Rivkin

Honestly don't know where this is all going... What is being advocated - an expert opinion unchallengeble except by a diplomized expert is not science, its a religion. Unfortunately, it is reflective of the modern academia and society in general; I've been doing this weapon thingy long enough to repeat the statement - every community is covered on all sides by passionate people who have Zero personal collection (whether they prefer sai-jo or sai-sai saku) and very meager understanding, but insist that somehow Only through them the river of "real knowledge" flows. They can't comment on a blade, but they can write pages about how one should comment on the blade, collect, study and live in general. Yes, many dealers are like that too. They are also very moral and always of very particular political hue. Hint: not nazis. Well, actually in Russia they are all fascist-Putinist, but its an exception. I long lost interest in what can or cannot make Juyo. I never submit myself. But I buy almost exclusively in Japan. I can say with certainty that 95% of decent blades I've encountered had strong indications they have been in major collections some time in the past. Its hard-ish to find a really good blade which is not Juyo. You have to invest time and skill, and get lucky. Sometimes such blades come with disagreements which resulted in ultra-conservative judgement. I do believe late Kamakura and Soshu (not Masamune though) were the absolute peak of the nihonto. This being said there are a lot of taste-based differences. I don't like Bizen and most of Rai. I don't appreciate most really old blades - ko-Bizen leaves me passionless and so is most Heian. Most Rai Kunitoshi is boring and I have no idea why Hizen Tadayoshi is so popular. I have almost zero interest in Muromachi, but admit some Oei and Tensho blades are cool. Yes, on average Juyo blades are substantially more attractive than non-Juyo ones. I can't argue with that. But I am a dumpster diver and should stick to proletarian venues. No, budo people are not interested in nihonto. Is it really a bad thing? Japanese people are not interested nor are understanding of Japanese traditional things. That's surprising, but one gets used to it. They are enamored with ryokans, pagodas, stone gardens and lacquer utensils. Graduates of art history department in general do not recognize the name Kano right away. They don't recognize the name Muqi at all. they can't pickout Sesshu if they see one. You have people knowledgable in such stuff spread thin through all venues of life - and many of them are absolutely not happy if foreigners collect swords. Tosogu is "sort of" fine though. Unless its top quality. Yes, nihonto is way more secretive than most other collecting venues. People don't see gaining much from discussing what they have. Admittedly, they are being very Japanese about this aspect... Well, they have papers already, what more can they learn. You see often the only thing people discuss with commitment is their blade which "should have been TJ". Its going to stay this way for a long time.

Would gentlemen excuse me a silly joke: the one in books has an extra hole.

In Sadamune you start seeing now and then a string of ara-nie towards the mune, but he is a calm one. With Go its very much tobiyaki/ara nie heavy.

