Shugyosha

Hi Dale, That was fun - got any more?

Actually there aren't: I was confusing this kanji 京 with higashi and now I look at it again, I think you are right - if I blow the picture right up I can just see where the top cross stroke cuts the centre vertical stroke, so we need something to go with 束. Straining my eyes and imagination I think I can see 各 as the right part of the kanji and 洛東 Sakutou pops up in a search related to Kyoto tourism, so maybe that's the top part of this side? I've tried googling the signature as a whole but nothing popped up so I'm not overly confident...

Yes, I hesitated as I couldn’t see the top cross stroke but there are villages with that kanji in Otagi gun. I’ll have another look on a while with fresh eyes and see what leaps out.

Hi Uwe, I'm honestly struggling with the first one. Edo seems more plausible than anything I've come up with, definitely Shige, but the final kanji is a mystery to me. Back to number 6: 城州愛宕郡 – Jōshu Otagi gun 口口住保高 I think the artist's name is Yasutaka but I'm not confident about the "taka" and the first two kanji on the left have me beaten for now.

Looks like it starts with 城州 Joshu or maybe 武州 Bushu. Good Spot Piers, I couldn't sort out that first kanji. I agree with Uwe for the remainder.

Yep, already blocked Joe2.

Hi Stefano, Other than the blade was registered in Showa 60 (1985) and has three mekegu ana, it is as I've said above but it is a torokusho, a registration card for legal purposes, not an appraisal paper. As such it simply records basic sword details such as type of blade, length, curvature and signature if there is one. You might infer that, with three mekugi ana, it is likely to be suriage but it doesn't expressly say that and there is no reference to when the sword was made or who the smith was (which is completely normal for this kind of document).

Maybe an uguisu - Japanese bush warbler...it's a popular motif.

Hi Stefano, I think it has the number in Japanese on the right hand side: 弐八九九八 - 28998. Other than that, it's an unsigned katana 70.2 cm long and with a sori of 1.6cm. The torokusho was issued in Oita prefecture.

I think it perhaps looks odd because the hada is tending towards masame hada and whatever it is is following the grain of the steel but it does look like chikei or some similar activity.

Hi Dee, There's normally at least one shinsa in the USA each year - either at the Orlando show or in San Francisco (sometimes both) and there's usually a mail-in service so you don't have to attend in person if you don't want to. Forums are a microcosm of society so you get the bad with the good and the block button is very useful. I don't think that stops a person downvoting a post though and I wonder if Brian could perhaps add a feature that prevents those on a person's blocked list from commenting on their posts also? Anyway, hope you'll drop in once in a while.

I'm sure this question will have been asked and answered earlier in this thread so apologies for the repetition, however, if smelting iron was an option, why wasn't it used in weapons making? Why persist with a tatara to produce tamahagane and for smiths to make their own oroshigane when there was another process, probably less of a PIA than the tatara, that could get you an ingot of iron that could be used to make a sword? If you hadn't noticed, the Japanese in the Edo period and earlier did like swords and lots of them and, if there was some process that would have made processing the raw material easier, is it not likely that this would have displaced the other technologies available? According to another thread on here and from our own Jean Colin, even an oroshigane kiln doesn't heat iron or steel to the degree considered to be smelting, so where did the cast iron tsuba come from? Anyway, this thread is pretty much the turd that just won't flush and I don't expect any logical argument to send it down the tubes so this will be my one and only contribution to it other than to suggest to Dan that if he has proof that the technology and capability to make cast iron existed in the Edo period and has primary sources that show this the please post those references or take the absence of proof positive as the end of the argument.

Hi Alex, Happy New Year to you too. I'm going to go with "probably" - I can't see anything to make me think it isn't genuine but the photos are coming up pretty small on my screen and a full length shot of blade with the habaki off would help too if you're able post one. The fittings do look good from the photos, the tsuba is signed Bushu ju Masakata and looks quite nicely done as does the fuchi and I think those are fairly good signs. Anyway, I'm sure you'll get some comments from those with bigger screens and better eyes shortly.

There's an example here, but different in style and using a different yuki: https://picryl.com/m...k-a-867987?zoom=true

Hi Lewis, I don't think so in the west - I think Ray Singer answered a similar question recently with the conclusion that, as it is a special order sword, it would have received the smith's best efforts and superior materials and therefore be superior to his normal production. Not sure if that would be the case in Japan.

The elephant-headed creature might be a Baku: https://en.wikipedia...iki/Baku_(mythology)

Hi Michael, The mei is: 乙柳軒 - Otsuryuken 味墨鋪随 - Miboku Nobuyuki Markus Sesko's Signatures of Japanese Sword Fittings Artists says he was 3rd Hamano generation and working between 1756 and 1793.

