rkg

Hey guys, Timely thread. The kid has a wakizashi by one of these two sukenagas - trouble is that I can't figure out whether it is the shodai or nidai (comments?) Its signed differently (with the mon/ichi symbol (as described in the blerb above):" [Kikumon] Ichi Biyo Osafune Shi Yokoyama Kaganosuke Fujiwara Ason Sukenaga February, Koka 3rd year" (1846) - wish I could read Japanese better so I could puzzle out the taikan entry :-/ It has hozon papers, so I'd guess the mei is probably right for whichever one did it... Here's a rubbing of the nakago: and here's a pic of the blade: Hopefully this doesn't just confuse things... Best, rkg (Richard George)

This is something I've always wondered about. Are there any images of "known old polish"? The best I've got is a naginata, early Shinto, that was apparently apparently never mounted - I don't know if its state was pre-polish or what, but.... http://home.teleport.com/~rkg/photos/ub ... verall.jpg http://home.teleport.com/~rkg/photos/ubu_nag_tip1.jpg note the file marks in the second image... Best, rkg (Richard George)

Thanks to all who replied. First, I knew the origins of the theme - I kind of bought it as a reminder of its meaning, actually. I hadn't realized how popular the theme was at the time, which probably explains their similarities better than them having to have been done in the same shop or something. Outside of the kyo guys, I can't ever seem to remember which schools did which tagane "adjustments" in the nakago ana area.. Second, the "Heianjo" seems like an interesting kantei for it (I hadn't thought about it, but they did pieces like this), though the iron confuses me - perhaps I haven't seen enough pieces from this school, but when I think of this school either that really doughy, easily rusted iron or that highly refined iron kind of like you see in kyo pieces comes to mind - this doesn't seem like either of these, plus the patina seems pretty black compared to the Heianjo pieces I've held... maybe they got ahold of some other iron or something? Third, I hadn't thought about it, but maybe Ford's right about the deliberate "corrosion" - it seems like some of the features would have been completely eroded away (fine details on monkey's face, the zogan eyes, etc.) if it was "natural". The question of art "restoration" seems to be a minefield - I had recently acquired and started to read "Art Restoration: The Culture, the Business, the Scandal" but managed to lose it on a flight somewhere (story about trying to navigate airline lost and found deleted), and kind of figured it was an omen.... Thanks again all. Best, rkg (Richard George)

Hi, There's actually surprisingly little written in English for the tosogu collector, let alone for the beginning tosogu collector (I keep thinking a writing decent primer on tosogu appreciation would be something to do, but...). It doesn't help any that there are a number of somewhat orthogonal aspects to be concerned with (artistic, construction, functional/usage, historic/ethnographic, etc), and a lot of what is in English look like coffee table books with surprisingly little additional insight into these concerns (or worse, like Robinson's book, suggest er,uh, "questionable" conservation techniques (I still cringe when I think about his advice to burn tsuba to take care of them...)), so you end up having to dig through a lot of books for little pieces of insight. It also doesn't help any that some of the classifications are somewhat arbitrary (having been invented mostly to be able to sell stuff) and/or in need of revision (a lot of "important" pieces were parts of family/shrine collections and have really only recently become available to people researching these beasties), or possibly just explanation to us gaijin (I've seen many cases the answers to something we all 'wonder' about is either somewhat common knowledge among advanced collectors in Japan or is in a book somewhere - in Japanese... There are tooo many books where 3 pages of description in Japanese gets boiled down to "Tsuba, Iron, XXX theme, Momoyama Period" for the english "translation".....). I also think that sometimes collectors spend too much time trying to "bin" pieces rather than grok them - I actually found that sword book that Paul Martin just translated very refreshing in that in addition to the usual fundamental "stuff", it focused far more on what makes a "good" piece rather than identifying minor and esoteric differences that would aid you in binning it (if you happen know what you are looking at - so how does that help the beginner again?...) (I'd actually recommend reading this and going and looking at some swords before buying/studying Nagayama's tome, but I digress). Also, as with swords, I also would posit that making an effort to go physically look at some good pieces might be a better way to spend money than buying countless books on the subject, or even buying poor quality "starter" pieces. Those coffee table books are actually kind of misleading in this respect because tosogu can look VERY different depending on the lighting conditions, there are huge issues with gamut and color control, etc. That said, depending on your interests, there are some fairly succinct (if perhaps debatable) and not too expensive "starter" books beyond the bits and pieces in Sato's/Robinson's books, etc. - Torigoye/Haynes's "Tsuba An Aesthetic Study" (is the NCJSC still pprinting this?), Harry's Koza translation, and actually stuff like Haynes's catalogs and Benson's "Bushido" magazines come to mind off the top of my head, as does Sasano's books if you are "into" iron tsuba (though due to the controversy about his dating you might need to take that with a grain of salt). It might also be useful to understand the times these pieces were being produced in, so another good" beginner" thing to study would be Japanese history (I slugged through Sansom's books, maybe somebody else has a better suggestion these days) and how the fittings were used - there are books on swordsmanship, or you can actually research this yourself by taking up iaido, etc. Its funny - I'm also interested in polearms, and they suffer somewhat from the same problem. you could probably start with Knutsen's newest polearm book though. I don't have any good gun/armor book suggestions - hopefully somebody else does.... Best, rkg (Richard George)