Let’s do the reveal! As I said earlier, please cut me some slack – its easy to act as sensei when one runs the kantei and has all the cards, but still explanations should be given – and they should come with an exclamation its just a personal opinion. There are a few ways to judge this blade. Sugata locks you into either Kamakura-earliest Nambokucho or very late Nambokucho-early Muromachi. In hand the lack of niku and the balance point suggests Kamakura, but this is subjective. Its heavily nie-based so its either Yamato or Soshu, with some exceptions. The coarse jigane in shinogi-ji comes up as very long lines, and that’s a sign there is long masame there as well. Lets go Yamato route, its easier and faster. Possibility 1: Not much comparable in early Muromachi, so accept the notion its Kamakura. Kamakura Yamato by definition should be first and foremost considered as Senjuin. Possibility 2: Its Yamato with midareba. By definition it can only be Senjuin. That’s actually what the sayagaki argues. It can be added that nioi choji-like midare in Yamato is also exclusive Senjuin traits. Lets go Soshu route, its also fun. It does look like Satsuma, but nioi-guchi is seldom Satsuma’s strong point, it tends not to do nioi based midareba covered by nie and sugata is quite off. But its an important note, because Satsuma was particularly inspired by Go and Norishige. In the same way if we would say its Horikawa, we mean it looks like Sadamune. We can also right away check that nie 1cm wide and 20cm long endulating “belt” is either Yamato Shizu or Etchu, its Extremely uncommon everywhere else. So in Soshu route there are not that many practicing first class tight itame (often referred to as Awataguchi hada) with bright broad nioi-guchi and nioi/ko-nie hamon covered by nie towards habuchi. Most Kamakura lineage is strictly nie based, for example. The three options here are Sa, Naotsuna and Go. Some Mino Kanenobu are nioi based but nioi-guchi is weak and jigane is large featured. Naotsuna tends to have large featured jigane, more mokume. Sa is a good option, I felt. His itame hada is excellent, but he did not do much masame-nagare and ara nie away from hamon is uncommon. If you look at his kinsuji you don’t really see transition to masame. In fact, Awataguchi hada with nagare, bright broad nioi-guchi and nioi/ko-nie hamon covered by nie towards habuchi, plenty of ara nie and occasional use of “nie belts” in Etchu fashion is a textbook definition of Go. You can find the exact wording more or less in “Connoseurs”. Re: Nabeshima Go meito and many other examples. So what’s wrong with calling it a Go? First the boshi is not typical for Soshu, Go’s in particular tends to be much wider, its can be called “yakitsume” but its wide. Sugata is a bit different, the sori is larger, the tapering is larger than what you usually see with Go. There is arguably stronger presence of masame-nagare, nie within the hamon forms really nice clouds, but overall its presence is more… sort of “stout”. It has substantially more Yamato character to it. Here one can remember that there Senjuin Yoshihiro smiths from Echizen province, with signed examples, and Go Yoshihiro is often considered to be one of them. So the commentary of Honami Koson (which might be my confirmation bias, I really need to study the issue much more!) was that its Kamakura period’s Senjuin Yoshihiro, possibly the father of Go. This in turn should bring us to the question – what is the so called Senjuin school? As I mentioned, its not advised to be placed in judged competition except Ryumon Nobuyoshi. The attribution to particular names is impossible; there have been attempts to write up different subschools but they all run into problems that there are plenty of nijimei examples which are papered Senjuin but which are not consistent namewise with “Shigehiro school” etc. Its also largely attributed in a negative fashion: really old blade with Yamato features which is not Yasutsuna or Kyushu-mono. How did we come to this? To an extent we have to thank the “five Yamato traditions” for that. When the classification was created Tegai Kanenaga and Hosho smiths were considered almost mid-Kamakura, and Taima was also referenced in Kamakura genealogies. When it became apparent that Taima, Shikkake and Hosho were very short lived, Tegai did not really begin until 1300 – still the “five traditions” were kept. So you have a bizarre case that Yamato Shizu is not considered a mainline, while Taima does. Even more bizarre case is that while every Soshu tradition is “shadowed” by its Yamato counterpart, all of these counterparts actually can be found in Kamakura period’s Senjuin examples. Here is mid Kamakura “proto-Taima” in tight itame with nie splashed all over. The quality varies, but towards 1270-1310 you start seeing extremely high end Senjuin. Awataguchi hada, nie laced throughout; the best ones do tend to come to old attributions to Echizen Masters like Go and Norishige. But they are different: the forging style can vary a lot within the blade, more comfortable with pure masame sections, more comfortable with chouji midareba or nioi ko chouji based hamon. The signatures are sadly lacking, but it can be ascertained as Echizen Senjuin – a precursor to Echizen Soshu.

Its nothing profound or important, but anyone notice anything unusual re typical reference materials?

Feels like we should do at least a partial reveal here... Yoshihiro. Honami Tenrai. Now any guesses on the qualification by Honami Koson (supposed, comparing to oshigata is always a bit iffy) and what the NBTHK papers/sayagaki say?

Its an interesting choice. Later Uda can do decent Rai-styled jigane, and in regards to the late Kamakura Uda I think there are no 100% certain signed examples, so that would make a contentious point. However they are typically specifically described as late Kamakura at best, nioi-guchi tends to be subdued, midareba is extremely uncharacteristic, pieces with Kamakura-like sugata tend to have rough Yamato jigane. It sounds like a good guess to me, but no.

Rough, very wide and high contrast mokume. Negative.

Yes, in the shinogi ji with Yamato Shizu its extremely uncommon and uncharacteristic.

Aaa, Kamakura's Honami... I don't like the proper kantei. Shijo makes you memorize the combos of nouns corresponding to each maker... even though reading them is difficult, its not 100% objective and often different writeups on the same blade greatly diverge. It boxes you into stereotypes which in reality are not applicable as the works tend not to adhere 100% to what he is supposed to be in a kantei book. The "real in hand" means three months prep-bootcamp committed to memorizing everything possible about 50-150 or so smiths. Its useful, but again - too fixed on stereotypes, avoids hard questions and narrow. A complex early blade with multiple opinions is what I like the most. We don't know what it is - but we can present a few theories, discussing them and end up with two decent ones. Thus I'll stick with illegal options.

Its a very good guess, but midareba typically precludes Taima. They tend to be hard nie-suguha group, Tegai with good itame, not much into 1cm wide/20cm long nie "sunagashi". There is indeed a notion that signed Taima tend to be softer.

Nah, you do see it with Yamato Shizu. Shizu is not that great with itame jigane and he goes pure hard nie in hamon. A bit rougher overall.

Ok. The real purpose of kantei as we all know for the organizer is to have no risk o-sensei cosplay while embarrassing everyone else. Putting my (100% illegal) sensei cap on: Strong koshizori even in o-suriage, very pronounced taper locks us into either very late Nambokucho - early Muromachi, or Kamakura plus maybe earliest Nambokucho. In the first case Shikkake guess is reasonable, but gunome is not too periodic, nioi-guchi is broad and bright, jigane is itame, hamon tends towards nioi especially at the edge. I personally would follow with either Sue Sa or Naotsuna (since both did a lot of work in such sugata and nioi hamon with nie activities), but the negations are obvious - you don't often see that long and that broad nie stripes with them, boshi is wrong etc. etc Yamato Shizu is a viable and probably the best option if one is committed to seeing this as late Nambokucho sugata. The actual opinion of NBTHK paper is that its Kamakura. The seller swore he was given more precise indication (early-mid) but I would refer to Cicero's "on honor" in regards to antique dealers. He did not research the blade in a sense of checking the shumei, checking the Honami publications. Honami are specific with late Kamakura-earliest Nambokucho. So here Yamato Shizu remains a decent alternative. Sayagaki does not comment explicitly on the period, maybe as it is unaware of Honami work, but does not contradict or expand on the papers, so the Kamakura dating stands. Hope this helps.

Negative so far. Its "typical" for the school, though such subtype is admittedly rare. |Aspects from different schools would imply it to be of secondary role, and its a bit dangerous statement in this case. The bigger issue: school's kantei overall is awkward. But arriving to the attribution in this case is pretty much two step procedure on many fronts. Given X and Y means Z. Or if we assume its X, then given Y it can only be Z.