Above my pay grade - once things start getting cursive, I'm done. I'm sure @Nobody or @SteveM will be along soon though.

It's by a fairly well known artist, Otsuryken Shozui of the Hamano school. If you have a google around for tsuba with that name that have authentication papers you'll get an idea of prices - also you'll see other tsuba from this school that might interest you. Sorry, I'm running out the door to do some Christmas stuff but I'm sure others will chip in soon.

Gary, that's not a house, that's a museum. Amazing collection!

I'm with you Colin, the two signed pieces are the most interesting and the one with cranes wins the race.

Hi Michael, Welcome to NMB. I'm with Dan, I think that all of the ones that you have picked are genuine antique tsuba for the reasons that Dan points out. With fake tsuba, they are often cast and the sekigane (metal fitted to the hole for the sword's tang) and the punch marks around it are also cast and it's relatively easy to spot once you've seen a few and they don't show the marks of wear from the washers fitted to fine tune the fit of the tsuba to the handle of the blade. The other thing to look out for is marks left by the casting mold which can show around any holes or open work in the tsuba. Back in the day, the manufacturer would make the plate from forged iron or steel (sorry Dan) and the holes would be made by perforating the plate with a drill and then finished with a saw or file so the holes should not to show any excess metal left there. Also cast tsuba can show a crystaline structure to the metal (particularly with brass) or holes where air bubbles have burst on the surface which isn't there with forged metal and modern steel tends to be uniform in structure so you don't get something called tekkotsu ("iron bones") showing, usually on the rim, and which are evidence that the plate contains metal of varying qualities of hardness and which are eliminated by modern manufacturing processes. Look at the rim on the tsuba immediately above and you can see irregularities in the metal which probably wouldn't be the case with a cast copy or other modern copy. The other thing that leaps out in all of the examples that you have presented above is the quality of each of them which you will come to recognise as your eye develops. Essentially, if something looks like it takes a long time and a great deal of care to produce, then that is a pointer towards it being a genuine tsuba. Take what is (for me) probably the lowest quality example above, the one with the cockerel sitting on a hedge or hurdle: if you look at the hurdle itself, all of the branches and fronds are distinct and sharply defined which must have taken the maker a good deal of time and effort to create, by hand and probably with a hammer and chisel. The same is true of those tsuba above where there is a bird, shell or other element in a different metal to the base-plate. That takes time, skill and effort which isn't there with the fake tsuba. The final thing to say about this hobby is that, to avoid the fakes, buy from reputable dealers who have a website and a trading history and avoid Ebay and the Japanese auction sites until you know what you are looking at. Tsuba with authentication papers are still relatively cheap and that can give reassurance and, of course, you can post stuff on here that you are thinking of purchasing for a sanity check if you need to.

Hi Glen, I don't think that anyone would argue that the shinsa system is perfect, but it is about as good as it is going to be unless it changes to a rolling system where there is no pressure to push items through the process on a given day and members of the panel can take their time to fully evaluate the items they see and judge accordingly but I doubt that will happen as the people involved probably have paying jobs to do. I think the issue is that, at the moment, shinsa all takes place on one day with sometimes hundreds of items to evaluate and if tsuba presented are unsigned and don't fit precisely into one of the established "boxes" in terms of their attributes then what do the panel do? They presumably ascribe it to a group that is known (or thought) to work in a variety of styles and stick a finger in the air as regards whether it's Edo or pre-Edo period. The owner gets a paper verifying that he has a genuine antique tsuba so is either satisfied or goes elsewhere for a second opinion and picks the one he likes best if they differ. The problem is, to state the obvious, there are a vast quantity of tsuba out there that lack distinct characteristics. If you have several million swords in existence, each one possessing at least one tsuba you can see the size of the task particularly where many of the swords were of low value and carried low value fittings, shiiremono and the like. These are just going to be knocked out by mass production and the designs will be from the design books that did the rounds in the Edo period hence similarity in motifs across different schools/ provinces. I guess, if someone had lots of free time, access to the necessary books and research articles and the linguistic ability pick through them, it might be possible to divine how the shinsa panels set their parameters but in the absence of that, when you see a tsuba papered to Shoami one just concludes that it is a genuine antique, but a John Doe effectively.

Thank you for the kind words Sam. There's a Heinjo/ Onin style tsuba with a rectangular hitsu ana on this page of the Varshavsky collection. https://varshavskyco...tion.com/onin-tsuba/ so perhaps it isn't so unusual. It did occur to me that the tsuba might have originally had some Heianjo-style decoration done in copper that had been lost or that the copper is the remnants of a means of fixing another design element to the plate but that has now been lost but I'm guessing. Dee, would you mind sharing the seller's description of the item?

They’re usually shiny when they’re fresh Jeff!