Kronos

It says seki Kanenori so the first one i think. From Markus' index: KANENORI (兼則), Eishō (永正, 1504-1521), Mino – “Nōshū-jū Kanenori” (濃州住兼則), “Kanenori” (兼則), San´ami school, he made mostly katana with a stout sugata and a rather wide mihaba, the jigane is a dense ko-itame with shirake-utsuri, some blades show a mizukage-like utsuri at the base, the hamon is a suguha or gunome, sometimes with ko-ashi, but we also know a suguha with nijūba or a relative flamboyant koshi-no-hiraita gunome-midare which is mixed with chōji, the bōshi is either sugu with a ko-maru-kaeri, a midare-komi that tends to jizō, or ends in a pointed manner, the yasurime are takanoha on katana and higaki on tantō, he signed in a rather powerful manner with a thick chisel along the shinogi-ji of the tang, wazamono, chū-jō-saku

Without a shadow of a doubt. Overall I guess it boils down to where you're coming from, if you're after 1 great sword then this may not be the one, on the other hand if you collect Bizen and have 4 or 5 other juyo+ like a Fukuoka ichimonji, a Morimitsu, a Mitsutada and a Tomonari then this would fit in perfectly with that collection. It all comes down to context.

Just wow...

I'm afraid you may need to look further afield in that case as I'm not sure about mainland Europe. There's always Japan but registration and agent fees would be too prohibitive for just a window which I'd recommend. There's always Bob Benson who's very good in the US, then there's a couple of guys in the UK while not having done apprenticeships in Japan I'd trust to polish medium level nihonto and could certainly handle a window with ease. Your best bet may be Andrew Ickeringill who while far away in Australia is a top quality togishi and I believe he'll be doing a round of windows in the next couple of months.

I'd agree with what has already been said, looks sue-soshu and with 6.4mm kasane could still be quite healthy despite the rust. Not a lot to go on except the shape which reminds of the likes of tsunahiro. Where about's are you located?

Yeah, it's just Fedex (and most parcel companies) being mongs.

Well it's 87cm nagasa so could be shortened to 75cm+ easily and retain signature. It's also non fatal so could be polished out technically. Either way you have a flawless juyo nanbokucho tachi but then it becomes like everything else from the period and you miss out on what makes it special as generally ubu swords like this are on the juyo bunkazai - kokuho level and you have no chance of owning.

This type of flaw doesn't bother me so much as forging flaws. I can understand a sword having a hard life in this way and being used, but something that's polished down beyond recognition or has some ware drives me nuts.

Scientifically there is an undeniable truth to be found. However to answer that one needs to first answer "what makes a good sword?". i.e. what is the critieria we are judging on. Is it what is most aesthetically pleasing? or what is most functional. If it is purely function then it would be a simple case of doing cutting tests (I'd suggest pig carcasses or some such as hacking up convicts is frowned upon these days in most parts of the world). Then simply finding what is sharpest on average without breaking too easily. If this were the case using modern technology and non-traditional methods would render the best result most likely. Whereas if it's pure aesthetics it's hard to argue that the mid-late kamakura is the pinnacle although the best early shinto smiths come close but there's not as many of them and it's aesthetically pleasing in a slightly different way. I suspect the answer lies somewhere in between whereby it's a time that produced the most artistic swords that were still highly functional and could be classed as saijo-owazamono/Owazamono although no ones going to be doing cutting tests with a motoshige tachi anytime soon. You say craftsmanship is just as good but the raw materials are substandard but I disagree. Harvesting the best materials and creating tamahagane is part of the skill, or at least it probably was in the early days when smiths had small operations and created their own. Raw materials seems like a cheap cop-out when from a geological perspective there's now a whole world to find the best iron sand and it's almost inevitable that there's some comparable to that found in 13th century Japan. There's clearly a gap in the entire process somewhere if modern smiths want to create work as good as 700 years ago but can't, whether that be raw materials, the current tatara process or forging skill. The time you pinpoint as particularly exceptional was one of continuous experimentation from the inception of the classic Nihonto shape through to where soshu smiths may of looked to the likes of ko-hoki for inspiration but weren't afraid to do things a little differently from those that went before to improve upon it. They were after all still trying to perfect their methods whereas beginning nanbokucho it seems to get a bit stale and maybe they were happy with what they had and in combination with the need of increased quantity standards changed. I'd contend that the best smiths throughout history that surpassed their teachers were those that didn't follow convention as is the Japanese way but tried to improve upon what they had been taught and this is why you still get great smiths like Kiyomaro in shinshinto.

I can honestly say I've never experienced anything like that, but maybe it's a little different in mainland Europe, seems very relaxed in the Uk except "weapons". If it's really high level stuff there's also the option of specialist antique shippers who handle everything but it can cost £400+ for a sword so not worth it unless it's of high value.

With those dimensions it could even be kamakura, it seems like one of those that's probably hard to tell unless you're holding it. The reason my first thought was Oei'ish was the slight saki-zori, small kissaki and taper. But in a healthy example I'd expect 1.9cm+ saki-haba, 2.8cm+ moto-haba and a kasane around 0.7 or 0.8cm which is the most glaring thing that points to an earlier time. this is a very worn down Morimitsu for example: http://world.choshuya.co.jp/sale/gj/1008/4_morimitsu.htm And yet that still has 0.52cm kasane. There's a wide variety of shapes in kamakura so it's not beyond the realms of possibility. I guess the question is just how hard a life has it had.

