Higo Ko-ryu Naginatajutsu
A classical naginata school from the Higo domain; shaft and blade each measure about four feet, a proportion archaic even in the sixteenth century.
Quick Facts
JapanCharacter & Origin
Training
Who It Suits
Organisation & Competition
What the style is built from
Editorial rating on a 0–3 scale, based on how much room each area gets in ordinary training.
Catalogs & Databases for Higo Ko-ryu Naginatajutsu
About Higo Ko-ryu Naginatajutsu
Higo Ko-ryu is a Japanese classical school of the naginata, tied to the Higo domain on Kyushu, that is to the territory of today's Kumamoto prefecture. The sources name Kame Terushige as its originator; the exact time of foundation is not documented, the early Edo period or earlier being the estimate, and this page therefore gives no year. Terushige passed the art to Matsumoto Genjiro, and through him the line attached itself to the Higo clan, which then held it as part of its own military tradition. The most striking feature of the school is the weapon itself. The Higo Ko-ryu naginata has a shaft and a blade each about four feet long, a proportion that was already archaic in the sixteenth century: ordinary glaives had blades considerably shorter than their shafts. Work with such a weapon therefore differs from that of most other schools; the balance point sits further forward, the cut travels on a different path, and the weapon is driven by the whole body rather than by the leverage of the arms. The school is transmitted in paired kata, in which sword and other weapons face the naginata, and it has no free bouting. Alongside Toda-ha Buko-ryu and Tendo-ryu, Higo Ko-ryu is one of the few classical naginata traditions to have survived to the present, and its practice is one of the few places where this older form of the weapon can be seen in motion.
Similar styles
Selected by overlap in the style profile, not by historical lineage.