Quote Originally Posted by O'Hea View Post
As an aside, there was a lot of variation between individual weapons, so it seems likely that cavalrymen would've used shortened pudao/bisento/naginata/whatever, say ones with four-foot or five-foot hafts instead of a six-foot infantryman's weapon. Cavalrymen could effectively wield polearms from horseback, but there was a limit to how much of an advantage reach could give you before it became too cumbersome. That being said, most everything I've ever read about nagamaki describes them as a type of o-dachi, and therefore primarily an infantry weapon. The whole o-dachi family was apparently based off the Chinese zhanmadao, which was itself an anti-cavalry weapon issued to infantry soldiers. So while shortened naginata were probably reasonably common among cavalrymen, nagamaki were rarer (to the untrained eye, the two would be pretty similar though).
The Odachi pre-dates the Chinese Zhanmandao. Considerably in fact. Japanese great swords inspired the Chinese Zhanmandao. The trouble with the Odachi is that it is not a standard sword. Forms of Odachi have existed in Japan for a long time. (Even before the word Odachi was invented.) Many were offerings for gods, massive swords enshrined in Shinto temples. I've seen some that had blades much bigger than a man.

A nagamaki is also no more than a shorter naginata as well. Although the quality of their construction would vary. Some nagamaki were made from recycled katanas, (This was true for the blades of regular naginata as well.)