Shugyosha

I'm not quite sure how far Santa's remit stretches, but... Dear Santa, I've never stopped believing in you, or being a kiss-arse. Please lean on the gods of cricket and nihonto so that they get their heads together and arrange dates in 2017 for the Australia v England Ashes tests in Perth and Adelade and DTI to be on days that serendipitively (???) allow me to take in all three events with a little R&R in Sydney thrown in the middle. I promise to be a good student of nihonto this year and not to buy anything that I don't really, really want.

Hi Jim, It's in katakana next to the picture of the tang: Wa o ru taa A. Ko n pu to n (sorry, couldn't get my Japanese keyboard working this morning). If someone has the auction catalogues or 100 Masterpieces that would also perhaps give you a means of verifying that the sword was in the collection. Best, John

Hi Grev, I'd completely missed that so I've lashed out $10 on a copy. I suspect that it will be a very valuable resource. Best, John

Sounds like a great idea but as Jean says, a lot of work. To overcome my ignorance to some degree, I try to adopt a problem solving approach to identifying kanji and I've often thought that it would be useful to have common sword and tosogu-related kanji grouped by radical as it is often possible to make out part of a kanji but not the whole thing and that could possibly be used as a shortcut when trying to work out inscriptions. I'd thought I might put it together when I have more time on my hands...

Hi Gary: a trip to San Francisco would indeed make sense - I don't think I'd have to try too hard to get approval for that...and maybe a run on to Hawaii...I have a desire to visit the Arizona memorial. Also Chicago might be an option as the Missus is into researching her family tree and has a wayward ancestor who went coal mining in Illinois in the 1880s and she'd love to do some digging around to see if she could find out anything about him and I could leave her to do that and take in the show. Hi Barry: thanks for the reply - yes you are absolutely right. Perhaps the lack of focus is the problem and I should stop tinkering and get serious. Out of interest, which smith's work did you fall in love with? Kind regards, John

Hi Gary, I hope I'm not being rude but I feel that you I have to come back on some of the points that you have made. Yours is an interesting take on collecting that doesn't seem to account for the growth and changes in taste of the individual, the acquisition of knowledge or the idea that one can improve one's collection incrementally by selling from the bottom to acquire better items. Here's where I am at: My finances are never going to be such that I can own a bunch of swords worth in excess of $10,000 - even if I could I would struggle to justify spending that much on a hobby. My collecting doesn't have a particular focus, so how do I justify doing anything at all? Well for me it's about educating myself and I don't mind paying some "school fees" in order to do so - I don't regard this as taking a beating, though obviously existing in more rarified climes where every purchase turns a profit would be preferable. I guess there are a number of other ways that I could go about educating myself, one of which is to visit sword shows, but I'm on the other side of the pond to you and there aren't anything like the quantity or quality of sword shows in the UK that there are Stateside - in fact the only Japanese swords one can hope to see regularly are at millitaria fairs and these tend to be low quality. Furthermore, I have a wife who enjoys travel, but I have to take account of her when planning holidays etc and she isn't really interested in swords so my options are limited in terms of getting to Japan or USA for sword-related purposes. Also, I don't buy things I don't like nor would not be happy to keep but do feel that continuing to develop is an important and there's no point in having a house full of stuff for its own sake - so some gets moved on. When the desire to develop stops so will my interest and I'll just sell everything and ride off into the sunset. Kind regards, John

Thanks for the tip Peter. I've contacted Paul and am going to have a run down to London to drop a sword off on Saturday. If anyone wants to put a face to a name, I'll be the short, fat bloke clutching a grey holdall. Best, John

Hi Joe, I hope your sale goes well - I love your monster katana. I've got a couple of swords up for sale at the moment and they are currently priced at a loss. The answer to Gary's question is obvious in that, if you buy at dealer prices like I did, without a significant shift upwards in the market, you must sell at a loss. If I buy a sword at one price and then take it back to the dealer the next week he will pay me less than he sold it to me for. To some extent the sales section on NMB has undermined resale prices also (sorry Brian!!) because people often hold off on buying what are already reasonably priced items in the hope of a further reduction and this often follows and then sometimes another one. Should I have bought these swords? Based on purely monetary criteria, obviously not. However, I do enjoy owning them, I've learned things from having them and I'm selling them so I can put the money back into something that I can learn more from (hopefully in a pleasant way). If I can't sell them at a sensible price then they will go back in the box for a while and I'll think of another way to move them on.