Hey guys, Here are some pics of a couple of ko-shoami tsuba - one I recently acquired, and the other is owned by another board member who was kind enough to let me post the image. They seem to be pretty similar in design, and I'm wondering - Was this "monkey and the moon" theme very popular, or did these come from the same maker's shop, or..? http://www.rkgphotos.com/recent_stuff/k ... front2.jpg http://www.rkgphotos.com/recent_stuff/k ... ey_bak.jpg and the other: http://www.rkgphotos.com/recent_stuff/ko_shoami/630.jpg Comments appreciated. Best, rkg (Richard George)

This is actually a very interesting question, because it strikes at the heart of our stewardship of this stuff... In the final analysis, after you've bought it you can do whatever you want to the piece, but for me all the stuff that comes with a piece is part of its "voice", hinting at what the piece has gone through in the past. when you discard those pieces or do heinous things like strip a tsuba down to bare metal and remake the patina in your own image (why people who do this don't just make a piece from scratch confuses me), you steal the piece's voice. Looking at it another way, a future owner might be really happy you kept the stuff together - I bet a lot of us would really like to have gotten that low ranking soldier's Nambokucho period tachi or sengoku period uchigatana koshirae that a sword had at one time or another... At the time both of these were being cranked out in high volume for various reasons and (like gunto koshirae until quite recently) probably weren't considered to be of much value beyond their immediate utility (often the bits got recycled in various ways, but that's another story). Now the few that are left are treasures... Best, rkg (Richard George)

+1 on this being a"modan" piece, painfully so... I'd recommend saving your money. FWIW, you'd be money ahead just making the pilgrimage to one of the sword shows and looking at a number of real pieces before you buy anything. There's one next week in SF... Books are nice, but unless you've seen a number of pieces in hand to compare what you're reading about to, its really hard to "get" it... Looking for pieces in the woodwork has a certain allure, but realistically you'll probably just be wasting money if you don't know what you're looking for/at... Good Luck, rkg (Richard George)

That's a tough one. You used to figure polishing cost at ~$100/inch + a few hundred for a shirasaya (+ shipping + fees ++ if you send it to Japan for the work) - but with the dollar falling so much against the yen, that might be low these days. There are guys that work for less (both here and in Japan), but... It looks like an older blade with some pitting(?), so there's also an increased chance kizu will "appear" during polish. And in general, wakizashi don't sell for much these days unless they're something special. I can't see enough in these images to even offer an attempt at kantei on this (probably just me, but...). Good Luck on your decision. Best, rkg (Richard George)

Ludof, The 4/3 system isn't a bad compromise (diatribe deleted). In general, fixed focal length lenses are "sharper" than zoom lenses. Another suggestion is to just go with manual lenses - I believe you can buy adapters for that line of cameras so you can use other lenses on it, and you can buy some excellent manual lenses for a song these days (though you'll need to learn to manually focus/set the exposure). you can also then reverse the lenses for some more magnification easily as well (you can also put a reversed lens in front of your lens to magnify as well, but that can get funky...). Also, if you have a lens that has poor close-up perfomance (not the case here obviously), you can also buy a dual element macro filter (like a canon 500D or the Nikon equivalent) - I actually just use one of these when I'm traveling rather than dragging along a dedicated macro lens, but that's just me. If you are going to reshoot your fittings you might want to consider the following suggestions: 1. If you aren't shooting in a raw data format, learn how use the custom white balance in the camera. This probably would have helped a lot with your "color" issue with your original lens (unless you are talking about chromatic aberration problems, of course). 2. if you aren't changing the lighting, learn how to shoot in manual mode with the camera - the metering systems usually leave a lot to be desired for several reasons ( systems often change exposure based on focus point/image composition, metering system in general tries to set exposure so the "average" intensity is a neutral gray (which is why you usually have to over expose pictures of fittings shot against a white background), etc.). 3. if you are doing real close ups, you might run into depth of field issues even with the 4/3 system. It is actually very helpful to shoot "tethered" so you can look at a large computer screen to do the focusing and set the focus exactly where you want it.). 4. turn off (or deflect) the built-in flash and use some kind of external lighting of your choice. 5. get a decent tripod/head - That new (well, to me) Manfrotto unit that allows you to place the column horizontally might be good, and the base ones aren't terribly expensive... IS is great if you're in the field shooting flowers/chasing bugs, but... Good Luck with your shooting. Best, rkg (Richard George)

