Tsuruhashi (鶴嘴) - The Samurai's Warpick

Tsuruhashi (鶴觜) - The Samurai's Warpick 

In the centre, an unarmored soldiers wearing a Tsuruhashi on a two handed shaft, with an hammer side and a white-hardened point, from the Ukiyo-e "Descending Gees at Yahagi Bridge" by Yoshitoshi, 1868

In this article I want to cover a dedicated anti armor weapon known as Tsuruhashi (Crane's beak ) also known as Motayu (藻弛) and often erroneously called nanban hachiwari (more of this later on).
This warpick was a percussive weapon which resemble an European warhammer or an Indian Zaghnal, both in shapes but also in usage as well.
The war pick was made of iron or steel, usually fitted onto a lacquered wooden handle that could vary in length; most of the time it was one handed, but there is at least one depiction showing it to be two handed length.
The one handed version occasionally had a "D-shaped" handguard on the handle.
Even if it was rare, it was used from the 14th century onward to overcome the coverage of body armor through blunt impact and by piercing the zones covered with mail or with thin plates, thanks to its prolonged beak.
It was also used to destroy gates, shields or other defensive implements used in the field, just like the masakari (鉞).

On the right a warrior with a Tsuruhashi on its back, presumably one handed with an hammer side, from the original 14th century scroll "十二類巻物"

The majority of Tsuruhashi only had a peak without an "hammer side" although some artistic representations show a similar feature.

This weapon shouldn't be confused with the Kama (鎌) or the Tobiguchi (鳶口) although they share some similar features; the Kama has a blade rather than a spike, and the Tobiguchi, besides being also a tool that could be "weaponized", has a shorter beak and a top spike.

However, the "boundaries" in the nomenclature are rather slim; sometimes, a Tobiguchi could be considered a warpick, and in some example of the famous Kusari-gama, there is a beak instead of a blade which should make the weapon a Kusari-tsuruhashi but luckily nobody use such names to make things even harder in the world of arms and armor collectors.
Sometimes, a similar beak was fitted to some Yari, making the weapon highly effective in dealing against armor.

On the left the warpick, in this case called Motayu (藻弛)); from "武器皕圖"

In fact, nobody knew its original name; this is what led some collectors of Tobiguchi to call this weapon a "foreign head-breaker" (Nanban hachiwari), since it resembled an European warhammer. However, this weapon existed before the contact with the European, so there is nothing "nanban" in this warpick.
Probably it was a derivative of the everyday pickax used by the Japanese (nowadays the name Tsuruhashi means "pickax"); just like the Kama or the Tobiguchi, from ordinary tools they were "weaponized" to be used effectively on the battlefield.

This weapon its highly effective in dealing with any type of armor, and is capable of overcoming even the highest form of protections.

Hope that this short but neat article was informative enough! For any questions there is a comment section below, and if you liked the article please feel free to share it!

Gunbai