Rivkin

Very sorry to hear that. My condolences.

The first generation Kunishige is a bit of arcane art, as for a time Hasebe was thought to have began working much earlier than 1350s that we usually see. Whether its true or not is debatable. If its not, there is not much difference between Kunishige and Kuninobu, which is how I would approach it personally. Its a good blade, the nie is a bit harsh rather than cloudy and the hada is a little bit indistinctive, but then the fact that mumei was attributed to specific name is good. Its not "really" ubu... It does not feel like a strong Juyo candidate but as it is, its probably a decent blade. There are very many katana attributed to Hasebe, but signed ones must be exceptionally rare (not with my books). Also katana tend to be all around the place in terms of work itself, more so than ko waki.

This problem I often ran into - air companies screening the packages and if the guy doing it presses the red button, there are no upper echelons checking and no responsibility, its out and back. Its much worse in states like California, so thinking about actually shipping them from Chicago, for example.

Well, again not being a tsuba guy. The plate shows very little evidence of true old forging, its tight and neat with just a bit of roughness. The openings are shaped like something more common on early tsuba, but again everything is neatly drilled. Thick. Its possibly end of Edo attempt at being old and stylish.

Thank you very much! It looks like I'll have to send many parcels :(.

Could be. It feels a bit machi okuri to me, which would make the original nakago smaller in proportion to the blade... 25 inch sugata is somewhat on larger size for katana, but below typical period's tachi.

Its completely unpolished so hard to be sure. Sugata-wise this is uchigatana, katate-uchi etc.. from 1500-1520 probably. In suguha. Statistically speaking with kiri yasurime and such nakago I would be tempted to say something like "Bizen", but suguha is a bit too narrow for Bizen. Might be just the condition or something else related.

There is an interesting book called "Economy of taste", but it is not very applicable to Asian items. Extending its gist, with Art and antiques price increase tend to come in waves, associated with "disposable cash" accumulation by the top 0.1%. Plus periodic re-evaluation of specific subjects which might not have been popular before. It shows how a lot of current allure of Russian museum collections comes from it being the XVIIIth century market for what back then was considered second tier collectibles like Van Hals, which were dumped there in quantities, but now these artists are considered first tier. In nihonto I think the recent valuation of Norishige, Yukimitsu, Akihiro, Oei Bizen compared to what it relatively was 100 years ago is because the last 20 years helped items whose quality can be recognized even on average photos. You can read a lot about how great Rai Kunitoshi in suguha is, but on photographs Norishige is definitely going to look more impressive. Which quite frankly is a real thing. Expanding on this, it is possible that many blades which are great on papers and attributions, but creepy looking will slowly devalue compared to more visually impressive schools and examples. But otherwise, nihonto is probably never going to make money as a whole.

Thank you very much, this is very helpful. I did not know about three blades. Yes, for some reason there are a lot of Brits in Japan. The real challenge I am trying to solve is polishing about 30 blades accumulated over many years. It looks like hand carrying them there is not an option. Sending the blades by mail, 10 at a time and then bringing them back in a suitcase appears to be more viable. I have a possibility of staying there for couple of months also... Any restrictions on sending them to Japan? Did it many times before, but all my agents there retired one after another in the last 5 years . I guess we are all getting older.

Gentlemen! I have not been in Japan for close to 10 years already, and even before I always used someone's services to help me with registration etc.. This time I want to fly in with a case of swords. Probably Tokyo rather than Osaka. Haneda? How bad should I expect it to be? Thanks a lot in advance for any suggestions.

The tanto looks like A+ item even in photos. Going back to passionate discussion we had a while back, the person who stated there are no collectibles below TJ actually responded to a request to bring TH Masamune to an exhibit. In many ways he was right, there are TH Masamune where in the best case you hope for a few fukure which make it non-Juyo grade. In the worst... the attribution is something many people would not affirm.

I appreciate the question, but it is difficult for me to offer anything definitive. First and foremost, I am in anti-Masamune camp. Any other major smith - Yukimitsu, Norishige, Hasebe, if you take them out and try to write the history of Soshu, it does not make sense anymore. You can write a Soshu book without showing a single Masamune piece and you'll be perfectly fine. You also seldom will hear from a high end person "it papered Sadamune but its really X" or "its papered X but its really Sadamune". Note: leave dealers aside. With Masamune you hear that constantly. There is no 100% consensus of what Masamune actually is and is not. That is not to say there was no great smith who today is attributed as Masamune - the "fukure master" with crazy nie work, but he was relatively late (1330-1345?), did not work for a long time and did not produce many pieces. Then ofcoarse there are suguha works signed as Masamune, which is another, opposite end of the spectrum. And then there are works with relatively narrow hamon, but which is rich in nie, structured as long, winding "belts", and it can have ara nie and tobiyaki. Jigane tends to be a bit rough and large featured. That feels like the type of work we see here. And really not the best example of that. You can see those as done by someone who studied under Shintogo and made considerable changes in both hamon and jigane, but did not really go into later Soshu like Go and Sadamune... but sugata-wise such pieces don't necessarily fall into the "early" category. Will this one be Juyo? Probably not. Is it really Masamune? Hm.... There are many books that state "you can't mistake Masamune's work with anything else", but they offer very scarce hints regarding what makes it unmistakable. If this blade is resubmitted today, can it draw something like Sanekage? I don't know.

