Ko-Mihara

[paulb]

For fellow Ko-Mihara enthusiasts Aoi Art have just listed a good example. I think this is a hugely underated school, I have yet to see a mihara blade with a poor shape and at the top end of their quality they comapre favourably to the best other schools of the period have to offer.

https://www.aoijapan.com/img/sword/2016/16684-2.jpg

[Ray Singer]

Great sword. I am surprised that Tanobe-sensei did not append the sayagaki with Chin-Cho (or Chin-Ju) given the health and quality of the sword and the fact that it was placed with one of the earliest masters of this school in late Kamakura. The hamon also seems unusually wide for this school.

 

I am also often surprised that this school is not more popular among collectors. Ko-Mihara hamon often have a tight habuchi with smaller/finer hataraki compared with other groups. Perhaps that is part of the reason. By contrast to this example, take a look at the Ko-Mihara which Grant is selling here, which appear to have deep nie hataraki. Workstyle (in hamon) seems closer overall to Tegai.

Edited April 2, 2017 by raymondsinger

[nagamaki - Franco]

Not to change the subject, but are these images scanned? Scanner type, if so?

 

Thanks.

[paulb]

I think so Tsuruta san has a large flatbed scanner taking up a high % of his shop's floor space. Unfortunately I don't know the model

[Shugyosha]

I understand that Aoi scan all their swords - they add on a standard miune with no detail. No idea what they use.

[seattle1]

Hello:

 Yes and eye catcher and at about $21,000 USD for a Juyo with Tanobe sayagaki and koshirae, while the latter isn't much to look at, is reasonable if there isn't a fight at the auction.

 What would bother some is that it appears to have had a fair amount of some notation, perhaps a kinzogan mei, removed from the nakago. It is also atypical, Aoi mentioning Aoe similarities and the dog teeth ashi don't fit, if it had utsuri one would think Unji perhaps, and as Ray said, the hamon is wide. I would guess that those factors might exclude Chin-Cho and such, yet it isn't designated as "Den" though Tanobe sensei might not have been at the Juyo shinsa.

 Arnold F.

[Jean]

There is another point to be mentioned, Tanobe sensei has not written the juyo session on the sayagaki. Perhaps the sword was "sayagakied" before passing Juyo.

 

Another school underated is the Nio school.

[Darcy]

My thoughts in response to the other thoughts in this thread. I always like sayagaki stuff because paying attention to them gives some insights and there is a point of knowing just enough about how a gun works that you can shoot yourself by accident with it that applies to these.

 

Quick notes:

 

- The sword is a good sword that passed in a hard session to get papers in. 

 

- Aoi scans and does not photograph these blades.

 

- The mune looks funny at either end because it's inserted with photoshop, you cannot light a mune with a scanner very easily so they appear to just quick and dirty fake it. The left and right sides don't even match

99% of the time on these but people don't seem to notice so they keep doing it.

 

- Jean caught the fact that the blade got its sayagaki before getting Juyo.

 

This sayagaki:

 

https://www.aoijapan.com/img/sword/2016/16684-3.jpg

 

Appears to be the rigid middle period type of sayagaki that he did that followed a strict layout formula. Now if he's inspired he will just write his thoughts and if it blows the layout formula out of the water so be it.

 

Now, Chin-cho and why you should care about it and what you should know so you don't shoot yourself in the foot.

 

The basics:

 

Chin-cho is praise and because it always comes at the end of a sayagaki and is easy to recognize by people who can't read Japanese, it caught the attention of westerners. Bob Benson went and asked Tanobe sensei

what he means by that. When you ask Tanobe sensei a question he responds to you in conversation to you: he doesn't respond like he is being interviewed and the answer will be broadcast for all time.

 

His response in this was that it meant something akin to: "If your house is on fire and you can take only one thing, then this is the thing you should take."

 

When that info came back to the west that there was special meaning to this phrase then people started thinking it was code that singled out a special Juyo or a Tokuju candidate. Some people wanted to not share the knowledge so they could use it for themselves. Others wanted to disseminate the knowledge. And then like any game of telephone the information got out there half assed and with various spins on it.

 

I went to Japan and I asked him about this and what it meant because I wanted to have some clarity and to know firsthand what it means.

 

He said basically that he had a format, and he followed it, and tended to end sayagaki with one of three stock phrases or none at all and no difference was to be taken from any of this if the blade was Juyo.

 

I asked him about the house on fire thing and he said basically, "Oh, that's what Juyo means." Again he is not worrying about being perfectly consistent with a previous reference because he is just talking to you. He wants you to get it. He doesn't think someone is going to write an article summarizing his statement and other people are going to go way too literal about the meaning of two characters on a sayagaki.