We are somehow going in a bit of a wrong direction I am afraid. I don't want to throw any more direct hints, so I'll allow myself to do a bit of sensei posturing. Please understand it does not come from a big league player, just an old and frail carp who now and then gets some weird stuff. The way a typical kantei competition works (not that I know much about them, seriously) is you have say two blades that are 100% stereotypes. If kantei book says Nobukuni has shirakke utsuri, they'll place there only the one with shirakke utsuri. Even if its not that common actually among Nobukuni. The set of choices is also kind of small - shinshinto is Kiyomaro, shinto is Kotetsu, don't expect much Muromachi except maybe Oei Bizen etc. etc.. Then comes a curve ball. That's where someone like Kinju can come in... As long as it has a well defined feature and a reasonable well known, even if its something aside from well traveled path, its going to be in. You do have Kinju and Tadayoshi in competition all the time. You sometimes have Masamune, even though his "characteristic" traits are kind of vague or all over the board, but its just going to be stunning and relatively early Soshu blade, so one can then say "Masamune" more or less based on the quality. There are a (very) few major schools however which are not supposed to be used in judged competitions, with some exceptions. They are very seldom used in this venue, and its openly acknowledged. That's one of those. P.S. I actually checked and there is one smith from this school who actually does enter competitions with reasonable regularity... and maybe as a curve ball. It has shusho (i.e. post-Edo shumei) attribution by Honami Tenrai, which was more or less obviously purposefully erased. Very likely because its very specific. The unfortunate thing is that both NBTHK and sayagaki attribute the blade to basically the same school, but not to a specific (and controversial) person. The blade's features to an extent do support a narrow attribution, but I have not heard about unsigned blades (there are signed examples) actually attributed to him within the last four decades probably. Well, it also depends on whether we consider Him as one generation, two or sort of one and two nidai. I think one should concentrate here on the school and consider a personal attribution speculative. Another note that sayagaki and NBTHK declared the shusho as unreadable. Well, obviously Markus Sesko can read these complicated kanji extremely well, while I have some experience with pulling out erased shumei in the photography so they are visible again. To further pad myself on the back I will also say at the beginning I did not understand sayagaki and was not aware of Honami opinionson the blade at all, but I strongly suspected the attribution to be along the lines what Honami proposed.

Hard to be certain on the period - I think sayagaki purposefully avoids being too specific on the matter. Negative on Chogi: he would tend to uniformly wide mihaba, powerful kissaki, in o-suriage tends to loose koshizori. In case if there is a will to do the Sa route: sayagaki and other descriptions do not say this, but the steel has slight dark hue.

Negative on Kaneuji. Its 100% illegal kantei. Everything is permitted. I don't want to formulate my answer as dozen etc. The hints are here, they already outline the possibilities in a narrow circle. Obviously its something not completely orthogonal to Yamato Shizu, but there are two-three features which are not particular consistent with Shizu lineage. Itame is too dense, dominant and strong. Hamon is gunome-midare, more non-uniform compared to Shikkake, more nioi based. Nioguchi is clear, broad and bright.

Lets actually add the sayagaki's description: The forging structure is an itame that tends to nagare towards the ha and ji-nie appears. The hardening is a nie-laden midareba that is composed of notare and that is mixed with gunome, ashi, and sunagashi, kinsuji, and yubashiri that are interwoven with the hada. The nioiguchi is bright and clear and the bōshi runs out as yakitsume.

Width can be ascertained from the tape measure, though with some difficulty, but I am quite a bit lazy to put tape in both directions. This blade however is a great example of shijo kantei's limitations. Tanobe san writes in his description that bohsi is yakitsume. On one side the kaeri is indeed almost absent, there is sort of just flame of hakkikake extending along the mune, but on the other side there is kaeri. Took me 10 minutes playing with lights to detect, but its there. Very thin but actually reasonably (but not too) long. Kasane is not too informative here, but what you are stricken to discover in hand is that the blade has almost no niku. Its in perfect condition but no niku. Very light and the center of mass is towards the nakago. Utsuri - well there are areas much darker than others, but they are also chikei-rich. Can it be called utsuri - hm....

All are welcome - we have at least two more attributions to go through! Negative on Shikkake.

It is "typical", the issue is how this group of smiths is attributed, which creates a strong potential for alternative interpretations. The blade has 4 attributions, all somewhat different, issued by: Honami Tenrai Honami Koson NBTHK Tanobe san The attribution Yamato Shizu is cited by Tanobe san as a possible alternative. My congratulations - it is by no means an easy blade. But the main attribution is different.

