Yari

Origins

Spears were used in Japan from early times, but in the Heian and Kamakura periods the elite mounted warrior fought mainly with the bow, and the curved Naginata was the favorite pole weapon on foot. An older spear, the hoko, had a socketed head that fitted over the shaft. The straight spear called yari, whose head was fixed by a tang, appears in records of the fourteenth century, in the wars between the Northern and Southern Courts. It spread widely in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, when armies grew larger and relied more on foot soldiers. A spear was cheap to make, easy to learn, and useful in close order, and by the Sengoku period, the age of the warring states, it had displaced the naginata as the main pole weapon of the samurai and the ashigaru alike.

Design & Construction

The yari head was forged like a sword blade, from carefully worked steel, and often signed by its maker. Its tang was very long, sometimes longer than the blade itself, and was set deep into the shaft, which was bound with metal collars to stop splitting. The commonest form was the su yari, a straight, double-edged head of triangular or diamond section. Others included the jūmonji yari with a cross-shaped head, the kama yari with a sickle-like side blade, and the leaf-shaped sasaho yari. Some very large heads, the ōmi yari, were more than 60 cm long. Shafts were of oak or of laminated bamboo, lacquered for protection and ended in a metal butt cap. When not in use the head was kept in a wooden or lacquered sheath. A samurai's personal spear was usually two to three meters long. The spears issued to ashigaru, called nagae yari, were much longer, commonly between about 4.5 and 6.5 meters. Oda Nobunaga is said to have armed his men with spears of three and a half ken, about 6.4 meters, but figures for particular armies come mostly from later writings.

Combat Use

Mounted samurai used the yari to thrust from the saddle, and on foot it gave a warrior reach over a man with a sword. Many samurai took pride in being the first to strike with the spear, and the "Seven Spears of Shizugatake", young retainers of Toyotomi Hideyoshi who distinguished themselves in 1583, became famous for it. Ashigaru with nagae yari fought in close ranks. They held off cavalry, protected the gunners and archers, and in a clash of spear lines they seem often to have struck downward and beaten at the enemy as well as thrusting. Spearmen made up a large share of every army by 1600, and at the Battle of Sekigahara they fought beside the arquebusiers with the Tanegashima and the samurai with their Katana.

Legacy

In the peace of the Edo period the yari became a symbol of rank. Daimyō processions carried decorated spears at their head, and samurai households kept them as treasures. Three spears were celebrated as the finest in Japan, among them Tonbokiri, carried by the Tokugawa general Honda Tadakatsu, and Nihongō. Martial schools of sōjutsu, spear fighting, flourished, the best known being the Hōzōin-ryū founded by a Buddhist monk of Nara with the cross-bladed spear. The yari remains a central part of the story of Samurai warfare, and a close Asian parallel to the European Pike.