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