Rivkin

The hada is very dense and without o-hada or ware or anything else common in late Muromachi. The nakago is also a bit light for that. Hamon does not show any sub-structure, a single mass. It appears to be late. I think its owari 1700 or even somewhat later, related to: http://sanmei.com/contents/media/A42776_T3546_PUP_E.htm

Personal take: If its NTHK, Godai = "later generation" rather than fifth generation. For Tsunahiro fifth generation I think they put his exact title in the papers. They still tend to put an approximate timeframe in the papers as well and from this one can deduce what the likely generation is. This is done to an extent to avoid being involved in controversies like when is the separation between Nobukuni's 1st, 2nd and 3rd generation - you just paper it to Nobukuni and a certain era, and the same for Muromachi Nobukuni - you say later generation Nobukuni and the likely era.

Strongly suspect sandai.

Usually the generation is judged based on work rather than signature alone.

There have been multiple attempts in pre-Meiji times to use iron ores, but surprisingly the literature asserts that until Ansei at least iron sand and tatara accounted for >95% of steel produced. The shift to iron ore and blast furnace was part of modernization effort and came later.

And sugata is not an ideal match for shinshinto. Can be early generations of Kunikane, if one blames inconsistencies on it being out of polish.

I have conflicting feelings about this package. There is ambition, but the quality is not the top notch. Interesting habaki. There are not too many details seen in the blade, but I don't think its very old, more or less certainly pass Muromachi. It seem to have nioi based suguha hamon and lots of masame, an unusual combination pointing towards late production, possibly shinshinto. Its based probably on what Sendai Kunikane used to do, and the last generations had masame almost parallel to suguha without things like hotsure and their boshi has almost no kaeri, which is very unusual for the period. So I am very strongly suspect its either 11th to 13th generation of Sendai Kunikane. Pricewise - very little idea, sorry.

I would say that there are a few sugata which are period-specific (Heian, Nambokucho, Kambun shinto and shinshinto) and the rest actually sort of appears similar to one another, if the blade is cut down a lot. That's a reason you can get the same blade papering to Kamakura, Muromachi and early shinto. Otherwise you have koshi-zori of the early Muromachi and Kamakura which are also similar to each other, but kissaki tends to be different, so you have to start considering chubby kissaki or ko-kissaki as well as how transition happens from ha in the blade to boshi (it tends to differ through periods), and things like typical kasane for a period. Current NBTHK is very high strung on things like hira niku and kasane, but there are plenty of detractors of such approach treating it as a counter-reaction to 1960s when Dr. Sato was issuing Kamakura period's judgements right and left to blades with a Nambokucho o-kissaki.

All sword publications always suffer from one big issue - there are about 3-4 people who can write something rather than rehash something already published, and these people tend to have uneven output. Plus today they can reach as wide an audience through a personal blog (Markus Sesko). By comparison a periodic publication has both a more limited audience and substantially lower average quality per publication. I am all for nihonto journal as free, open set of papers collected on a website, but with no more than one issue per year. Otherwise I don't see a point. In terms of books, I would love to say digital as it saves tremendous amount of effort on the publisher's side, but... I don't think digital only is a good option today except for strictly reference volumes like Markus' swordsmiths for the time being. Maybe the best case is having a limited print run (250 copies) plus a digital version. On Societies... In my opinion, they should focus far less on titles, on being called a sensei, on publications and events, and more on looking at blades. First and foremost organizing shows of good blades or tosogu. Sadly this is something they least appreciate. Working hard with members or doing infinitely harder job of getting through the screen of museum nonsense is not their forte.

That's a classic Takada signature I would think - bold, large, deep and centered and a classic Takada name. Not being a specialist: Their work just varies a lot and thus can be difficult to pointpoint to a specific generation. Nambokucho ones typically have strong Yamato feel, but in ko nie, with lots of variations of hamon which you can probably call gunome or midare, and masame is not particularly strong. In early Muromachi you would expect more of the same, but even a tad less nie(some are pure nioi based with relateively wide and white nioi-guchi) and with somewhat larger featured jigane. Those would not be pure suguha. The problem is that occasionally they would decide to do Bizen imitation or something else, but here we talk about suguha so it makes things easy. Then they started to churn out a lot of blades around 1550. To be honest, almost everything signed is actually good quality, unsigned things attributed by NBTHK are absolutely random. The issue is that besides Yamato-Soshu stuff which was their early tradition they started to do full blown Soshu pieces and later also Bizen works, so at this point the style is complicated. But then the story goes some of their own worked with shodai Tadayoshi and you clearly see the very best examples after that time are all pure suguha and very bright and consistent itame with ji nie, very close to Hizen but tends to have distinctive "scratched appearance". They also made effort to show some nie at habuchi - either as hotsure in which case jigane has nagare or as Rai-like round ko nie foam, in which case the jigane will be pure itame. Hope that helps.