??越國泰次作 It doesn't make any sense to me. 3rd kanji could be tetsu 鐵

Looks like a nice sword, Early muromachi but dimensions would help. It could be the start of a first name like first name Seijirō (清次郎) but the Kiyo looks correct. I'd maybe check out Nio school and see if the workmanship matches. The second Kanji I can't get to match anything so far. There's always the possibility of gimei so could originally of been a tachi :S

Not sure how your bank is but for me £1000 gets me 161479 yen including the £10 fee. The recieving bank may charge a small fee as well so not good for small payments. In comparison using CD I get 166387 yen, so a saving of £30. Not a huge amount but it can add up the larger it is. It's good also as in the summer I bought a few hundred thousand yen to pay for a polish when it's complete next month when the exchange rate was 190:1 knowing that it would likely go down which is just held in my currency account until i need it. Shame i didn't do the same for the $ when it was 1.6:1

Just checking their rates now for £100 I get 162.26 yen/£ which doesn't go up until I hit £600 which is 166.5071 then goes up slowly to 166.9 for £10k. Consider the inter-bank/forex exchange rate is 168.89 this is fantastic.

I use another wire transfer company currencies direct who had the best rates at the time. Basically paypal will screw you the most (their rates are quite frankly scandalous) but ok for small amounts, followed by your bank, then CC's but wire transfer by these intermediate companies is the best but it needs to be a significant amount like £500+.

A fibreglass pen works very well on tsuba if it's not too small (like cleaning a floor with a toothbrush), not sure how it'd compare to a copper penny as with abrasives it's all about getting the softest material that will remove the rust. That way it will minimize any damage to the good steel.

I agree with Darcy about Aoi's system as it doesn't leave much room at each rank. Using the analogy of chu-saku being rank 5 on the scale it appears what they've done is taken that down to 5 ranks from 9, so ranks 1-4 which no one talks about is actually chu and chujo saku so it's not until you get to jo saku on Aoi's system that you would even get onto the Fujishiro scale. This basically leaves jojo saku and saijo saku (on Aoi scale) encompassing everything from the lowest of Jo's to the absolute summit of Saijo's (on fujishiro scale) into these 2 ranks. This all means there can be a massive gap in even just Saijo stuff, especially when you consider there's a big gap anyway between smiths at the top on Fujishiro's scale. Whats more is that it's judging the individual blades as opposed to the smiths and this is where I disagree with Darcy. Taking the Juyo Kozori smiths works for example, some of them are up there with good works of Masamitsu (or other mainline osafune smiths of the time) that got him ranked Jo-saku. Fujishiro was just a man after all so was only able to rank what he saw. Therefore there's plenty of smiths that got ranks based on reputation and many more unranked or ranked based on their best or worst work depending upon what fujishiro was able to view so it's not a perfect system. Saijo smiths did have "off days" and while for the purpose of Kantei of mumei items they don't due to things impossible to know that are buried in history, in reality when you look at a large body of signed work from a prolific smith it is easy to see and cannot be put down to condition. I also Don't think Aoi takes into account when and where the blade was made unlike fujishiro, so it's more based on the sword for what it is than where it fits in so a Jo saku kamakura would be equivalent of a Jo saku Kanbun shinto. All this just muddies the waters so while Fujishiro can give a good indication the majority of the time nothing will ever compare to your own eyes which is why seeing as many swords as possible of all levels but especially the best of the best allows each individual to form their own internal ranking system and nothing can substitute for that. I do like the idea of ranking items out of 10 as you would do for films etc as at the end of the day the variety is so great that you need a lot of places to put something, this is why i think Toko Taikans system is good because it is a large, open ended scale although not without it's own flaws. Speaking for the Masahiro sometimes it's hard to tell from photo's alone and in person it may be a lot more impressive. This seems true more so of swords in suguha and small activities/grain and the beauty maybe found in different areas such as the refinement and efficiency than wild activities, large nie particles and O-hada one associates with Soshu. Not to mention different dealers have different photography techniques and some swords are just a pain to capture what you want. Personally I'd give this Masahiro a perfect 5/7

Budget?

The Kozori smith used a different character for Hiro, but then again this isn't the first Kozori mei that has confused the hell out of me.

I can see why they could think mitsu, but it's very different in a lot of ways. I just can't see what else it could be with the 3 top strokes that are very unique for mitsu, a hard one for sure. Do you have any pics of the blade?

Suffice to say wakizashi aren't worth getting polished unfortunately unless they meet certain criteria such as famous names, cut down tachi from kamakura and kodachi or you can see enough activities to know it's a fantastic blade that will be attributed to a good smith. If not you'd have to get it for peanuts and/or it being in excellent koshirae. As an example I have one that is most likely oei that was very cheap but I'm being cautious and getting a window done as it could still be a net loss.

Including shirasaya and habaki $2000 and up depending on the polisher.

Has this gone to shinsa yet?

Agreed, good advice from Ed. In regards to the pitting, it looks pretty deep, however a good polisher imho will be able to get rid of most of it or possibly elect to reshape the kissaki slightly and move the yokote down which would eliminate all the pitting (this is an extreme option as you're losing steel so a bit unlikely in this particular case). Overall the pitting is not a big problem and if any remains it will be very minor and only left there to preserve as much of the blade as possible. For $475 you've done very well even if gimei as it looks like a well made sword and the hamon does remind of Hirotaka although not really my area. The sugata/nakago/nakago-jiri/yasurime are also correct for this smith. Here's a mei comparison: