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Jack, I get the impression that this is a modern item. No handle, no patina, a bit crudely made, 'signature' machine (?) stamped and upside-down - all that might speak for a non-Japanese origin.

Unfortunately I am not that skilled in kantei that I could tell the differences. However as I am slightly obsessive about data collecting I can provide that. I might have slightly controverisial view that I see only signed swords and attributed swords. I know many people might view kinzōgan, shumei etc. differently but to me it is just one form of attribution. Also over the years I have been starting to me much more relaxed about the attributions thinking it is just the best guess the organization (NBTHK or NTHK) giving as it is having in a fast paced shinsa session. With high level items and museum pieces for example I think the attribution will be much more researched. Here are some numbers for the Mihara smiths I will just have signed / attributed works Masaie : 16 signed / 18 attributed Masahiro : 32 signed / 16 attributed Masanobu : 4 signed / 25 attributed Other Ko-Mihara smiths 11 signed Ko-Mihara attributed mumei swords found so far 223

Another example on eBay https://ebay.us/m/Ox8mXy

Sukekuni is quite a different smith compared to other Hokke, his choji are sometimes interpreted later by others, but he carries strong Bizen influence unlike any others. His work can be quite good. Hokke Ichijo is sort of synonymous to Hokke, you seldom find mumei blades attributed to other Hokke names except Sukekuni and Ichijo. Yes, he can be borderline between Nambokucho and Muromachi. I've seen Masaie attribution of Mihara when they wanted to send a message its the founder. Masanobu I think is a common attribution for mumei blades of a specific period. There are some kantei differences between the two, but I am not sure they are actually often observed.

The vast majority of Hokke blades from the Nanbokucho period were Kaneyasu.

One of the better dealers who deals specifically in high end stuff is in Canada. He's also a dealer member here on the forum: https://www.militaria.co.za/nmb/forum/125-nihonto-art-inc/ Get hold of https://nihontoart.com/ @Nickupero Nick will be of assistance I am sure. @b.hennick Barry is also in Canada and is an advanced collector who I am sure can give advice.

After some serious brow furrowing I dug up the small article on Lt General Nishieoda's sword, it appears in the Token Society of Great Britain Programme vol. 71. https://to-ken.uk/onewebmedia/Programme 71 November-December 1972.pdf

Thanks, Sam. He must have just put it up because I checked yesterday! 5406 is new to the list. Interestingly, it's closest number, 5419, uses the same stamp. John C.

MOST IMPORTANT - DON'T LET THIS COPY, PUT YOU OFF A GREAT HOBBY! You are welcome to ask any questions here on NMB and there are lots of experienced collectors to help. [We have already made the mistakes - so you don't have to! ]

Masahiro is another representative smith of Ko-Mihara, check out this particularly impressive example (ubu, zaimei and with yubashiri that resembles nijuba and sanjuba): https://www.toukentakarado.com/item-tk019-juyo-token-mihara

I am a bit surprised someone quotes Masanobu as synonymous with ko Mihara since the two big names are Masaie and Masanobu (80% of signatures), both multi-generations, but Masaie starting earlier and dominating Nambokucho while Masanobu tends to begin during the very end of Nambokucho and has a strong tail into Muromachi (?) though meikan emphasizes Nambokucho specifically and single Masanobu generation at its very end. So ko Mihara is more likely to be Masaie by default among the two. Hokke has darker jigane, utsuri expected, can have a bit large featured/rougher jigane and can be a bit more midare than the pure suguha, while high end ko Mihara will have a very nice tight itame jigane with more greyish hue. Mihara will have longer kaeri and it has very specific, though period-dependent hamon width. Muromachi Mihara jigane will shift towards more standing out mokume, masame etc., wider hamon.

There is another one over on Etsy [actually two in a lot of 9 fakes ]- soft metal without the tagane-ato https://www.etsy.com/au/listing/4341039673/used-Japanese-sword-tsuba-set-9 There are worse looking fakes - I do hope you didn't pay much and as some of the other members have said - just use it as a learning experience. [most of us have bought things we later regretted ] The design is based on a scene from the "Tale of Genji" A love story set in the Heian period around 11th century.

With the passing of Yoshikawa-sensei (NTHK) and Miyano-sensei (NTHK-NPO) and Tanobe-sensei not officially a part of NBTHK Shinsa (I could be 100% wrong about that, and if so, I humbly apologize), although he still does sayagaki attributions…. who are the current notable people in the Shinsa/kanei world whether in the above mentioned organizations or other? Just wondering who the current and upcoming crop of leaders in the field are?

