Rivkin

Blade #1. Signature obscured by ninja spell.

Few know that among the many practices of illegal kantei there is but one deemed so evil the practicioner's souls have no hope of attaining Nirvana and cursed forever to walk the earth as ninja spirits. Even the most exalted order of volunteer knights of NBTHK are powerless before the sinister inclination of those partaken in the ritual. It is said to have been founded by a blind kantei expert whose family ko-Aoe was "bungoed" by the NBTHK. Filled with anger he offered his soul to the vengeful spirits of Kurama mountain, granting him i exchange illegal ninja kantei powers. The rules are deceivingly simple... Instead of kantei-ing one blade you kantei by photo THREE papered to the same school. Branches are considered as the same school. Today is the day to find out: Are you ninjas or pussies? The answer should include the school name and dates of the three blades. Let's fighting love.

I wrote a sarcastic message but then realized where the problem is coming from. In normal people's textbooks Nambokucho can be part of Muromachi period. In Nihonto definitions it never is. This blade by papers and sayagaki is from 1400s, i.e. nihonto's Muromachi.

Its an interesting case in a sense that stylewise a very active Bizen in nie can and is mistaken for Soshu. In both cases you have choji-togari with lots of ups and downs , in both cases the hada plays the secondary role... I think this is late Muromachi Kaga. This is when such hirazukuri waki were most popular, the nakago has Kaga shape (though damaged), and the hamon is more Bizen than Soshu - and Kaga liked to produce this style. One can even state "Kaga Kiyomitsu", 4th generation, but I have to run before the "friends of NBTHK" volunteer unit gets on my case for yet another illegal kantei.

I saw the blade. This was 2022 NTHK panel with a new staff. Quite a few attributions to ko Aoe and Bungo Yukihira. Ko kissaki seems to be the thing for all such submissions - and in real life this one did look miniaturesque.

Virtually every description is quite... optimistic.

I'll join a previously made statement. It has an unusual shape with a very slight fumbari/koshizori. The nakago is suriage and is patinated as it it was done in the early Edo or around. The hamon even assuming big chunk of what we see is hadori is very wide and periodic gunome. This makes it unlikely to be a really old blade. If its shinto then its something along the lines of Jumyo, but its a big "if" because the shape is strange, and we have to assume how the hamon looks underneath this hadori. Shinshinto or even somewhat later is quite possible here, in which case the shape and patination are sort of purposeful while the work will likely be average execution in this style.

Copper coins were always towards the bottom of the metal quality in East Asia. More often than not the government monopoly mattered more than the content; 18th century Japanese copper coins are magnetic (i.e. iron based).

I think the issue is that for a variety of reasons (i.e. different Ph.D. thesis give different explanations) production of soft metals was scarce in early Muromachi Japan, the imports were quite common and absolutely all coinage was imported. Such coins were later outlawed when Hideyoshi was shifting country to a centralized trade system, all melted down to make whatever was made out of bronze at the time. But their metal content is extremely varied and dirty, so you can't just get any decent shinchu or other alloys from them as is.

Does look like early shinto (1650) tanto. The style is sort of arch-typical for shinto-soshu-mino, the work itself is decent.

Looks quite possibly late Muromachi. No way to be sure with these photographs, but I think it can be sue Tegai or something similar.

I often feel Omiya is undervalued. Some of it is very good Soden-Bizen in nie, other works are quality follow ups to Kanemitsu's school.

I have to admit having some difficulty understanding the blade.. can we see the boshi and nakago in detail? In video I think there is a glimpse of darkish hue (somewhat ugly "utsuri") around the ha; the patchy-large nie arranged in "belts"... Sugata which can be shinto, but I personally would not exclude late Muromachi. Somewhat rough jigane with masame. Its hard to judge here, but it can be late Muromachi Uda...

I am sorry to say I don't get the point... Tsuba and kozuka makers made money by selling practical items which were also artistic, not by issuing a guarantee that each kozuka is one of a kind. There are hundreds of near identical kinai or soten tsuba. Hundreds of near identical dragon or sea shells kozuka. Hundreds of identical ones with scenes from Heike monogatari. Which is why you can't 100% identify the Goto generation even if yours is a very decent match for the one in the book. If the motif sold well, you made another. And there are a lot of low grade kozuka - its just a knife.

Frankly - you should. Echizen Seki call on this blade means they did not care to examine it. The last two years Echizen Seki attributions are like a floodgate opening from every orifice. And I thought all blades are supposed to be Bungo by default...

I will be shooting myself in a foot since my current ownership is skewed towards the early sessions... But everytime somebody big on a shinsa dies the appraisals and customs do change a lot. Sometimes not right away, but within couple of years they do. You suddenly see different names being used and specific judgements leaning more on a conservative or liberal side. These institutions are very persona based, unfortunately, and each generation tends to have its own scenario. Comparing Juyo received today to the one received 50 years ago is difficult.

If asked what is easily sellable for 25K from Oei I personally imagine a lesser known but first tier smith like Heianjo (Oei+) or at least nidai Masahiro... In both cases the blades would have to be dated as otherwise one has to deal with the question "I think its later Muromachi". But dated blade like this is an exceptional find. So its most likely Bizen blade, which is of the order of 90% of preserved signed ubu Oei daito. In Japan in the first tier shop getting 25K USD for those is doable. In the US I think 9-15K is more of an expectation. And it will not sell in a moment.

