MauroP

勾玉・曲玉 - magatama, literally curved jewel. Like hōju, magatama has also a religious significance, but it pre-dates (for many centuries) the Buddhist tradition. A magatama is one of the three imperial regalia of Japan (with a mirror and a sword).

OK, too easy this time...

Both ji-sukashi kebori (地透 毛彫) decoration. Unfortunately badly overcleaned causing huge loss in patina.

A classical ko-kinkō tsuba, the waves design clearly would lose coherence if mounted on a edge-down blade. The signature looks quite amatourish in its quality, so mayby someone has carved it as a personal (and wrong) attribution. Just my hypotesis.

There is a counterexample for everything (in tōsōgu speculation, at least...), that's why basically I'm no more interested in attribution to school, provided one consider it no more than a fun game (like recognize incense flavours).

Actually the paper reports 無銘 (越前関) - mumei (Echizen Seki)

Thank you Moriyama-san. So I suppose that hakogaki was not intended for my tsuba (and the attribution to Daigorō-ha should have made me doubt from the beginning).

My latest acquisition is a tsuba with hakogaki by Satō Kanzan. Despite my effort I'm unable to sort out one of the kanji describing the tsuba, so I'm unsure about a matching between the tsuba and its kiribaki. The date of the appraisal is also unclear to me. Here below my partial transcription: 大五郎 - Daigorō 孔▢文透鐔 - ???-mon sukashi tsuba 丸形鉄地透彫 - maru-gata tetsu-ji sukashibori 無銘 大五郎- mumei Daigorō 昭和▢▢年夏- Shōwa ??? 寒山誌 - Kanzan shirusu (+kaō) Thanks all.

from: M. Sesko "Encyclopedia of Japanese Swords"

Actually the hozon paper correctly report Kyō-kanagushi, wich is different from Kyō-kinkō (and surely nothing to do with ko-kinkō).

The transcription is 哥德呀, but no idea how to read it.

生意兴隆 Business is booming (or something like that)

The higher the percentage of zinc in brass, the harder the alloy (and so less apt for sekigane). I suppose that brass with low-content in zinc could be good for sekigane, but all iron tsuba I have in my collection have dark reddish sekigane, so more probably made of copper/yamagane. But I'm not a metallurgist...

Well, Thomas, actually I see a problem if at the best of knowledge the top experts give inconsistent or variable attributions. The point is simply nobody knows for sure, the attributions are no more than educated opinions. Present day believes, though different, are not better founded than those experts in the field erpressed one hundred years ago. The whole thing looks to me more like religion than chemistry. It's not science. Nontheless it's an amusing activity try to tune with this kind of exoterics...