it looks like nobody mentioned it, so I will - the stamp at the end of the nakago is discussed in detail on page 65 of slough's book about this smith. It appears to indicate that it is of kobuse construction - if that helps... Best, rkg (Richard George)

Ford, Interesting assertion on the tosho vs. onin tsuba. I've always thought that the metal they used on the pieces classified as onin has in general a more "doughy" look/was more susceptible to corrosion than what in general got used on the toshos - is this then a result of different care of the surface to try and protect the zogan decorations (or maybe the toshos were all lacquered to prevent corrosion) or different heat treatment or..? Best, rkg (Richard George)

what's in a name... A great many of the current "classifications" of tsuba are really kind of arbitrary. "Old Iron Tsuba" just didn't have a good ring to it when selling pieces to the gaijin tourists, I guess... Its my understanding that (this month) having more complex sukashi and maybe some kebori is what gets the "head scratchers" lumped into the katchushi rather than tosho bin... Best, rkg (Richard George)

Stephen, Now that the auction is over, I can comment... Two words: Metal Tsunagi... While good polishers have a lot of tricks to save pretty far gone pieces, between the pitting, loss of shape, etc, I really doubt this is salvageable... Too bad the seller pulled the images. While fleabay is great fun to look at, Hopefully you aren't seriously shopping for pieces there until you've done some more study - While everybody knows somebody who's pulled something off of fleabay that went Juyo, between the often awful photos, mediocre pieces (there's usually a reason the piece is on fleabay), and um, "optimistic" descriptions, its a minefield for the novice collector... Save your pennies and pick up some of the legitimate bargains out there... Best, rkg (Richard George)

Hi, You might hit up Boris/Andy at Yamabushi antiques - If nothing on their site is in your price range, they might be able to scrounge up something that would work for you... Best, rkg (Richard George)

Hi, FWIW, the first couple of shots in this web gallery on my website are of a "known good" Matashichi Hayashi in this theme: http://www.rkgphotos.com/new_book_preview.htm I can't recall for sure, but I think maybe the kebori was denser on the inner surfaces - I'd have to unarchive the original images to see... (as an aside, this was one of the coolest tsuba I've ever shot - in hand its amazing...). The seppa dai on the piece in question is also different... +1 on Ford's desire to see better images... Best, rkg (Richard George)

Jason, +1 on trying to just scan the pieces with the lid open - on most scanners you'll get a nice black background - you usually don't have to wait til night - depending on the scanner you can just make sure there's no bright light source (I tend to just shut the curtains and turn out the overheads) and it works fine... On your "can't open" file issue, does the file suffix change? What software are you trying to open the image with after you scan it? FWIW, I've seen microsoft's "windows picture and fax viewer" screw up when you feed it really large jpegs. scanning at the highest optical resoluion your scanner has and cropping to size before posting is the way to go - few people want to download/look at all those "black" bits :-) Which scanner are you using? Some are better than others for this kind of imaging... It looks like you don't have a lot of depth of field to start with here... There's a pointer to something I wrote up a while ago on using a scanner for this sort of thing in the "news" section of my website that might help you out: http://www.rkgphotos.com/news.htm Best, rkg (Richard George)

here's another sukenaga mei: rkg (Richard George)

Pete, Huh, What!! Me??!! I've got to photograph a couple of these over the years, but just have one - here's a b/w shot I got of it - it was part of a fine art series of tsuba I shot: http://www.rkgphotos.com/recent_stuff/a ... i_arty.jpg So many tsuba, so little money :-) Best, rkg (Richard George)

