Every Now And Then .......

[nagamaki - Franco]

https://www.aoijapan.com/katanasakuyo-bakkashi-hosokawa-masayoshi-zo

 

 

A newer sword that grabs a Koto aficionado's attention .... 

[Jean]

Drew my attention yesterday Franco. I am rather Koto but this Hosokawa Masayoshi is outstanding

[SwordGuyJoe]

I saw that one too and thought, "Every now and then an older swordgrabs a gendaito aficionado's attention..."

[Curran]

I saw that one too and thought, "Every now and then an older swordgrabs a gendaito aficionado's attention..."

roflmao.

A Motohira was the first to get me to look at shinshinto. Then a gendaito or two came along.

[Greg F]

When I saw this I had a feeling it may end up here for discussion on the board. Just beautiful.

 

Greg

[Brian]

Also shows what a huge difference a decent polish/er makes!

[Stephen]

And not multiple polishings. 

[Valric]

It grabbed my attention also. Five bidders and five days remaining. It will be interesting to follow this one. See how much the market is willing to pay. 

 

Sublime shape. 

[Red Sun]

Congratulations if one of you picked it up.

 

I am not sure how it ended but it is fascinating to see which swords attract a lot of bidding on Aoi.

 

I hope it eventually finds some suitable koshirae  - another thing I notice is how the majority of TH and Juyo swords seem to be without.

[SwordGuyJoe]

Looks like it went for just shy of 3M yen. What does koshirae have to do with TH or juyo rating?

[Red Sun]

Looks like it went for just shy of 3M yen. What does koshirae have to do with TH or juyo rating?

3M still a nice buy for somebody.

 

I am not saying Koshirae has anything to do with rating - just observing that many of the TH and Juyo that become available seem to be in shirisaya and without koshirae.

Just an anecdotal observation but that is how it seems to me.

Just saying that it would be nice to see these top blades that have lost their koshirae once again kitted out in full furnishings.

[Valric]

50% above reserve price. Someone needs to keep track of these auctions. It's valuable knowledge esp. when we're dealing with names that aren't in the "Big" category reaching Juyo prices on TH blade. Tells us a lot about the intrinsic valuation of the pieces and the market's opinion. Unfortunate that realized prices aren't on AOIart.net. 

[Darcy]

I am not saying Koshirae has anything to do with rating - just observing that many of the TH and Juyo that become available seem to be in shirisay and without koshirae.

 

Great swords had great mounts. 

 

Collectors will not pay for the sword and the mounts, they either devalue the sword or they devalue the mounts. As a result the mounts get separated from the blade. The better the mounts the more likely they got separated. Hence you see great stuff like this that have no mounts anymore. 

 

And you see run of the mill commercial grade stuff slapped onto lots of swords coming out of Japan. 

 

Cheap koshirae helps sell a blade and they have lots of cheap koshirae. Great koshirae ends up sold to koshirae and tosogu collectors, in the box or still mounted.

 

The attached daisho koshirae is Tokubetsu Juyo. The katana was by Yosozaemon Sukesada and is Juyo Token. The wakizashi is by Morimitsu and maybe could qualify but is Tokubetsu Hozon. The koshirae is from the Mori daimyo. 

 

I found this out because I found the katana and the habaki was solid gold with Mori mon. Whenever I see this I know there is a good koshirae somewhere. So I asked the dealer, what happened to the koshirae. He got the Tokuju book out and he said this is what happened. I said they are gone yes? He said yes. I said, the wakizashi? He said another dealer had it.

 

Nobody would pay for the package so they split it up.

 

Crap swords with crap koshirae, nobody cares and they go into the market at $5k and are gobbled up by bargain hunters. Crap swords with great koshirae, it happens... I am not entirely sure why but it stays like that because the blade is basically a tsunagi. Cost nothing in the package and status quo reigns. 

 

This means if you have a rare sword with great koshirae you have something precious and over time it will become more rare because the destruction is still going on now.

 

[Peeti]

Wow,

Really nice pieces, it is really ashame that there were splitted up....

 

Peeti

[Gakusee]

Unfortunately many people do it. Both collectors (I have bought swords from members here who split the package to make money or recoup investment) and dealers (Tsuruta offered to me several times to split a package when I was negotiating with him on a couple of swords - I declined he entire offer as I feel strongly about ruining something historically assembled for a purpose). This is an unfortunate and sad fact. I have also seen packages where very clearly the tsuba had been peddled away as all the koshirae were en suite but the very obviously aesthetically ill-fitting tsuba. Sometimes the appeal of the blade (in my view tantamount to the essence of the sword) is too strong and I view the koshirae as a nice sweetener and not a must-have. So I do not mind if historically someone had swapped parts but I refuse to partake of or proactively authorise such disassembly myself.

[Darcy]

I split things two times in my life. Both times were gendai constructions by collectors or dealers. This kind of mount comes and goes and has no significance for the package as it was not there in the Edo period and was a marketing enhancement or a pleasure project for the owner.

 

You need to always evaluate a koshirae to see if it was meant for a blade. Sometimes it doesn't even fit and most collectors will not (and should not) try to put it into the mounts so it goes undetected.