Hi Brian, There's something a bit odd about this one. For me it has that "made in China" feel to it. The scale on the tang is weird and the length of the nakago for a suiriage blade seems too long, though that may be the photos. The mei looks etched rather than cut which might explain the scale (I can't make anything of it out) and even if I'm wrong and it it is genuine, like you say, the tang condition says that it may have been through a fire. There's enough doubt there to make me run away, but it's late here in the UK and you might get some different views. Best, John Mark posted while I was typing I'm not disputing what he said but if it is a shinto blade, it's had a pretty hard life - suriage and no discernable ha machi from the photos which again would make me hesitate.

Hi Guido, You know far more about this than I do, but for me it begs the question of why go to all the trouble of faking the papers and not give the swords themselves a more attractive attribution that would inflate their price? Kind regards, John

There's a nice example here: http://www.seiyudo.com/ka-090116.htm I remember reading somewhere that longer hira zukuri blades were more prone to cracking during the quenching process but I can't remember where I got that from. Best, John

It's the Seki stamp, so it's a shingunto. Best, John

Not really, which is why I hadn't replied sooner. The kanji in the second photo are (I think): 運者右天 (un sha u ten) but they don't make any sense to me in this combination. As regards the other side, I'm struggling to make out the kanji at all apart from the third one 者 (person) which also appears in the other inscription. Hopefully you'll get some better help shortly. Best, John

Do you have any close-up pictures of the blade? The activity might give a clue as to its age. As regards the tang, I'm suspicious of the colour of the patina (too red for me) which doesn't look quite right and also the metal of the tang seems too smooth. This makes me wonder whether this isn't a more modern blade with the tang adjusted to give an older look. Best, John

It's an interesting example. Having thought further, if the flaw did appear after shinsa and during polish, I'm curious as to why the "high ranking polisher" went on to finish the job after the hagire had become apparent and (excluding personal sentiment) why the owner would spend further money on what is effectively a write-off.

Sorry Lee, you beat me to it.

Hi Chris, Have a look at the photograph with the oshigata. I couldn't see it in the first picture. Maybe the blade passed shinsa before polish and the hagire was either revealed in or caused by the polishing process?

Hi Donny, It's your money and they are your eyes and I don't mean to speak out of turn here but, just keep your hand in your pocket for a while. You seem to be buying a number of items that are, at best, of doubtful quality and you don't need to do this. You can learn just by looking at items for sale on the internet and studying and researching them. There's lots of good advice on here and usually good items at decent prices if you look at the sales section. Also, if you are contemplating a purchase, there's no shame in asking advice first. Kind regards, John

Hi Joe, So here I am sitting out on this tree limb and I'm about to get to sawing at it... Whilst I absolutely agree with your reasoning, I'm not sure that this is the way to look at it. Is it not the case that the best works by koto smiths are better (or regarded as better) than the best works of shinto smiths notwithstanding that there might have been a greater thinning out koto works over time? Essentially what I'm getting at is that, however many shinto swords are eliminated from the equation, if the best five (or however many) koto works are put up against the best five shinto works of all time, the koto works will win despite the fact that there are more shinto works extant. As regards Ken's original question, (and I don't know the answer) but here's a bit of supposition: The best quality iron sand will be used up first (gold mines in certain provinces were pretty much mined out by the 18th century), so it was possible to use up all of a commodity in a particular locallity); The more easily accessible sand will be used up before the stuff that is hardest to get to; Smiths working with a material that they know inside out and which is of a consistent quality will achieve consistently higher workmanship; Groups of smiths were forced to move around during war time or as a result of natural disasters are more likely to have to work with materials of a quality that they are not used to; When peace broke out in the Edo period raw materials were available from a variety of sources and so the iron available might have come from a mixture of sources or at least was less likely to be from a single source; Many of the swords produced in the shinto period were more akin to art swords rather than swords made as weapons that were coincidentally beautiful and also were not made for use against armoured oponents so the need for the best quality steel possible was reduced. I'm sure someone will shoot all of this down shortly, but it has been fun trying to hypothesise. Best, John

ZZ Top??

Many thanks Morita san. Apologies Bojan. Kind regards, John

Hi Bojan, It reads: Mogarishi 藻枋子 Soten sei 宗典制衣 Best, John

I have dealt with Marius several times and have always been very pleased with what I've bought and the transaction as a whole. Also, I feel I have to give a shout to Hamish who bent over backwards to get an item to me recently, despite the Australian Postal Services best efforts to the contrary.

Sorry if this is a bit obvious, but it looks rather like the mae kanji from maedate 前 : Mae - ahead, in front, before. Best, John

The first kanji in the seal looks like 軍 but it doesn't look like this in Markus Sesko's book on Identifying Seal Script...