Description
The nagamaki was a long sword with 2–4 feet blade and a shaft with about equal length The blade was single-edged. It was also beveled along the back edge to reduce its weight. It resembles a traditional naginata, but the main difference was that the handle (tsuka) of the nagamaki was not a simple wooden shaft; it was made more like a katana hilt. Even the name "nagamaki" ("long wrapping") is given by the tradition of handle wrapping. The nagamaki handle was wrapped with leather or silk cords in criss-crossed manner, very similar to the wrapping that is made on katana. The nagamaki is considered to be evolved from the extremely long nodachi or ōdachi swords that are described in fourteenth century literature and pictorial sources.
The length of blade varies on a nagamaki. However, the nagasa most commonly fits the profile of a tachi or katana blade, which would be a blade of more than 2 shaku (2 Shaku = 60.6 cm, roughly 2 feet) in length. While nagamaki means "long wrap" they have been found with no ito (wrapping cord) at all, which is very much like a long tachi handle. The tsukamaki (hilt wrap) is of even more importance when applied to the tsuka of a nagamaki. The cord helps to improve grip on the tsuka and also lends structural integrity to the wooden handle. Nagamaki found without hilt wrap usually had at least metal collars around the hilt where the tang is.
There are no solid rules governing the aspects of the make of the nagamaki. Unlike wakizashi, tantō, and katana, which have had history of strict measurements regarding the nagasa, and even the tsuka in some cases; the nagamaki varied in nagasa, nakago (tang) length, kissaki style, etc. Bare nagamaki blades are katana length with typical katana-size tang (7–10 inches). Nagamaki presumably could have koshirae in a tachi or katana style as well as a nagamaki style, however there are examples of nagamaki with rather long nakago (tang), which could be fitted with a longer staff for a haft and effectively function as a naginata. Araki-ryū nagamaki is a heavy naginata over eight pounds of weight and eight feet long.
All traditional Japanese swords are fitted very snugly to their tsukas and held in place with a mekugi (bamboo peg) which is fit through a mekugi-ana (hole in the tang and hilt). This is actually quite a strong mount when done correctly, and allowed for easy dismount of the bare blade for maintenance or inspection. Katana most commonly had one single mekugi, and nagamaki commonly have been found with two or more to account for the added leverage of a longer handle.
Read more about this topic: Nagamaki
Famous quotes containing the word description:
“The Sage of Toronto ... spent several decades marveling at the numerous freedoms created by a “global village” instantly and effortlessly accessible to all. Villages, unlike towns, have always been ruled by conformism, isolation, petty surveillance, boredom and repetitive malicious gossip about the same families. Which is a precise enough description of the global spectacle’s present vulgarity.”
—Guy Debord (b. 1931)
“Everything to which we concede existence is a posit from the standpoint of a description of the theory-building process, and simultaneously real from the standpoint of the theory that is being built. Nor let us look down on the standpoint of the theory as make-believe; for we can never do better than occupy the standpoint of some theory or other, the best we can muster at the time.”
—Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)
“The type of fig leaf which each culture employs to cover its social taboos offers a twofold description of its morality. It reveals that certain unacknowledged behavior exists and it suggests the form that such behavior takes.”
—Freda Adler (b. 1934)