rkg

Hi, On the wakizashi, I believe its simply supply and demand - In the scheme of things there just aren't that many katana length pieces because in the post Momoyama period there really weren't that many samurai, but there were a LOT of commoners who had carried/owned wakizashi for the dictates of style/personal security/etc.,. In addition, a lot of the samurai in this period were dirt poor, and couldn't really afford to get new pieces made very often (unlike many of the merchants who could afford to get a new blades regularly to follow the dictates of fashion, (get a new blade to go with that new koshirae), be "in" by owning a sword by the newest hotshot tosho,etc.,). In addition, I'd posit that the nasty consequences of katana ownership by commoners in the post Momoyama period probably motivated a lot of commoners who had "family" blades that weren't rounded up during the sword hunts to get 'em shortened to comply with the law. Also, you'll see a fair number late Muromachi uchigatana that are what would be considered "wakizashi" sized. I personally believe that this is because of their usage - for very close-in fighting. I've always thought of them as the weapon of last resort after somebody got inside the effective range of your gun/bow/polearm) - but still, hordes of these were turned out during the sengoku period (and they didn't get used up because they seldom got used). On the other hand, the wakizashi is what the samurai type could keep with him at all times, and I've heard some people assert that often favorite old pieces would get shortened just so they could be carried at all times. Tying this back to naginata, they are kind of in the same price range as the wakizashi because they had limited usage in the edo period - aside from the "woman's weapon" stigma, it seems like most polearms were relegated to storage/ decorative use/conversion into other weapons during the Edo period when there wasn't much organized fighting going on. Naginata kind of got supplanted by yari as the polearm of choice. Yari were lots cheaper to make, and were probably more versatile in a crowded battlefield situation. And actually, you see some naginata made at the beginning of the shinto period with the back edge sharpened - I personally believe this was kind of the last development in naginata before being relegated to the dustbin of history, being added so they could be used for "poking" attacks like yari as well - this vanished as they were relegated to ceremonial/decorative/women's use. I personally think naginata are interesting because 1) they're actually a pretty wicked weapon if you have the space to use it, 2) they're hard to make (so a good example really shows off the tosho's skill), 3) they have acres of hada to study, and 4) (IMHO) they look cool. The trouble is in finding a "good" one - a lot of the pre-Edo ones got converted into wakizashi/katana, machi'd down to a "Shinto size" and/or had their nakagos shortened considerably, and a lot of the post Momoyama ones just are not very high quality and/or have a strange shape. Best, rkg (Richard George)

Brian, first of all, it should be noted that this opinion is probably worth what you paid for it.... Second, its always risky to buy pieces based on analysis of a few marginal photographs - there could be a bunch of issues that the seller has decided not to "emphasize" in the images (A major US dealer once commented that if he took the best pictures he could of his wares, he would never sell anything), or simply didn't realize the issues were meaningful. That said, there appears to be nothing really obvious that would indicate that this piece wouldn't polish up other than the "usual suspects" (ware/fukure that rise to the surface during polish (naginata are bad for this since they are very difficult to make + short/shinto ones were made mostly for women, so they tended to put less effort into them,etc.), possibly a hidden hagire (sometimes you see swords supposedly worked over by the clueless owner with steel wool, having some "minor scratching" etc., to hide fatal flaws like this), etc.), but I agree with Grey about asking "why" - I personally don't like its shape, but in addition to that its not a particularly interesting example (its kind of under sized, not done by anybody interesting, etc.,). If you were to have the piece polished by somebody competent in Japan, papered, shirasaya made, etc., you'll be out nearly what you could buy a polished, papered, perfect piece for - throw in what it will probably go for, and you'd probably not be coming out ahead doing this... If the piece doesn't go for much you might get closer to not being underwater by having the piece polished some US based "amateur" polisher, and the shirasaya made here, but... Anyway, good luck on the auction if you are going to bid... "no name" naginata are nearly as hard to sell as wakizashi, so if you are patient you should be able to find a good in polish example for a reasonable price... Best, rkg (Richard George)