 

Because of the reasons above and because of carelessness koshirae and swords are constantly being mixed and matched. Nice koshirae with a really bad blade will be split for sure. Then that nice koshirae might go with a nice sword that someone wants to put together. Because a buyer will indeed not pay $35,000 for a sword+koshirae original pair but he would actually buy a sword for $28,000 and find a nice koshirae for $7,000 in the secondary market and put them together. It is a real head scratcher but that's what people do.

 

When a dealer is offering to you a chance to split, it may and probably means that the dealer himself put the package together. If you look at some websites you will see a standard mid-commercial-grade type of koshirae that goes onto almost every sword. Especially if aimed for the western market. Especially if the sword on its own doesn't have anything compelling (i.e. a Kiyomaro will sell itself. A chu-jo saku 68cm mid-Edo katana won't. So you don't need to juice up the Kiyomaro, you will however need to juice up the Chu-jo piece and you do that by making the package complete from your huge inventory of a few hundred empty mid-grade koshirae that cost you next to nothing because there is no market of collectors buying mid-grade koshirae... and a lot of western buyers especially in the mid-to-low-end won't buy a sword without koshirae because they feel it is "incomplete"... dealers do what the market forces them to do to make a buck). 

 

In my own experience I have sold mumei swords with no koshirae, and saw them years later show up on Japanese sites with koshirae. I have had swords with no koshirae offered to me in Japan, and I declined, some years later this one in particular shows up on a western dealer site with the dealer talking about the samurai who owned the set of sword and koshirae. Whether that dealer knew or did not know, the information was not accurate but will be repeated forever after as truth.

 

If you want to look for telltale signs of retrofitting (again, people frequently post links to swords on NMB and give their stamp of approval without checking the details), you can find them. Look for filled mekuigiana in the tsuka. This is most likely a modern era retrofit. Here is an example from my site, and I documented it as a retrofit and made it clear it was not original to the blade. 

 

(Of course that scares buyers and they go buy one that was not original to another blade but the dealer didn't disclose it and they don't know how to look for it. But that's how the market works.)

 

http://nihonto.ca/hasebe-kunishige-2/koshirae-right-l.jpg

 

Anyway have a look at the image and the tsuka. Then if you buy a sword from anyone, look for something similar. Dealers will not be aware of it, or generally won't disclose it, it's something that is for the buyer to look at. Sometimes retrofits mean taking a tsuka from one koshirae that fits and adding it into a saya from another. These maybe you won't detect because the tsuka didn't require a mekugiana move. Or if you have a good saya that fits and a damaged tsuka you can just make a new tsuka that fits correctly and remount the tosogu. This kind of blade you will detect by everything looking old and matched but the same and wrap are new. It won't tell you for sure but knowing there is a probability here might alter your decision making process about what you want to do.

 

A lot of buyers ask to find mounts anyway if a sword has none, or will look on their own, or try to make them. So it is basically always a bonus if you have mounts retrofit or not. Buyers feel happier once their sword is "completed."

 

This however also makes for this weird situation of koshirae and mounts being made to go with each other, being split, floating around, and then people trying to retrofit them to a new blade, maybe being split again in the future. Who knows. This is appended with "who cares" by a lot of people, as long as the mounts are nice. 

 

For us in the west because we highly romanticize things that Japanese dealers in particular, and I suspect Japanese customers, do not. We get involved in the "great sin" aspect of splitting a sword from the mounts and refuse to do it. I myself subscribe to this line of thinking too, and I feel like I saved a few blades from this fate of having their tosogu boxed. 

 

...

 

But that said, if you can detect a retrofit and the dealer offers to split, do so if you want one or the other. If it's a retrofit it's just unrelated anyway. The Tokuju set above, it was a tragedy but the market forced them to do it by being irrational and inefficient.

[SwordGuyJoe]

Excellent posts Darcy! I asked the initial question because I'm in the "who cares about koshirae" camp. The reason is just because the swords I buy and collect are all gendaito and shinsakuto. So the mounts are either military or pieced together by previous owners. I always buy the blade and if it had koshirae, that's fine, but I'm not going to pay extra for it. I've never split koshirae and blades up, but there is a Miyaguchi Ikkansai Toshihiro in my collection that has excellent custom ordered type 3 koshirae. I made what I felt was a fair offer on the sword and said that if the seller wanted to keep and resell the koshirae, that would be fine. He took the price and gave me both the blade and koshirae, though while nice, I really don't place any value to the koshirae.

 

Gendai is very prone to put together koshirae as well by dealers. There is a dealer that I have done a lot business with in Japan that nearly all of his swords have koshirae, but if you understand the market and know what a fair price for a good blade in koshirae costs, use that as your price to base whether a dealer's sales price is fair, then you won't go wrong and for gendaito never be too impressed with koshirae, since unless military, the sword and the mounts were not made to go together.

 

The thing that never ceases to amaze me is how an amazing modern blade in shirasaya will just sit, while average blades with shin-gunto mounts priced the same fly off the shelves. It just goes to show that not everyone collects swords. Some collect stories, history, militaria, and sometimes those stories, history, and militaria that they collect come with a sword made in Japan. Different strokes I guess.