Rivkin

The magnification/resolution is unfortunately not there. What is seen is that hada is masame dominated, hamon is ko nie to nie deki, suguha with a bit of gunome, midare. Definitely koto, but without high res pictures its hard to say something more specific. Nakago sustained significant damage which will scare a lot of people to think its saiha, but the work does not lean this way. It can be Naminohira. Or Yamato shikkake. Finally, Uda is definitely worth consideration. The most optimistic outcome is Yamato Shizu. Period can be later... High resolution would be nice, also boshi [!]. If hamon widens towards yokote its a common Muromachi trait. In general it feels like the photos are good enough to identify, they've just been downsized until not much is seen...

I think you are right. I scanned the sword descriptions pdfs I stored away and got roughly the ratio 12:1:3.5... With a caveat that my pdfs are obviously not representative and if anything they probably over-represent Kunzan and potentially Kanzan. If I take Tanobe-sensei's sayagaki at 3000 that would be 600-1,000 for Kunzan and 25-36,000 for Kanzan.

Hard to estimate because its a non-random selection which tends to cluster around upper TH and Juyo, but one can estimate the ratio between three using just Juyo swords and then guess the number of sayagaki for one of them getting all three. My pure guesstimate would be about 1,200 for Kanzan, 100 for Kunzan and 300 for Tanobe sensei.

Any proven DYI recipes for getting rid of stupid kimpun mei without damaging old and nice patina or its polisher only task?

They never really matched Kongo jigane. O-Sa went Rai first, then Sa went Soshu with very fine jigane and hamon which is sort of choji or suguha nioi with very strong belts of nie. In Muromachi after Oei it mostly reverted to weird provincial Yamato.

Edo period, lots of acid.

I have to admit this one is a bit of a head scratcher. Jigane seems great, but the hamon ... is it mostly nioi and ko nie with strong nie only in couple of places? nioi-guchi which is bright and wide in some places and nearly gone in others? The price... because of Date association? All top Soshu have gained considerably compared to 20 years ago, and the spread between collector to collector and high end retail also increased. But... Anyways, I seriously considered this gentleman: https://www.aoijapan.com/katana-mumei-attributed-to-sa-sadayoshinbthk-tokubetsu-hozon-token/ Personal preference, I would probably like it more than "Go".

I don't think its LED per se, its the size and relative brightness and directiness of light source. As some know, I use very long (seconds) shutter times and "paint" in real life the blade with light, sometimes with different light sources. If you want something generic I would use very wide LED lightstick and hold close to blade's surface. That sort of works for all. For some Soshu to bring up nioi-guchi and nie I use on the contrary portable LED flashlight. It brings up detail much better. What's the blade? Naminohira?

My thinking why its not shinshinto: unless you are dealing with Kiyomaro level, shinshinto cannot do matsukawa-hada or any high contrast jigane without completely tanking the hamon. Its barely visible, either pure nioi or some weird nie which never sparkles. Here we see high contrast jigane but hamon comes up as having also about the same level of contrast. There are exceptions and in hands its possible to say, but also the holes are punched very naturally, with the correct profile and everything. Kamakura: unless you believe in Masamune who started to do hitatsura level activities in late Kamakura, this style of Soshu work is no earlier than 1330. At least "Sadamune", but if its pre Muromachi ts probably northern (jigane) and later. I am more inclined to see here Muromachi work. Either Uda, probably earlier, or Shimada and later. In both cases its likely to be quite good. Though unfortunately not greatly valuable financially.

I am in between Shimada and Uda Kunifusa. Nice piece though.

Very many polishers believe they do. Reasons provided vary - "water trapped inside steel during polishing", "micro-erosion of weaker particles which still held out during polish". Some polishers will request a specific oiling schedule, a few older polishers would recommend continuous uchiko application.

From little that is seen I would say there is equally little reason for Shintogo optimism. But it appears to be an interesting and quality, possibly Soshu tanto from Muromachi (?). Long kaeri? Shimada, Nobukuni etc... but there is a chance its something better. In which case its likely be something northern.

Real. I even ordered AI to issue papers. It messed up the measurements, but that's AI. Still young. Messes up Juyo papers even worse .

Fuyuhiro, late Muromachi.

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.