Bobby, Jean's earlier comments about what to avoid for "investment" VERY are insightful - I'd add to the list that any piece that isn't a "typical" size for what it is should be off the list too. In this case, the piece is short - VERY short for a wakizashi (to my eye it looks a little too beefy to be a boy's day sword, which is a different animal, sort of...), and I'd posit you will have great difficulty selling the piece regardless of price in the future (as I am sure the current owner is finding out...). In addition, its from an un-remarkable smith (there were a LOT of sukesada), and there may be an issue with the ware (I've always thought they aren't so bad if they are up above the shinogi line and not huge, but I defer to the observations of others on this), and probably the beforementioned atypical hamon. Of course, on the other hand, a perfect, well sized, shin-shinto piece by somebody known is going to cost more, so... It might be best to figure out exactly what you want (katana, wakizashi, tanto, other), decide what tradeoffs you are willing to make (what schools you want to look at, can you live with a mumei piece, do you REALLY need it papered (contrary to popular belief, though the NBTHK is the "gold standard", they aren't perfect, so...), etc., and focus on looking for that. Good Luck on your decision, rkg (Richard George) P.S. FWIW, if you are looking for a Wak, there are a LOT of wakizashi out there, and you do see some very good deals these days if you're patient. if you are looking for a katana in this kind of price range, You might consider looking at some gendai pieces - some of them by "no name" smiths are actually pretty good (though not as many as some would have you believe...) and they often pop up in servicable polish. But on the other hand, as a beginning collector, you tend to have lots fewer problems sticking to "Papered, Polished, Perfect" pieces, so...

And check out the sword... It looks like an image somebody took in a museum (from the look of the case, is this the National Museum in Tokyo?). rkg (Richard George)

Hey guys, One of the items I shot for the next KTK exhibition catalog was what I believe is a first Jingo - a decent one is amazingly good (I feel honored to have been able to study it for a while while I photographed it - the composition and jigane is enough to make you quit collecting pre-edo stuff :-) ), and has little to do with the original image posted. In response to the fine crosshatching in the last post, while this is often the case, On the jingo I photographed it appears that the crosshatching was very deliberately and carefully filled with brass by the maker to give the impression of worn away inlay. As an aside, I have a ko-shoami piece where you can see the crosshatching and the remnants of a silver coating which I'd guess was originally applied in such a way as it would wear off very quickly producing this effect - isn't that called surikomi zogan? Best, rkg (Richard George)

Nick, First of all, it sounds like somebody used naval jelly on it? For some reason I've found that surfaces treated with this stuff seem more resistant to rust than you'd think (I know, this makes no sense because naval jelly is just phosphoric acid mixed in with some goop to make it jelly-like so it will hang on the surface with enough acid to do some good, but that's been my experience with car restoration, so YMMV...). As far as repatination goes, I tried several things before I knew any better. Don't do it - the patina will look OK to you until you see an actual piece from the school... There are certain self proclaimed patination "experts" in the US whose pieces you can spot immediately especially if you put an un-jacked-with piece from the same school next to it - they often have a funky blue tint and/or smell like an oil refinery... there's like one guy in the US that can do it "right". What can get you an OK finish is time - one way to do this is to put the piece outdoors where it won't get rained on/can't get carted off by curious animals/children and let it sit, checking it occasionally - bright red rust is bad, and you want to remove that with a cloth (I tend to use something fairly coarse like an old cotton sock) or possibly a piece of ivory or antler if you let it go too far. Hit up Jim Gilbert's site for a far better explanation of all this stuff than I can give off the top of my head.... a pointer is: http://home.earthlink.net/~jggilbert/Cleaning.htm Best, rkg (Richard George)

James, Thanks for the info on your piece. Mine didn't have a showa stamp which made it confusing... I don't know what to say about the quality - as can be seen, it doesn't look like a lot of oil quenched pieces, so... Best, rkg (Richard George)

