The Kamayari

The kamayari (鎌槍, sickle spear) is similar to the jumonji yari. While it also had two protrusions shooting off the base of a main spear tip, in yari the offshoots were hooked back downward. The kamayari essentially is a yari with kama at the base of the blade to assist in hooking things. Generally the hooks are large enough to hold the head, neck or jaw (when in a tree) or to hook limbs of a swordsman on the ground, thus it is different in function in this respect from other types of yari. Also the kamayari was used to hook horsemen and dismount them.

A kama yari - not to be confused with a kama yari - is a long shaft of wood with an elegant arrangement of razor-edged steel blades at one end. The three-foot central blade projects forwards along the line of the shaft, while the two flanking blades, each only about a foot long, curve back towards the wielder with the poetic droop of a willow leaf in summer The kama yari is about ten feet long and about nine inches wide. It is made of steel and could be used as a weapon of type polearm Yari - Kama Yari 鎌槍 sickled spear These spears were very effective weapons though their more complex blade shapes were extremely difficult to properly forge and sharpen; therefore these were far less common than the above types and were often used for ornamental purposes. Jumonji yari (十文字槍, cross-shaped spear) looked something similar to a trident or partisan and brandished a pair of curved blades around its central lance. The kama yari (鎌槍, sickle spear) was the reverse of the jumonji yari. While it also had two protrusions shooting off of the base of a main spear tip, in yari the offshoots were hooked back downward. The kama yari can also describe a short pick-like weapon, similar to the warhammer, but without the hammer head. It is simply a dagger blade set at a right angle to a one-handed metal shaft. Compare to zaghnal, crowbill The katakama (片鎌槍, single-sided sickle spear) had a radical weapon design sporting a blade that was two pronged. Instead of being constructed like a military fork ,a straight blade (as in a su yari) was intersected just below its midsection by a perpendicular blade. This blade was slightly shorter than the primary, had curved tips making a parallelogram, and was set off center so that only 1/6th of its length extended on the other side. This formed a kind of mess 'L' shape. The Kama has a short blade at right angles to a hardwood handle. The handle is a little longer than your forearm and tapers from the Gedan Tsukagashir to the Ushiro Tsukagashira. The Monouchi is between 6 and 10 inches in length. It is sometimes upgraded to Kama-Yari (Spear with a hook blade) and the Kusari-Gama (Sickle and Chain)