Rivkin

The greatest issue I have with a modern society is its commitment to morals being a preset of unchangeable postulates. Philosophy worthy of Bronze Age fundamentalists but a wholesome rejection of historical realities. My mother grew up in camps. Cannibalism was rampant. As were very late term abortions. Infanticide. Was this evil? I would not say. Very little in prisons or war qualifies as "good", whichever side one was part of. The problem of modern morals is limited experience our journalists and professors have with life outside their career path. Air conditioning does mellow once's spirit. Makes life a bit more boring also.

I think the most honest statement is - I personally can't see anything in any of these pictures. These are probably good blades. The kitchen counter appears solidly build and well cleaned.

Wow! thanks. I will readily say Yoshikage would be zero chance for me on this one.

That's a first for me. Realizing as noted how much more difficult it is compared to conventional blades. It feels like many things boshi etc. simply do not apply.

I think you might be right here - for some reason I was hasty with Hizen guess, it does look koto. Damn, should not kantei on a smartphone. I would through a bit tangential thought though - Ryokai-Muromachi. But suspect Bizen is the correct answer. unfortunately that is one of the things where I can't distinguish well between Uda, Bizen, Fuyuhiro, Bungo and Ryokai.

Later generation Hizen Tadayoshi?

I don't think there are blades today which are accepted 13th century Enju. Your dealer might be translating sayagaki in a very aggressive manner. With Enju late Kamakura generally refers to Showa+ eras.

On a very personal note I have to wonder if these are Kamakura per se. They both look like earlish Nambokucho.

Its hard to be conclusive with these without seeing details of the work, but: - the mei appears to be the right size, place and strikes, it looks ok. - the blade looks ok for Muromachi. Maybe a bit post-Oei. - the horimono is well cut. Good chance its a real Muromachi Nobukuni. I would send it to NTHK next time it holds shinsa in the US.

Nihonto community is addicted to titles. Often fake ones.

All US museums are patronized by Morihiro Ogawa. He is disliked by many, myself not being an exception.

I think you'll have a blast with these two volumes. Its really interesting to build tables who preferred what, a very different experience compared to Juyo POV we have today. I might have spare copies but I am not sure. Someone with far better Japanese than mine can certainly get much more out of them. As a dumpster diver in Japan I obviously always getting a LOT of hatred from the collegium of American dealers whose dogma is that such activity is impossible in principle. In fact I would characterize it as being hard limited in certain aspects (yes you are buying blades that were seen by dozens of people who know at least something), but very rewarding in others. And one thing you definitely see as having a large impact even today is a mass selloff of Daimyo collections in 1950-1960 which often purposefully severed links to old information. Buying a blade in Japan and finding it is an important Daimyo piece is not only not impossible, but probable, though you have to get used that attribution very often shifts in modern papers downward. If you have Tametsugu suspected of being Daimyo treasure, check the register for Norishige or Go. If there is an important Jubi whose location is unknown today, chances are it was simply sold quietly. A great blade without Jubi status, which was common prewar might even have some generic Yamato papers today.

Probably someone late, shinshinto or later imitating Hosho. Pure masame, high contrast, very uniform like drawn lines and absolutely no ji nie - very late work.

I now see its a light reflection. Anyway it has been considerably shortened.

My take is that if its in good nie, its usually upper grade Soshu. It can be argued that you find it on chokuto etc, but that's too exotic. If its in nioi, you see it being revived by Shimada, and afterwords being used by shinto and shinshinto people.

Thanks! If its absolutely straight, its shinto and there will be one-two possible guys.

Outline of boshi would help.

To be completely honest there was one person in shinto who tempered similarly and used yakidashi, but he is very rare and then boshi will be suguha. Assuming its not suguha (impossible to see on pictures) yakidashi I think would still point to Yokoyama Bizen. Who exactly would need to be details of the work, but I suspect its someone a bit lesser in the group, though still as good as most of them.

Yokoyama Bizen....

Hard No would be my take.

Small probability sue-Bizen circa 1530, large probability Okayama Bizen 1850.

Boshi needs to be shown. there are a few options - Muromachi Bizen Tembun jidai is somewhat problematic because we don't see crab claws and sugata is very straight. Bizen Okayama Sukekane or related school so far appears to be a good match. They did clusters of very roundish choji. Very distinctive features is that sometimes these choji on the opposite sides of the cluster point slightly in opposite directions. If you find such choji - that's Sukekane.

I don't think tracking jubi is realistic. Such papers were issued in quantity and the "missing objects" are those taken from shrines etc. by some members of occupation forces... which is limited to but a few cases of outright theft from important official institutions. Police was enforcing the new laws actively from 1946 with more or less uniform understanding that it does not concern historical swords not in gunto mounts especially so in any important collections, though there were numerous occasions when either police or occupation forces took posession of something they did not comprehend. What was always more interesting to me is a tremendous number of blades that stayed in Japan but purposefully lost connection to their Daimyo owners. Things you buy in Japan and then find in Shimazu sales catalogue or some comparable register. I would not say you discover its Jubi, in part as doing this would be quite difficult, but with a potential Daimyo property and knowing a general region, you have to search against 1000-2000 blades in published registers/catalogues and finding your blade there is realistic. So there was a substantial drive to sell the blades in 1950-1960 without confirming their origin. Most Daimyo families were quite stressed financially and while almost nothing from them went to the West, internally it was a huge market. Those can be thought of as "missing blades", yet the missing part was done on purpose.

could not help myself against stating that Jim's article is exceptionally misleading on virtually every aspect it touches.

were it simply nijimei Yukizane I would definitely vote as genuine. Plenty of unlisted smiths, and Yuki is typical for Bungo, though not like this one. But - the signature is poorly written. Its messy, with highly uneven characters, the pace is very tight in the beginning and very broad at the end. Generally Bungo no kuni only are pre-Muromachi, long Muromachi signatures are bungo no kuni Takada and later you get Fujiwara addition. There are exceptions though. This might be gimei.