James, Just out of curiosity, did this piece also have a "shin gane Iru" stamp shown as item #vi on page 227 of Fuller & Gregory's blue book? (apparently it was originally mis-translated in their red book). I have a piece made by Masafusa that has this stamp in addition to the stamp you have a pictured - some images are in a web directory at: http://www.rkgphotos.com/masafusa/ (pardon the bad composite) - the stamp like you have is not pictured - its on the back of the nakago Also check out Slough's book on pages 65 and 98. both pieces show this stamp. Anyway, after looking at the piece for a while, I now believe its some sort of non-traditionally made piece, with the stamp indicating that they used kobuse construction. The hamon doesn't really look oil quenched, but atter looking at it for a while I realized that there appears to be no nie (see images) - so is it modern steel that was water quenched, or oil quenched or what?... Best, rkg (Richard George)

Hi, I'm embarrased to even ask this, but... Does anybody have a source for inexpensive reproduction Japanese fittings? Specifically, I'm looking for some tsuba, menuki, kozuka, kogai, and fuchi/kahsira that have a LOT of gold or silver (colored) decorations on them to use as photographic subjects (I'm working on yet another way to photograph fittings, and...). I don't collect stuff like this so I'm not terribly interested in investing in some originals (a repro pair of gold menuki will reflect the same as nifty early goto ones (well, not really, but it will be close enough for my purposes)). Anyway, any help tracking down some shiny klinkers would be appreciated. Best, rkg (Richard George)

Pete, I'm glad you liked it. rkg (Richard George)

Henry, Ah, the ol' Pocket Polish... This whole subject of polish/patina is very interesting - For example, a lot of the pieces in the Sasano collection were seriously over-cleaned (the sad part being that Sasano himself realized this late in life and had to live with the damage he had done...). Some argue that the original patina on iron pieces can't be replaced once its gone (its a thin layer of all these esoteric compounds formed by whatever the tsubako originally used to patinate), while others think that the patina morphs with time and handling is what brought out stuff like tekkotsu in the first place (though obviously metal patterns were brought out later by acid etch by the tsubako etc.,). I've tried "pocket polishing" iron tsuba in the past, but after looking at good pieces I don't do this anymore - its too easy to overclean, knock off "crud" on the insides of the sukashi that help date the piece, and polish areas that you really don't want polished (sekigane, inlays, the area around the nakago, crevices that shouldn't show wear, etc.,.). IMHO, you're better off spending some "quality time" with your pieces using a cloth for the polish. Less is More... If its got more red rust on it than that, what did you buy it for in the first place rkg (Richard George)

Hmmm... Bathroom mount... do you use a KatanaKaka for that? :D Or do you just need a katanakaka for this piece? rkg (Richard George)

Hi, After more effort/grief than I'd ever imagined, I've FINALLY got done with the 2005 Kokusai Tosogu Kai exhibition catalog supplement that has been mentioned here occasionally in the past. it is available at lulu.com - a pointer is: http://www.lulu.com/content/1179116 We ended up creating this because the original catalog had to go to press before photography of the pieces being shown at the exhibition by members outside of Japan could be organized. The curious thing about this exhibition was that the Japanese members submitted mostly kinko work (all excellent pieces, BTW), while the US/other members submitted mostly iron pieces. Anyway, its done... Onto the next thing. If anybody is considering using lulu.com for a publication feel free to contact me about the process. Best, rkg (Richard George)

Hey guys, On the crazy high tsuba, you'd have to look at the winning bidder and the seond high one - rumor has it that there are a couple of crazy(rich) tsuba collectors out of Europe that tend to bid up stuff to stupid prices, usually when one finds the other is interested in/is bidding on a particular piece... rkg

Andreas, Sorry to take so long to reply - I've been doing about 10 things at once, and... Yeah, this photo was done on a big sheet of plexiglass - I don't recommend glass, as its harder than your sword - and even with plexiglass you have to be anal about getting/keeping it clean(dust can be abrasive) and careful not to move your piece around on the surface. I used a macro lens, though I'm not sure what to recommend for your pentax as I'm not sure how much height above the piece you have/what lenses are available for your camera - just be sure the lens can resolve more than your sensor can across the field of view and you'll do as good as you can (there are a couple of sites that do objective tests of lenses). you can also squeeze out a bit more effective resolution by turning the camera so the sword is in the diagonal. Good Luck, rkg (Richard George)