Thanks for posting a picture of a "working" one of these! I saw this and was trying to figure out how it worked as well. Looking at Aoi's picture again, it looks like there is a hole that could have been used to attach the retaining pocket as on Curran's (ex?) koshirae. Its unfortunate the AOI photographer chose to light the piece so a heavy shadow was put across this area so this wasn't clear. Best, rkg (Richard George)

Hi, Interesting question. I just dug out my tembos and looked at them. I do see some evidence that the plates were folded over. The early ones had excellent iron (still looked like saotome metal) and really great compositions - the later ones not-so-much. I'm sure I've posted images of the little beasts before, but here's a couple of them I shot for a fine art series of tsuba images I was putting together: Best, rkg (Richard George)

Joe, It looks like a modern copy of a higo hayashi piece to me, but what do I know... Best, rkg (Richard George)

Hi, Short answer: I'd pass on both and keep looking. Just out of curiosity, are you trying to match these to build a koshirae? If so, is it to be a "wall hanger", for iai, or...? I agree with mariuszk on this - Its harder than you'd think to put together a set of fittings that looks "right" - usually the owner put together a set of fittings that had meaning to him and probably those who looked at it - be it to make some philosophical statement, say something about themselves, make a fashion statment, a joke/pun (actually surprisingly common), psych out a potential opponent, or whatever, in addition to being usable. Its hard to find the right stuff to make up an en suite set. If you look at the number of times fittings were apparently re-used, I suspect that as often as not people were mixing and matching or having new bits made up as necessary to make the koshirae get the theme across or follow whatever was fashionable that week as well as work artistically and as a weapon for the owner. There's hordes of source material - you can look to Japanese legends, Buddhist teachings, period Japanese culture, various Chinese themes/philosophy, and a whole raft of word plays/Kanji meanings based on the various words/concepts a phrase can represent. The bad part if you're building up a koshirae is that unless you're doing something with an unwrapped handle or are having a goofy wrap of some kind done the menuki are pretty much invisible. If you REALLY want them to match, you could have pieces made to go with them - I saw an example of this at Ford's display at the KTK/NBSK show in Tokyo - he made up a tsuba to complete a daisho where the owner had one of the tsuba and pictures of the other from an old auction catalog - Excellent work... I'm not sure what to recommend for iai. Good Luck, rkg (Richard George)

Here's another shodai Kunisuke mei - the sword in quesion's mei doesn't seem to look a whole lot like it, but what do I know... Best, rkg (Richard George)

Hey guys, Has anybody had trouble shipping tsuba (and I guess other Japanese sword fittings) to Japan lately? While in Japan I was tipped off to what appears to be a change in how the Japanese Authorities interpret their import rules WRT. tsuba - some of their customs droids are apparently now considering them to be "part of a weapon" and therefore restricted - which I guess is true if you read the USPS customs info (copied from usps website, I added the highlighting of the clause of interest) " PROHIBITIONS: No list furnished. RESTRICTIONS: The maximum value of a GXG shipment to Japan is $2,499 or a lesser amount if limited by content or value. Banknotes; securities payable to bearer; coins, gold bullion; bills of exchange; letters of credit; and other payment orders are subject to the conditions laid down in the law concerning foreign exchange and trade control. Coins; banknotes; currency notes (paper money); securities payable to bearer; traveler's checks; platinum, gold or silver, manufactured or not; precious stones; jewelry; and other valuable articles may only be sent in registered letter-post shipments or insured parcel post. Firearms, including handguns, pistols, machine guns, and rifles; other types of weapons, including daggers, swords, spears, and switch blade knives; and the components of firearms and weapons may not be imported into Japan unless the intended recipient has received prior permission from the competent authority (i.e., the Public Safety Commission) in the prefecture in which that person resides. Meat products are prohibited unless accompanied by an inspection certificate issued by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Customers who fail to electronically file their export information may be subject to civil and criminal penalties. If you need further assistance with AES filing requirements, contact the U.S. Census Bureau on their toll-free hotline at 1-800-549-0595 =, Option 1 - AES Assistance, Option 2 - Commodity Classification Assistance, Option 3 - Regulatory " Just a heads up in case anybody cares... Best, rkg (Richard George)

Interesting idea, though the guy might have been better off shooting the pieces with a more consistent background, grouping the tsuba so the changing themes flowed better and then maybe doing a "fade" between the images... Oh, and get some better tsuba to image... Best, rkg (Richard George)