Nothing authoritative about my statement, just I guess, but: I would argue by statistics one almost never sees the works predating Otomo Sorin (i.e. 1550s). There are mumei ones attributable to Bungo of Nambokucho, but then you have a long lull where you find exceptionally few blades. Nijimei ones tend to have very large characters. I am too lazy to look into reference books, but the ones I remember had visible jigane and were not in pure suguha. The passion for suguha begins later and dominates the works only of post-Hizen Tadayoshi generations. At the same time you start seeing a shift towards denser and better itame-nagare. On the other hand, later into shinto they are seldom nijimei. By default for me a nijimei like this is between Eiroku and Genna. I would ask a few questions - it is pure suguha? If yes, its almost certainly not earlier than Eiroku. If it has norare-midare-gunome-whatever you call it, can be earlier. Does it have hotsure or well defined nie crystals at habuchi? If yes, its late. If no, likely earlier. Is jigane somewhat wide featured in place, possibly with shirake utsuri, with not a lot of hotsure? If yes, likely early. If jigane is bright and itame dominated, with very well defined Rai-Hizen-like dashes in nie - certainly late.

Hi Joe, I will be the voice of .... (bad things) by stating that the signature might be false. The nakago is atypical for the school, so is almost everything about the writing. However, it looks like a genuine late Muromachi period blade which might as well have Soshu like hamon. Not much is seen on such photographs, but there are a few reasonable possibilities regarding the school. Is habaki a wood integral to the tsuka? Some people believe this tends to correspond to higher end, often Muromachi though blades. Kirill

I am very sorry to hear that. Larry had it tough for quite a few years, but kept on going with Minneapolis sword show and his dojo. He will be missed.

its very periodic which after 1500 is sort of mino. jumyo was a bit conservative in this so it survived into shinto like that. to be honest i would say its just older.

Yes, Jumyo comes to mind.

Senjuin attribution should not be an issue here. For pre-late Kamakura items there are no alternative Yamato mainline attribution, so one has to decide against Kyushu (Naminohira, Sairen) or ko-Hoki. This does not look Sairen, really a stretch for ko-Hoki, the hada with ayasugi-like masame can pass for Naminohira, but they tend to have much flatter ha. It feels like a typical mainline Yamato and thus Senjuin. However, Senjuin attributions are often considered somewhat weak simply because not much is known about the school and in many cases it serves as default attribution for Yamato without Senjuin-specific traits.

I am beginning to suspect I am royally messed up... Is it Chinese?? I thought it is better than that, but also thought they did not make things that simple in late showa...

Good point, forgot it was shortened... Then can be shinto.

You can see hamon at places, but the hada is essentially a glass-like mirror surface - this is very late. Straight without tapering with largish kissaki - often shinshinto. Nakago looks unusual for the period, maybe a bit earlier.

Almost certainly recent, like WW2 era.

Yep, border of Muromachi and shinto. Could be many things, like shitahara.

I would even go shinshinto, but hard to be certain.

I did not check any references myself, but with Senjuin unknown signatures are quite common. They did not have Edo period's genealogies to back them up, being an outsider group in a sense, while at the same time they are really old, with late Heian swords found here and there. So what would be a slam dank TJ with Bizen or Yamashiro becomes just a guaranteed TH with Senjuin, with not a lot of extra money from the fact that its signed. Funny how a low grade ko Hoki will set you back easily 3 mil yen, while very good Senjuin can be had for under 2.

Its almost certainly not koto, therefore Yamato attribution can be difficult.

The curvature is in the center, chu kissaki... Either the very end of Kamakura, or between 1570 and 1640. Statistically 1,000 times more likely to be the latter.