There are obviously those enjoying the proper type of kantei. The shijo comics released by the mainstream organizations. Yet I know there are those hungry for the crack feeling of kantei by photo. It must be illegal! It cannot be done! Only the shijo can capture the true secret of the nihonto! Yet we just can't stop ourselves. Again and again we must feel the stream of image bytes flowing into our system. Today I present to you the blade so controversial, in NBTHK journal no less it was stated that this type should not be used for a judged kantei competition! Whether in shijo or in hand, it shall remain a forbidden fruit! But I am sure real crackheads will not be stopped from guessing by such cowardly words! Go ahead, enjoy the show. Who will get the first atari? I will add that on the other side the kaeri is not nearly as easy to observe. First image is probably the key. Tape is included in the overall photograph for dimensions.

The thread is obviously not controversial enough. The first rule of going to any sword club, Japan, US or whatever if you own really high paper blade - bring one. Show it to club's senseis with a shaky hand and a begging voice - "could you help me with my sword". You'll be told its Muromachi. Not a bad blade. Real samurai stuff. A short lecture. Then in innocent voice add "I got what you call... papers? for it". Take it out. In every major religious institution there are folks patrolling in search of neophytes. "I saw you praying alone... We usually don't do this here... Do you know why? Do you actually know the real meaning of prayer, as taught by Him?" The mentor (who obviously denies such status out of modesty, for he is but a lowly student of Him - the Exalted Hermitian Sage of sacred living), is willing to part with his knolwedge... as long as the student promises to obey and never again pray in an inappropriate manner... maybe brew coffee ones in a while... Everywhere there is an unseen hierarchy: the gurus, they first circle of bitc... hm... followers, their apprentices, finally the (few) unforgiven ones who read the books and pray alone despite all the notices. For others its 10 years of serving coffee to a mentor so they can become mentors to the new crop. The choice you have as a neophyte - institutions where the duties are coffee, cleaning and "learning", and those where they involve... a different manner of service. Before you feel bad about the "victims" - the second type promises much faster advancement through the ranks and much more aggressive support system. In the old times at least the graduates of such thus institutions were often locked out into their own eco-system, but today's world rejects the bigotry. Every edge weapons collecting community has its cloud of "humble students". No personal collection - just tales of 100$ sushi. 3,000 messages and not a single opinion on the blade, general and generalizing statements only. Decent commandment of Japanese. Lots of mentorship pretense, though obviously - "after 50 years I am but a humble beginner". I stopped going to clubs in Japan after being aggressively torpedoed by the local gaijin-on-crack crowd. Some had a secret polishing technique (if you don't use one the blade gets physically destroyed!), one was a successor to Tanobe and a curator of dozen US museums, others were also selling some crap - not even theirs. You are what your friends are. If you have to constantly tell yourself "Yes, BUT Jim deep inside is really ok guy" - time to take a real close look at yourself.

Man, whats happened at NBTHK-ab??? Personally I would say the best way to learn is to have one or two experienced people looking through swords and making comments. Its very important for collectors to visit each other and look at blades tet-a-tet. Then handling blades by yourself, photography, looking at various dealers webpages, fromn Japan. Reading kantei exercises. Binge reading of Ph.D. thesis on pre-Sengoku topics since those can contain the views impacting swords genealogies yet never internalized by the nihonto community. Message boards can be extremely useful when you get 2-4 knowledgable people who are active and argue with each other. In nihonto the participation is more anemic I think because: a. There are very many people committed to comments that one cannot comment at all on a blade... it needs to be shown to "an expert", polished and papered. b. People are afraid they'll make a guess and then it will paper to something else and they'll feel stupid. In non-nihonto there has been message boards which were phenomenal in their impact... and they never lasted. Usually the dealer community and other "official experts" eventually get really upset and organize an extraordinary campaign to silence the participants. Or the forum's moderator decides one day he is the greatest guru - because technically he can enforce the status. Or you get a flood of bozos who band together and try to collectively take down someone they consider the most respected.

Not for anime purposes, but these are the swords that actual clans carried. For example, Hattori were real people with real swords - they are just not what you see in movies.