I would argue its late Muromachi Jumyo or possibly Kanemoto. Shinto would have sugu boshi. First generations would have more nie, more complicated work, possibly sugu boshi. I don't see periodic groups of three, not a single one strictly periodic, strictly group of three. I see very periodic gunome-togari with a few sticking out. Its Mino, its possible Kanemoto but unless there is an argument missing, I would personally prefer Jumyo. Probably by a significant margin.

Very late carving, the small details like completely flat toes and foot indicating... nothing good. Don't want to speculate if its cast and finished, but its just late.

Takes a while to get the light source angle right, but that's the key.

Congrats on nice purchase. Here is my take on Kunimitsu. Yes, the site overcompresses.

Here is the item: https://japanesesword.net/products/tanto-kunikane-nbthk-kicho-certificate-shirasaya-koshirae-ubu-nakago-shinto-era-kanagawa-53159?srsltid=AfmBOorUYpeV4tSRMwEZgXoEtofMmWWdLYfGIYOeGbteF2FYgUEst2Ny With such photographs it might be actually earlier than shinshinto, jigane looks correct, also some of the nakago "roughness" might have been photography-related. It can be real Kunikane, post 1670 probably.

Hamon looks like late Muromachi Mino, Bizen or Kaga. I personally would lean a little bit towards Bizen. It is possible it has utsuri which is still visible in these photos.

Jeesh, you beat me at my seven. Photographed only two though.

This is koto, and possibly Bizen or Bizen like.., Something more specific is hard to say in this condition and such pictures.

Decent late Meiji to Taisho or early Showa, for export production, "ken".

That's reasonably common. "Classic" Go has not many options except go down to Tametsugu and the upgrade is probably Masamune. For Shizu it does not have togari, there is slight chance to go Sadamune, you can't go Yukimitsu because hamon is too uneven, Hasebe would typically be rather different jigane. I do dislike dealers. They always write as if they've been family friends with most of the smiths, forcing them to keep in mind when Go's birthday is, and what did Masamune give him the last time everyone been drinking together. That rascal. They don't write "the earliest mentioning of Go is in X", "his birthday is first mentioned in Y". Go, Sadamune, Yukimitsu and Norishige do have arch-typical different clusters; as a pure personal guess in terms of width of the hamon, which continuously increases with time in Soshu until hitatsura and Hasebe, Go is beyond Yukimitsu and at least in Sadamune's timeframe, but before Hasebe. His works are unusually compact timewise, but this might be relative because many others are unusually wide - Tametsugu, Yukimitsu, even Norishige. Then again, nobody in Soshu was satisfied doing just the arch-typical, there are also many works that don't stick anywhere in particular and the early texts that everyone cites with respect to Masamune, somehow dismissing the fact they provide many names which disappeared from our mind because there are no signed examples... well, its not like there are many in Soshu overall.

The only early Soshu smith I personally would be exceptionally careful with is Masamune. There is a significant body of later 1360+ works which can move one way or another, but for earlier blades there is considerably better certainty, Sadamune, Yukimitsu, Norishige all having very arch-typical core body of work, so while there are "on the fence" examples, its not too great a problem. Go is also a relatively well defined cluster. Great (itame/ko mokume) jigane as most of the early Soshu, or possibly something more Yamato looking with masame; clear bright nioiguchi, wide and widening aperiodic notare filled with nie particles throughout. You would not see such width or widening in Yukimitsu, Sadamune tends to be a bit more periodic, the areas where hamon widens are more wave like. Sadamune jigane is probably superior. There are signatures in oshigata, but its an open question.

It is a [potentially] a considerably valuable sword and personally I would investigate the possibility of getting NBTHK papers.

I am not a specialist on this lineage, but what concerns me: - its indeed shinshinto yasurime. - nakago finish is different than typical for Kunikane, though such shape in general is possible, it is much more sharp-abrupt than expected. - nijimei is not too common in shinshinto, with better lineages. - we don't see much in terms of activity, is there something like Kunikane - remains to be seen. I would be a bit careful with this one.