My very blind guess would be 11K USD.

Ogh, these are major blades. and really good images.

I don't think he appraises the items as Momoyama period's. More like Kambun to Genroku in poor condition.

Its a nice Soshu tanto. Hitatsura has characteristic "comma" shape, which is indicative of late Muromachi.

It looks like I am going to make it. As always, if you want to have a high grade blade photographed, I should be able to do it in my hotel room. You get to keep the photos and I get to consider them for a (hopefully coming) photo album of nihonto masterpieces. Here is an example shot at the last Chicago show.

It appears to be the same old story. All pre-10th century iron swords found in Eurasia are basically random. Some show evidence of lamination, many don't, some were clearly hammered a lot, others don't, some are 0.4% carbon, others zero, the silica has any shape and size you can possibly imagine. Its not mathematics so definitively proving something on the basis of such data is hard, but the scientific community is 100% tribal. So in Europe such distribution is attributed to someone digging out the material out of what looks more or less like tatara and thinking - this piece is good and I'll laminate it, and those we never had luck even heating well enough, so I'll just shape it somehow as a stick with a (sort of) edge, and that will still be useful and sellable. Though admittedly full of holes and slag inside. If you want to publish an article in proceedings of Chinese Conference on Archeology, this will not do. The distribution observed is the result of intrinsically different methods used to produce the material itself - some is wrought iron, some is cast iron, some is pig iron which was decarburized etc. etc. etc. You have to pick the side where you want your tenure. For the dating, the most basic (and common) method for pre-mass literacy eras is establishing a set of "proved" sites where you have coins or writings and then you say - the site nearby has more stuff on top of it, so its older. Textbooks give you some idea how to convert centimeters into years. Precision is about 200-500 years, mostly depending on how close are the "reference" sites. In pre-Heian East Asia, where material culture can be rather conservative and writings are not often found (and often doubted), establishing such reference can be difficult, and dating can be quite a bit challenging... So maybe this particular case is more "datable", maybe its not, but in general every method is bound to give you a _range_ of dates. Replacing it with a single number is strange, but some people do it when it supposed to be "the oldest" of its kind. You see in publications bronze swords dating 2000-2500 BC, and then suddenly "sword, 3350 BC". Because the author promotes the find as the "oldest known". I had numerous dealings with Japanese institutions which had rather run of the mill circa 1800 Indian or European blades or mounts (apparently the desire for new things was not just shinshinto), and they wanted a nod that yes, this is Japanese imitation of European or Indian work, produced for the Otomo Daimyo (Shimazu, Hizen etc.), because it is from Kyushu and we know that the find's date is definitvely 1560. They have zero interest in this not being the case. One told me Indians could not produce it because they don't use chopsticks so the finger motorics is lacking to make a fine inlay. After having a Japanese girlfriend who did not want to learn swimming because "Japanese have very heavy bones and always sink", I was not surprised. But its really not Japanese problem: Scientists in the Academia do generally dislike error bars or admitting the unknown. If it says you'll all perish in plague, you'll all perish in plague unless Professor gets the funds to save us. All of these does not mean frankly that the statements made in the paper are "bad". Its just a complex question by nature.

I can only add that I had experience with a shinto blade being issued "no judgement", which is common when what is submitted is signed by the likes of Sukehiro (i.e. the most faked name), the work is good, but the signature has a few strange points - and much-much later it was resubmitted (by someone esteemed in nihonto circles) and passed. With this level they do want to find more or less an exact match in the records. It can be a biting experience with smiths like Shinkai, Masakiyo and others who changed their signature and "transitional types" are somewhat lesser known. With chujosaku its a bit more relaxed, and with Muromachi lower grade items more so.

Not being a specialist on Nobuyoshi by a very long shot... If this was a european auction house they would provide a similar signature upon request in an established publication or database, but we deal with different standards here, so we can only guess. Generally signed items are checked with some rigor against the published examples. With two or more generation smiths one tends to assume somewhat greater variability as "normal", much more so if its Muromachi. With "chujosaku" smiths one typically does not apply the same level of scrutiny as with jo-saku and above. Generalities aside, what can be relied upon here is that the "tempo" of signatures is actually very similar. Distance between kanji and between lines of kanji, the number of distinguishable strikes per line are similar, the pressure points are similar, and most importantly this "tempo" remains consistent throughout the signature. Usually with gimei there are weird pauses where the signer looks at the template in front of him and adjusts the chisel a bit for the next stroke "to get it right". If he does not do it, the whole signature will be more and more divergent from the original towards its end, if he does you see a discontinuity in the execution. On your photograph the signature looks extremely slanted, but on the papers its much more straight, it slants just a bit, so some of this is probably a distortion due to using a wide angle lens against a curved object like nakago. The signature is a bit condensed, and many dislike condensed signatures as a reflex, especially on wakis, where unskilled gimei artist can fear there is not enough space so overcondenses from the beginning and then has to continue like this till the end), but the examples you compare against are also condensed, so it seems to be his writing style. That the individual lines point in different directions is not a definitive proof of gimei for the majority of signatures.