Gakusee

You both could join established clubs which have regular Zoom sessions. I know the NBTHK AB organises these online sessions and so do other clubs. It is not ideal but if your objective is to “talk swords”, as you both state above, such sessions should at least go some way. Of course, they are no substitute for physical meetings.

Well, have you checked Eddy Wertheim of the Japanese Gallery in Kensington or Pablo Kunz from Unique Japan (who people do not realise is based and lives in the U.K.) and so on? Peter Yorke sadly passed away… There are probably another 5-6 U.K.-based people from whom you can buy papered swords and they operate on a “semi-professional” basis. There are also the various antique dealers who specialise in more than just Asian art eg Peter Finer and his sons and the like. Actually, there are sources (including the auction houses with their biannual Japanese auctions) from where you can buy papered swords in the U.K. . Also, members of the ToKen Society buy and sell from each other too. https://new.uniquejapan.com/home/ japanesegallery.com peterfiner.com NB: I am not endorsing anyone mentioned above and have no relation to these apart from knowing some of them. Caveat emptor and make your own conclusions.

Paul, this was good, thanks. Clever use of dual cameras and inset video stream. You still need to work on the lighting element for the swords. But otherwise, thank you so much for pioneering this.

Gary, thanks for posting. We cannot tell much from these photos but it looks like a great sword. Could you photograph the kinsuji and sunagashi which must have given it the attribution together with some nagare? Also the koshirae seems to have lovely byakudan nuri.

Well, Pablo is a professional dealer His catalogues and documenting, as herein, are always very high-quality.

Why are we seen questions such as is this way past polish / point of no return? The photos are blurry but I cannot see deep rust or disappearing hamon or a very thin blade where there is a danger of kawagane being thinned to have shingane show through. Measuring kasane, motohaba, showing more focused pic of the hamon and kissaki will hep people evaluate the state a bit better.

Well done, Manuel. Congratulations on this impressive result! I hope to see you again soon, with the rest of the Italian nihontophiles. Keep it up and all the best!

Dear Yurie, this sounds like an excellent idea. Thank you for the initiative!

I will be honest: I like the sea horse menuki most of all in this package but it is a bit like the tail wagging the dog from an interest perspective... Might be rather late-manufacture. The dai ito has some wear to it and greasing from handling while the sho - looks newer. They have different menuki etc so probably retied at a different time..... The was put together at different times with different elements.. Probably the tsuba were replaced at some point away from some more insect themed or marine themed.... However, there are some valuable elements in there and the NBTHK clearly wants to preserve those... That is why they probably papered them.

Axel, well, people's tastes are different. It might have some good elements but it feels put together incongruently, without following a continuous theme or aesthetic. It just appears haphazard: Shoki...oni... tadpoles.... autumnal leaves.....masks..all sorts of clashing metals.

As far as I know, the Munetsugu daisho is part of Udo's personal collection and was for display only. He has had it for over 20 years and it has some emotional connotations but you could get in touch with him via his website (Honto Nihonto). 'Best' is always subjective. To some, it means the rarest. Others look for it among the top-rated blades (Juyo) and others assume it should be the most expensive. We had another thread on 'best' in here. Best from what perspective? Best as a weapon could have been the two massive Nanbokucho blades..... Best aesthetically - we all have different tastes. Probably on the daisho we should say - the rarest. True daisho, same smith/dating/ same paper/koshirae. I quite liked the Hikobeijo Sukesada and also the tiny Sengo tanto with lovely TH koshirae (Seiyudo).

Luc, thanks for helping out with the educational side of the event too. We appreciated it and the small but avid audience of Katchu followers all seemed to enjoy the kabuto kantei. That was a novel approach to education and in general such sessions are valuable to discuss more intricate details of items and examine them in hand - whether it is swords or kodogu or kabuto or amour.

From the organisers, I have heard that probably pre-sales and ticket allocations are trending towards 200. Hopefully, there will be some visitors on the day, who have not pre-booked. The reality is that in Europe, we do not have that many options to attend hobby events like the US. The recent Berlin study day was a great success at the Samurai Museum, and around 40-50 people turned up at that NBTHK led event. I hope collectors and students of the samurai arts will turn up. This Utrecht event is more multidisciplinary than just swords. The Utrecht event website has a lot of detail about the armour / sword dealers who will attend as well as the educational programme.

I have actually tried ChatGPT with Juyo Zufu for which I have translations and sometimes the results are so far off, it is not even funny. For standard, non-technical subject matters where English resource material is prolific, it does reasonably well. For arcane subjects such as nihonto, in less intuitive languages such as Japanese and Chinese (where different alphabets and characters have different meanings subject to context or time-period usage), then caveat emptor. Be very careful as it mixes myth with fact, pulp fiction with history and blends things up. I made repeated attempts to teach it about Osafune, and within the same discussion thread, it did seem to pick it up somewhat. However, in a new dialogue, the knowledge was gone. It is a very advanced semantic model but that is what it is for now.

Fully matched, kamons in place, great kabuto smith, in great state of preservation, koshu tokubetsu kicho paper - what more to wish for Well done

Abalone or beetle, these are beautiful!. Thanks for sharing, Piers

Ah, that is a no. The regulations have been about for a while ....

One also needs to ask the question why the blade is not signed…..You know what the regulation in Japan stipulates

John / Yulian: in fact this did happen a lot in the past. Blades which were either mumei, or with deliberately removed signatures, but bearing stylistic similarities to certain smiths subsequently have had applied to them the signatures of these aforementioned smiths. That is the whole idea behind gimei: you do not chisel a gimei signature on a random blade but on one that is close enough to be perceived to be by the putative smith. It goes even beyond that. Sometimes the styles of both workmanship and mei are close enough and a blade could switch attribution. For instance, I have seen Masatsune blades which at one point were deemed Bitchu Ko-Aoe but have also had Ko-Bizen attributions (admittedly these two Bizen schools were close in workmanship and geographic proximity). Similarly, even within Bitchu, there is a Masatsune that at one point was deemed Ko-Aoe and at another Senoo. Now that is a bit too close as they are both branches of Bitchu (most people just tend to lump these into the Aoe bucket) but nevertheless, it is still illustrative. I have held a blade which at one point was deemed to be an Osafune Kagemitsu (at Juyo ) and at another, Osafune Kagemasa (at TokuJu). It just happened that it was strategically clipped after the “Kage” character, with the rest of the signature intact. Now, of course these were master and student respectively but clearly close enough. Sometimes the NBTHK would uphold a blade as made by a certain smith but would qualify the mei as “to mei ga aru”, which means that they acknowledge there is the mei of the given smith but they have some doubts, or the signature is a bit off, but needs further study. Sometimes the qualification disappears in the passage from Juyo to TokuJu and they reaffirm the signature. My examples above are not pertinent to the NTHK NPO, but demonstrate the subtleties involved and how many nuances there are that go through experts’ minds, while we / collectors like sliced and diced and readily regurgitated answers.