Wow, I hope this is indicative of an upward trend 
There’s yet another blog by a C:SI regular, Colin Kiernan. Colin is also a regular (or what passes for a regular) on the official C:SI forums, and frequently has some pretty interesting stuff to say, so I’m obviously going to be subscribing to his blog as well.
He decided to take his comments on the issue of Naginata vs. Katana and expand on them in his post Fighting against a Naginata.
Something really struck me about the following comment:
As long as you stay within katana range of your opponent, then it doesn’t matter that they have a longer range.
Most people who’ve seen me fight know that I’m just not a tanker, but I feel that there is a lot of justice in this comment. I *HATE* staying in striking distance of someone for a long time, but it really makes sense that it can be more dangerous to repeatedly “get into range” than to just stay withing range as long as you can also do some damage while you are there.
In Aikido - which is the source of most of my fighting philosophy - you often want to maintain distance in such a way that your opponent must make a committed and relatively large movement in order to cause you damage, and then you take advantage of the movement. You don’t want to be close enough that a very short and fast jab can knock out your teeth before you can even react, you want your opponent to have to lunge or approach, etc.
That’s much harder for me to do with a nagi-wielding opponent, though, because I have not yet sufficiently internalized the differences in speed and range. That, of course, is the primary source of why people wonder whether the nagi is more advantageous: If you try to fight a naginata like a katana, you are bringing a club to a crossbow fight.
I have to admit that this topic has gotten more exposure that I first thought it would, but it’s been quite interesting for me to read the various points of view, and I hope that it continues. Even if it *is* now spread across three or four blogs, lol.
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