Hi I won this at a auction a few weeks ago the auction house could not remove the handle and suspected it was glued on (it wasn't) and it came off fairly easy.i spent a couple of evenings working out the signature saka Kura echigo no kami terukane and bugyotsuji kindly translated the date as 1684 apparently the date fits when this signature would have been used I know some of you here have done this one before I've read all the posts.i would love to know what you guys think.i apologise for the poor photos I must have taken over 90 photo's the last 3days and there all bad.heres some measurements. Nagasa 46.3 cm. Sori 1.2cm. Moto hada 3.5cm. Saki hada 2.7cm. Moto kasane 6.5mm. Saki kasane 5.5mm. Kissaki 7.2cm. Nakago 16.6cm

Thank you Jean. The photo is making a lot of details look very off, chiefly the kiku which looks much more amateurish than it really is. The link is showing a blade by the first generation Yoshimichi, but I think mine is from the 4th Kyoto generation. I have compared it to many blades by that specific smith, and find the characters to be an exact match, with the kiku being the one detail that varies the most among different examples, namely the way the button is carved in. To illustrate my point, I made a superposition of this oshigata and the mei of the present sword. https://www.aoijapan.net/katana-kikumon-tamba-no-kami-yoshimichi-kyo-fouth-generation/

I think I can read TOSHIYUKI.

Couple more

https://www.invaluable.com/auction-lot/-2075970B25 another one

Hi @Prewar70 I started out as a Kiyomitsu collector and love their work. Unlike Sukesada, there were not that many recordedSue Bizen Kiyomitsu smiths ( 12 or so from 1500 to 1590 ) Unfortunately for this blade I can comfortable say it is a gimei. The nakago is off and the signature doesnt match sue bizen as well. Specifically the way the "Osa" 長 kanji is written with the rounded stroke is something never done by Kiyomitsu. The hamon pattern is also something you would not see from Kiyomitsu The mekugi ana should be punched not drilled. And the position of the mei relative to the ana is way off for sue bizen as well. The very small and tight hada you see might point to a shinshinto blade but I am not knowledgable in post Koto works. And for future refercence you will see that the Bizen / Bishu signature does not really correlate to quality in Sue Bizen. Esp for Kiyomitsu Best regard -Kevin

I will keep my out out in Chicago for you!

On the left Nishioeda Yutaka

Yes, I forgot about Masahiro, three smith names rather than two.

@eternal_newbie That Masahiro is magnificent indeed. I also know it s massively out of my price range 🤣. I do have that saved and its always great to see what the original sugata from aome of these old schools look like These were the 2 I was considering potentially https://www.toukenkomachi.com/index_ja_tachi&katanaA070425.html https://world-seiyudo.com/product/ska-030126/

Or the guys that study real paper money so that when a counterfeit shows up, they recognize it. Yours is better than most we see.

Thank you @Rivkin as always for the insight. it s just that I ve never personally seen a Ko Mihara with a Masaie attribution or any other Ko Mihara smith. But Masanobu seems to come up fairly often by comparison so I wasnt sure if he just made a lot of swords or if it was an NBTHK tendancy. Same with Hokke with a nanbokucho smith attribution. I ve seen a few Ichijo but I believe he s more Muromachi. I ve also seen Sukekuni who s supposedly the founder but no mention of Hokke connection. As much as I love Hokke blades, their timeline and lineage has always confused me. With sources saying they came about in the Muromachi and NBTHK attributions saying Hokke - Nanbokucho

To recognise a fake you first need to know what the real thing looks like, all the component parts, blade, fittings etc.You need to understand quality and artistry. That takes time and determined study. Or you can deliberately study fakes…..there are dedicated topics on this forum for that purpose. Once you have done that you will be able to tell the difference. It takes some effort. Every component of your sword sadly screams fake from the rooftops……but only when you know what you are looking at.

I have such a TSUBA, made in the same mold. I bought it in 1977 for YEN 500 as souvenir in a hardware shop in KYOTO who were selling knives, scissors, decoration swords, and such.

Thanks John, appreciate the help. The site I always thought would be available was much more inclusive of all the known artists who produced this beautiful work. What a shame it is no longer available for future researchers. Guess it might be a warning if you currently find a site useful it might be a good idea to download it as it might disappear sometime in the future! Howard Dennis

Dear Kent. Welcome to NMB! My first reaction to your tsuba was that it waas a modern reproduction and, sad to say I then found this, https://auctionet.com/en/4546742-a-metal-tsuba-mokko-street-unsigned-second-half-of-the-20th-century Auction houses are oftennot the most accurate with their descriptions of tsuba but I fear that in this case they are broadly correct. Please do wait for others to chime in on this one and don't rely on my assessment but if this is a reproduction then it raises questions about the expertise of your source. Please don't let this put you off persuing this fascinating field of art. To help you get your eye in do have a browse through the third thread in this section, 'A series of fittings'. All the best.

And I feel like this sword is well deserving of a sayagaki. The workmanship is top tier for Sue Bizen and this size ( esp with the long nakago ) is unusual even for Eiroku/ Tensho / Momoyama Sukesada

I received Markus Sesko’s translation of Fukushi Shigeo’s Tosogu Classroom Volume 4 today. Had a pleasant surprise to see my Tsuba there!

