri-zukuri daggers were worn mainly as a badge of distinction.
Another purely Japanese weapon for self-defense was the jutte dagger. In fact, it was … a rod with a handle, cylindrical or multifaceted, and without a pronounced point, but on the side it had a massive hook. These weapons, usually in pairs, were used by the Japanese police during the Edo period to disarm an enemy armed with a sword. With a blade and a hook, his sword was "caught", and then pulled out or broken with a blow on the blade. A lanyard with a colored brush was usually attached to the ring on its handle, by the color of which the rank of the policeman was determined. There were entire schools that developed within their walls the art of fighting in jutte and, first of all, methods of countering a fighter with a samurai sword with this dagger.
A samurai weapon could even be a tessen fan, which could be used not only to give signals, but also to reflect an enemy arrow or simply as a short club, as well as a combat chain - a kusari with a kettlebell at the end, an it ax and a masakari ax.
The latter types of weapons could have a handle almost the size of a person, so it was rather difficult to use them, like the "bearded" ax of the Anglo-Saxon Huscarls of 1066. But on the other hand, their blow would cut through, most likely, any Japanese armor. Naturally, these weapons were used to break through doors or gates in the enemy's fortifications. Well, they were also used by mountain hermits-warriors Yamabushi, who lived in the forests and cut their way through the thickets.
But, perhaps, the most amazing weapon of the samurai was a wooden kanabo club, entirely wooden or iron thorns or nails, or without thorns, but with a faceted surface, reminiscent in shape of a modern baseball bat and again, almost in human height!
A blow with such a club left the enemy very few chances and even a sword would not have helped him. It is interesting that, judging by the old Japanese engravings, even though they are far and not always possible to trust as a source, not only infantrymen, but even horsemen fought with such clubs! The intermediate link between kanabo and tetsubo are such types of weapons as arareboi and neibo - an even larger (more than two meters) club, cubic or round in section 10-20 cm thick in diameter, tapering towards the handle. The legendary bushi weapon of the greatest strength, since not everyone can do swinging movements with such a heavy object. The technique of working with the palate has survived to this day only in the Kikishin-ryu schools.
But the guards of the imperial palace had iron clubs of kirikobu, which most of all looked like a crowbar, so the saying "there is no reception against a crowbar" was obviously known to the Japanese in ancient times. The war hammer in Japan looked most like a pot-bellied barrel mounted on a long handle. Usually this "barrel" was made of wood and was only occasionally bound with metal. Unlike kanabo and kirikobu, it was a weapon of commoners, but how this division developed is not known.
Although a mace similar to European and Middle Eastern models was known in Japan, it was not very popular and was never considered a symbol of military leadership, as in Europe! It should be noted that every samurai, in addition to everything else, had to be able to fight with a long wooden staff - bo, the possession of which was equated to the ability to wield a spear and halberd!
As for the match guns, the Japanese arquebuses were very different from the European ones. To begin with, on the contrary, they had a wick drive, the so-called zhagra. And the butt … was not attached to the chest at all when shooting! His hand was pressed to his cheek, and the recoil was absorbed by the heavy trunk. In fact, it was … a very long-barreled pistol - that's how it is!
Well, did the Japanese know about short-barreled pistols? Indeed, in Western Europe, knightly cavalry already in the same 16th century was replaced by the cavalry of armored pistols for whom pistols turned out to be the ideal weapon. Yes, they did, and they called the pistoru a spoiled European word. However, they did not receive wide distribution among the Japanese. After all, they also had match locks. But if such a lock was convenient enough for an infantryman, then it was not suitable for a rider, since he had to hold such a pistol with one hand, and what is most unpleasant - constantly monitor the state of the smoldering wick in it. In addition, the effectiveness of such cavalry has always been directly proportional to the number of pistols each rider has. In Europe, pistol locks were wheel locks, and pistoliers could have several of them at once: two in holsters at the saddle, one or two more behind the belt and two more behind the tops of the boots. And they were all ready to fire at once! The Japanese wick pistol in this sense did not differ from the infantry arquebus. Therefore, the rider could not have more than one such pistol, and if so, then there was no sense in it as a weapon. At that time, the Japanese did not manage to master the mass production of a complex wheel lock, although they made some of its samples. Hence all their problems with this type of weapon.
It is interesting that in the West, although rarely, there were still combinations of a noble knight's sword with a pistol, but in medieval Japan they were never combined together, although combined weapons were known there, for example, a pistol-wakizashi, a pistol-smoking pipe. But it was a weapon of people of ignoble rank. A real samurai could not use it without tarnishing his honor!
The Japanese also knew about the invention in Europe in the second half of the 17th century of a bayonet bayonet, which was inserted with a handle into the barrel hole. There were two types of them: a sword-like juken and a spear-like juso. But they also did not receive distribution because the improvement of firearms undermined the foundations of the power of the samurai class and was very painfully perceived by the government and public opinion of Japan during the shogunate era.
* The word "naginata" in Japanese is not inclined, but why not follow the norms of the Russian language in this case ?!
The author expresses his gratitude to the company "Antiques of Japan" for the information provided.