Hi, Sorry, I got busy and didn't get a chance to reply... I'll run all the replies together to save on postings... Note that I found I had messed up the masking in the nakago ana and have reposted a fixed version of the picture to the same location. Curran: The method does look about ready for prime time, so I guess I can talk to people about that now. Mr. Hennick: While it does look like what people call a ko-uda piece to me, number of pieces I've actually been able to study is small :-/ It doesn't help any that it seems like ko-uda is a dumping ground for nanbokucho yamato pieces that the shinsa team can't identify - kind of a proto "shinto bungo takada" :-) Darcy, It was a test run, so I didn't have the lighting set up for the boshi, and actually didn't have the nakago illumination set correctly, so it washed over the hada towards the munemachi, but... as per your emailed comments I also redid the post process on the photo posted above to (hopefully) fix the pixellation issues... Best, rkg (Richard George)

Hey guys, After nearly 2 years of helping to close the family business its mostly done (YEY!), and I FINALLY have some time to start fooling around with high resolution sword photos again - If you're interested, please check out the test photo at: http://www.rkgphotos.com/recent_stuff/ko_uda.jpg I reduced its dimensions by a factor of two to keep the file size down, + I can see there was a bit of image degradation due to the jpeg compression, but still... Its a 2 megabyte+ file, so it might take a while to load for you. Not what I'd call a final by any means, but... Enjoy, rkg (Richard George)

Hey guys, I was doing some photo testing and thought somebody might appreciate this... Note the sword cut on the mune in the center of the photograph, apparently with some of the other guy's sword still stuck in it Sorry about the "choppy" mune line - this was a test shot and had some glare from the mune showing on the support surface that I quickly masked off... Best, rkg (Richard George)

Hey guys, Ouch! Think of this as a learning experience - shipping sharp pointy things requires a fair amount of care - remember that the sender is liable if somebody is injured by a sword in transit in additon to the damage that can be sustained by the sword/koshirae itself That said, a really good way to ship un-mounted pieces is to use the "Chris Bowen" method - you get a plank of wood big enough for the sword to lay on w/o sticking off anywhere (I like to use oak), mark the nakago ana on the plank, drill a hole there, wrap the blade as appropriate for your level of paranoia, punch a hole through the packaging at the nakago ana, and then tie or wire (Mr. Bowen recommended copper wire) the blade to the plank through the ana - you can then tie or duck tape the wrapped blade to the plank in many places to keep it from moving. Best, rkg (Richard George)

Did Alf mean 1531?? I don't see a date on the back side - how did he get a month? Best, rkg (Richard George)

Hi, I'm not sure I'd go with the pin vise - as you point out there's the potential for disaster if you get too energetic (ivory "lead" snaps and you run a gouge across the tsuba, etc.,.). I bought a big bag of ivory chips and chunks from a musical instrument maker sometime back, and can usually find SOMETHING in there that will work - I have a few pieces that are beveled and come to a point - these seem to work pretty well for fine work - so much so that I've taken to occasionally "sharpening" them to maintain the shape...). I like the idea of an ivory pencil - maybe I'll have to chuck up one of the chunks in the lathe and round it off sometime... :-) Best, rkg (Richard George)

Hi, First of all, great find! Second, its edo period, not endo period :-) third, I've always thought a handachi style koshirae referred to a piece that was worn "katana style" with the koshirae; saya having a kuirkata for this - this has a single ashikanamono mount, kinda like a later koshirae that was meant to be worn with western garb or something - could some expert out there clear up my confusion on this? Best, rkg (Richard George)

Hi, It does look waay yellow - try setting your camera for tungsten lights in the white balance settings), or reshoot the tsuba with something white or grey somewhere in the picture and use your photo editor to tweak to the right color. These could be fixed pretty easily, but it seems every photo editor has a different design philosophy/set of tools so I can't give you a specific suggestion on how in your application (some let you tweak the color temperature, some have a "normalize" function, some have a "photo filter" so you can crank in an equivalent of an 80A, some only have some kind of "auto fix" feature, some you have to manually tweak colors, etc., etc.,). Best, rkg (Richard George)