 

So, have to grasp the context of these conversations and also of sayagaki. In this case his message to me was that Juyo and Chin-chin Cho-cho were two aspects of the same thing. That the blade was a treasure. All Juyo are treasure. If your house catches fire grab your Juyo on the way out the door.

 

Now, here is the bad part:

 

In our tradition where people hunt for code words to summarize the meaning of things easily, there is the dreaded fallacy corrollary: if Chin-chin Cho-cho means something is very special, then its absence means it is not special. 

 

This is false.

 

It is based on the idea that Chin-chin cho-cho is the only way to praise a sword. 

 

As a counter-example, this sayagaki on this sword refers to the blade as "kahin" 佳品 which means an excellent item, with connotations of beauty and pleasure in there. He may also elect to call something "meihin" 名品 (masterpiece), "yuhin" 優品 (superior item) or any other praiseful description. If one of them is to be singled out as meaning more than any of the others, including chin-chin cho-cho then my belief is the word "masterpiece" is the one you'd focus on as the implication is that it is a pinnacle piece. 

 

Some words don't need interpretation, masterpiece is one of them. It has a pretty literal and clear meaning. The NBTHK if they write out in the setsumei, "This is an outstanding sword among all works by this smith." That is not code. That is something that has literal meaning and the meaning of that is synonymous with Tokuju.

 

So, the praise is there and he also singled it down to two smiths which is fairly rare in Ko-Mihara works. So there is enough in the sayagaki for anyone who studies this to read his mind and realize that this sword had some special attributes to it. Sooner or later someone got around to Juyo submission.

 

...

 

The take-home in this is that these praiseful things are rules of inclusion. If you see them then you should know to take note of something. But if they are not there it doesn't mean there is nothing of which to take note. You may be missing the details or it may be expressed in another way.

 

I've written that the length of the sayagaki is something you should consider if you can't read it, because if he's impressed he puts a lot of work into it.

 

But you can also say, "This is the finest sword in the world." and be done in one sentence and be clear. So just being terse on its own doesn't mean the thing is no good. Being verbose means there is a reason and source material to work with that allows you to write at length especially if inspired.

 

He won't go to the other side on a mediocre blade, but if he didn't go to the other side it doesn't mean the blade is mediocre.

 

Rules of inclusion.

 

Never be surprised that chin-cho or its variants are not there, because he just may have done it on the sword before and in his words to me, "I like to mix it up."

 

That shows the danger of relying too much on code words. Here people are thinking it is secret knowledge they need to keep to themselves for knowing what blades are going to pass Tokuju, and there he is thinking, "Don't want to be too boring and repetitive."

 

Ultimately you have to rely on your eyes first and then read this stuff to seek out confirmation of what you believe you've seen. So if in this case, everyone thinks it's a good sword they are all on the right track, I think it is a good sword too. The head scratching just shouldn't be there over him not writing chin-cho or any other variant if the sword seems good, as long as you can trust your eyes and experience. If he overtly praises something you think is no good though, this is when you need to scratch your head and go back to the drawing board and figure out what you're missing.

 

The last thing I would throw out there is that he has his favorites too and it may be a bit harder for him to wax prosaic on something that is not perfectly in line with his internal emotional state. It can be a really good sword but maybe is not going to make him write poetry on it.

 

If you ask him what he really likes he'll tell you Satsuma. If you ask him why he'll say, "I'm from Satsuma!"

 

So everything in your experience has to go into trying to grasp the implications of a sayagaki. I think he tends otherwise to fit the model of any older Japanese expert or collector... they go down the path of the old, classical, natural with exceptions for imposing or magnificent blades or particularly intact blades from other periods. Motoshige may not be his favorite smith but the most impressive Juyo he felt from a couple years ago was a fully intact Motoshige tachi that I think was 92cm, signed and dated. And as a scholar and historian, something we should all have a part in us for liking antiques, regardless of the rest of that blade its intact nature and size make it truly impressive. It will always have something that even the most magnificent Masamune won't have, in that it stands as an exact and complete example in unaltered state of its time period. So the Masamune should be more beautiful all things considered but intact is its own kind of quality.

 

We need always to look at these things and if there is a reason to be impressed, then to be impressed. I can be dismissive of things too quickly and its a reminder to me too.

 

Ko-Mihara is not my exact cup of tea but I can say this is a nice piece. 

[Grey Doffin]

Ko Mihara

Grey