That's points precisely to the problem with the current system. It's set up as a sort of "dichotomous key" based on sets of relatively broad characteristics that were set up relatively early in the attempt to sort and classify tsuba. I think these criteria are too rigid and oversimplified, which directs us to put things in label boxes that are likely not correct. For example, It assumes that all "movement in design" is restricted to Shoami smiths (and some early Akasaka), which seems like a patently false assertion to me. It doesn't seem even remotely possible that they were the only smiths to use movement in their designs. So using "little to no movement in design / structured geometric designs" plus "visible evidence of folding in the plate" gets us an Owari label. This type of system does not allow for styles to evolve, unless you start throwing little qualifier words like "mostly" or "often"... which muddies the waters so much as to render the system "mostly" unusable, unless you are looking at "archetype" versions of tsuba from specific schools. To me, that's a crazy way of doing things, because it does not allow for any variation or evolution within multiple groups of smiths from large geographic areas like Owari, or take into account any aesthetic shifts in Japan's culture over time. I think I have gathered enough examples of Kanayama and Owari type tsuba that show a clear departure from the more structured geometric patterns we see in the majority of the Momoyama period, that show that a certain point in time, there was a general shift in aesthetic and artistic expression that was experienced in many regions of Japan. It was more of a general "zeitgeist" (spirit of the times) to borrow a German term that is such a good word in my opinion. With regard to Shoami specifically, most Shoami schools, where the smiths signed with "shoami", really only began in the mid to late 1600s. From various information sources, it's seems possible that the Iyo Shoami group may have started a little earlier, maybe by a decade or two. Certainly "movement" is present in many Shoami (and Akasaka) designs, but I would argue that the Shoami smiths were certainly not the originators of this type of design, but merely following in its footsteps. The designs of the tsuba I posted above don't fit with any specific style of Shoami work, and can be separated even more when you start looking at the plate characteristics, which fall entirely within an Owari type of categorization (following our supposed "dichotomous key" of classification based on broad descriptive characteristics. Also the hitsu-ana shapes do not fit with other examples of what most people view as Shoami tsuba or even ko-Shoami tsuba which tend to have more geometric shapes. Personally, I think the size differential of the hitsu-ana align better with the look of ko-Akasaka (who also had their origins from some type of Owari area lineage)... so I suspect it's possible that the ko-Akasaka and this "mystery smith" had similar Owari roots in that regard. So to make a long story more succinct, I feel that the tsuba above pre-date anything that we would consider Shoami works, and show a divergent shift within the smiths who came from an Owari area. In discussion with @Steve Waszak, we both feel this proposed period of time fits well with cultural shifts and influences that lasted a brief period of time at the very end of the Momoyama, and very beginning of the early Edo period, when there was even a rise in "distorted" modes of dress and mannerisms and went so far as to skew body posture (look up "kabukimono"). There was also a similar shift in "expressiveness" in other artisan crafts like painting and textiles.

It is a junker, give it a wide berth

Steve: According to Mal Cox's Gifu Tosho write up (available in downloads), he died in 1983. Mal has included a lot of information about Kanemichi you may find useful. John C.

Second that it does look like late Muromachi Kongobye.

I think my first guess would be Yoshifusa (能房) from Kongōbyōe (金剛兵) school. Could you perhaps take clearer picture of the signature? Of course it might be very difficult as it is bit worn down.

Jo James, welcome to the NMB forum! The TSUBA seems to be of the NANBAN type. The NAKAGO (= tang) photos are a challenge as they are not well focused. Please use a plain dark background, light from the side and orient photos blade-tip vertically upwards so reading is easier. There are no photos included of the blade, so not much could be said on it except that the NAKAGO looks KOTO to me. Signatures are not always authentic!

and V@A visit :

Here is the final product. I'm quite happy with the outcome of my freshman project. I changed the tsukaito wrapping style to the less ambitious menpumaki moyo iri style and finished it off with a custom-made silk sageo. There is a slight misalignment in the seating of the fuchi against the koiguchi because the drilling of hole in the tang for the mekugi is slightly off, thereby changing the angle slightly. During drilling, I accidentally drilled into the tsukaito on the opposite side of the tsuka, requiring repair with Seiwa glossy water-based leather finishing agent. I really should have done all of this before I wrapped the tsuka. I may redo the entire tsuka/tsukamaki and drill new hole in the tang to correct all of these mistakes. I need to shim some wood veneer into the sides of the opening of the koiguichi to tighten the seating of the blade and eliminate slight side-to-side rattling. Otherwise, the saya turned out quit well.

Signed Izu no Kuni ju Sadayoshi saku kore (no date) but with a very fine carving of a ken attesting to his background in the Gassan tradition...

Have you got a drill-press? If yes, making a valuable "Hidden Christian" TSUBA is fast and easy! Tutorial: q1223551604 on JAUCE or BUYEE

Aren't we still looking for intelligent life in the universe? - We already know there is not much here on Earth.