Nagamaki
Japanese sword with an extra long handle
The nagamaki (長巻; "long wrapping") is a type of traditionally made Japanese sword (nihontō) with an extra long handle, used by the samurai class of feudal Japan.
History
It is possible that nagamaki were first produced during the Heian period (794 to 1185), but there are no known examples dating from before the mid Kamakura period (1192–1333). The nagamaki is believed to have been developed from the ōdachi (great sword). The ōdachi, with its long blade, was sometimes too long to be used with a standard length hilt. Therefore, a strong cord would sometimes be wrapped around the sword from the center of the blade to the tsuba (sword guard), and the user would hold the sword by that part of the cord. The sword used in this way was called nakamaki no tachi (中巻の太刀, sword with middle wrapping). It is believed that this usage evolved into the nagamaki, in which the hilt was lengthened during the manufacturing process.
In the Sengoku period, as the battlefield changed to a tactic where foot soldiers called ashigaru (足軽) fought on a large scale in dense formations with tanegashima (gun) and yari (spear), naginata (pole weapon), which were difficult to use in dense formations, were replaced by nagamaki, and heavy and long tachi (long sword) were often replaced by katana.
During the Sengoku period, the nagamaki reached its peak of usage. It was generally used as a weapon for low-ranking soldiers who fought on foot.
“Nagamaki” enters the record as japanese sword with an extra long handle. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Nagamaki, Japanese and sword can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 20, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1304426. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1185, 1192 and 1333.
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This entry incorporates text from “Nagamaki” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.