Wielding a weapon of yore at a community dojo

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Wielding a weapon of yore at a community dojo

The traditional naginata is a long wooden pole with a curved blade at the end. Though the naginata used in the dojo were entirely bamboo, they nonetheless made for striking displays of power and agility. | COURTESY OF MONIQUE BAE

By Monique Bae
Contributing writer

Oct 27, 2025

I first learned about the naginata — a long wooden pole with a curved blade at the end — from “The Tale of the Heike.”

In an undergraduate course at Binghamton University in New York, I found myself engrossed in an epic account of the battle between the Taira and Minamoto clans during the Genpei War (1180-5). Among those thrown into the chaos were women like the legendary Tomoe Gozen, supposedly one of the card-carrying wives and daughters of the samurai class who wielded naginata.

I left that course thinking of this “woman’s weapon” as simply a cool piece of Japanese history. I never imagined that, 12 years later, not only would I be living in Japan but that word would appear before me once again.

On a fateful summer day in 2023, I was flipping through my local ward’s newspaper and saw the hiragana characters for “naginata” nestled among recruitment advertisements for more common sports. That was the first time I realized that naginata indeed existed beyond the pages of a historical book. And in my own backyard was a chance to be part of this extraordinary history of Japanese weaponry.

A few months later, I exited Kaminakazato Station, climbed the stairs leading to a small shrine and made my way across the street to Takinogawa Gymnasium. The naginata dojo was in the basement across from the karate dojo. A table was set up with a booklet about the history of naginata as well as pieces of white cloth and markers to write our surnames. After paying the ?5,000 accident insurance fee and pinning the cloth to my shirt, I was ready to embark on a six-week journey with the Kita City Naginata Federation to learn how to use a naginata.

Thankfully, we were far removed from the life-and-death situations I had read about in “The Tale of the Heike,” and a metal blade was not going to be used. The bamboo blades were no less impressive, especially as I watched the federation members, or naginataka, spar from our corner of the gym.

Our instructor was Kato Sensei, a short-haired female naginataka who was responsible for managing the beginners’ classes offered three times a year. Out of the three people in my beginners’ group, I was the only non-Japanese person. I was nervous about being able to keep up with the Japanese instruction, not to mention technical terms, but I was up for the challenge.

Kato Sensei’s commands of “Hajime!” (Start!) and “Mae!” (Forward!) were easy to follow, but it took repeated efforts to get used to the commands for the different kamae (guarding positions). As the weeks went on, however, the counts spoken in unison...