Josh, I think I've managed to make pretty much every mistake there is when it comes to buying nihonto, so I thought I'd take the time to reply to this. Let's see, where to begin... First, which books do you already have? Pick up Nagayama's if you haven't already... I used to think it was terribly important to go buy a small fortune in books and study a lot before buying your first piece - I no longer think this is as important as getting to look at a number of swords and discussing them with third party(ies) that are not going to try and make money off selling the pieces you are lookg at to you. For that reason I'd suggest attending a sword show or 10 before buying a piece instead, preferably with some "sword buddies" (as my wife seems to keep calling my friends who collect) and really look at some pieces, learn about handling and what various activities/problems look like, what pieces make your jaw drop, etc.,. You can also join the NBTHK and attend their exhibits/kantei competitions at the various shows - they usually have some pretty good pieces to study. Second, I feel that I should mention that most edo or earlier swords have probably earned their retirement, which is why they tend to get put in shirasaya separate from their original koshirae - there are a number of problems storing pieces in their original koshirae that are best avoided. If you want a piece to heft/handle regularily in its koshirae/leave out, you might consider getting a modern piece of some kind instead - a gendaito or one made by a modern smith (either Japanese or Gaigin), and have a koshirae made for it to suit you - Edo koshirae are fragile and are actually kind of hard to preserve in a lot of cases - not something you want to handle much. I finally ended up doing this so I could have something to "leave out" to show people/handle in koshirae - and leave the good stuff in the vault until you're sure they aren't gonna wave it around and stick your juyo piece into the ceiling, etc.,. Third, I don't think they are that hot an investment at this time (even if they did get mentioned in the May 07 edition of Worth). I'd posit that it might be better to not think of them as something you'll end up selling for more later, but rather more like art, which you purchase to enjoy. The bad part is that inevitably as you collect and learn more your tastes/ideals will change and you'll probably end up selling pieces at sometime in the future - because of this, I think most people are best served by only buying pieces with the "3 Ps" initially - Papered, Polished, Perfect. Anything less will be more difficult to resell. And you have to beware of several other issues that make swords hard to sell - there is a Japanese price guide that prices based on a "typical" katana which they define as >=~27", is ubu, and has no problems/is a representative example of the smith's work - usually pieces like this are also a fairly easy "sell" when you need/want to, and those "minor problems" like being machi okuri, suriage, have condition problems, etc., come back to bite you at selling time. Wakizashi as a first piece are a two edged sword (no pun intended) - you can get an example of a particular smith's/school's work at a very resonable price, but there are a lot of them/they are very difficult to resell in general and usually unless got a fantastic deal, you will at best break even on them... And you might do well to look at a few top grade gendai as well, granted I think there were fewer good gendai smiths than the market would indicate, there were some very good smiths and some of the pieces are very nice (and make great candidates for the "leave out" piece - they will probably take another polish w/no problems, and are sufficiently inexpensive so that if they get trashed you don't cry in your beer much). And one always has to ask themselves why a piece is being offered out of polish - one helpful hint - polishing risk is very real - I've had several pieces polished, and even with the advice of "experts" on whether or not to have it done, I only came anywhere near "breaking even" on one. I used to think buying your first piece from a dealer was important - I also no longer think this is true, unless you know what you "should" be paying. There really are a lot of swords out there, and I think the saying "there will always be another" is very true. Anyway, I've probably typed too much - Good luck on your first purchase :-) Best, rkg (Richard George)

I've got a few ut there, mostly macro work though - I haven't done much overall work since I upgraded my cameras - got some good ones using a 6x7 medium format, but I've never had any of them drum scanned to put online (again, it became obvious I couldn't shoot much more than a tanto overall at high resolution with an 8MP camera). I'm going to upgrade to either a 1DSII or its replacement in the near future, but I'm going nuts post processing tosogu photos for a book on fittings for the KTK right now and have like NO spare time to think about it... hot light = continuous (usually tungsten) light - I now use photoflex starlites with 1000W bulbs in soft boxes. - you can try remote controlled camera flashes as well using your camera's ettl metering system - this seems to work much better than studio lights for this (though you need a herd of flashes to do much good). Gotta run, rkg