Rivkin

To much of my amusement (small world) I was just working on getting some sayagaki done. While talking to the agent it became apparent that the wakizashi that was "discussed" here (offered by Andy Quirt) just received sayagaki from Tanobe san. Kirill R.

The blade is Ishido shinto school, the signature is Muromachi-ish Bizen style, but it does not seem to be a perfect match for the blade's work. Kirill R.

I think one of the big choices to be faced in life is whether to follow what one reads or what one sees. Repeating what is written is a safe choice. In the worst case one shares being mistaken with many others. Following what one sees runs into danger of acting on incomplete or misinterpreted information. But its a fun choice, and tends to yeild right results in the long turn. So I can only comment on my personal observations. If others have different statistics, it will be interesting to compare, and I am looking forward to learning new numbers. 1. NTHK - one very seldom sees any paper by them issued prior to 1980s. Given its history, one would expect it to play bigger role in the paper market, especially in the very early yeas, but whatever the reason, this is simply not the case. Today NTHK combined has about 5-15% of the market, in 1970s it looks like it was 0.1%. The international outreach may have been the crucial choice in NTHK history. 2. I can't say anything for green papers with shinto names - I am bad in kantei for this period, and don't have a lot of experience with them. But green with mid range koto names with a very great probability will repaper to something roughly the same. I am puzzled when people are concerned with papers to Kaifu Muromachi "because they are green". Look at the blade. What are your concerns about it? Koto the very top names - with substantial probability will repaper notch down. Irregardless wheather its the head office; absolutely the same goes for the blue papers; same goes for Dr. Sato's sayagaki, except in this case I would MAYBE replace "substantial probability" by "reasonable probability". I personally would estimate the validity of juyo judgements from the period as "substantially worse" than that of Dr. Sato's sayagaki, and at about the same level as other papers to the same names. Practical case in point: https://page.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/auction/k466533601 What do you call in "modern paper language" Dr. Sato's sayagaki and green papers to Soshu Yukimitsu? Yamato Taima. But one very seldom repapers Juyo - so its hard to back up the conclusion with hard date. I can make a bet regarding some particular pieces, but that's about it. Well, it went what - to three volumes per yearly shinsa and then suddenly to one thin booklet? I certainly have the two volume years on my shelf, but too lazy to check whether my recollection of three volume version is right. This being said, I did not have either green or blue repapering in a different ballpark. Very substantial portion of the let downs were due to choices made relatively recently by NBTHK to not paper to Hasebe, for example, any tanto with kasane above certain thickness. Shimada it goes, or Tsunahiro if its more along his style. This also creates a rift with NTHK papers, where the shinsa team(s) do not have a similar strong rule. Which can be interpreted as the modern (2005-present) NBTHK shinsa being overly conservative. Or not. If you buy Muramasa with NTHK you have to be aware the criteria used for judging him differ from those used by the current NBTHK. I am not going (qualified?) to argue here which one is right - in part because it sort of needs to be analyzed case by case and arguments for each judgement to be presented. I will just note that it is often omitted that dealing with NBTHK can be long, hard and unpleasant. Dealing with Japanese customs can be randomly long, unpleasant and hard. To send the sword out of the country is sort of ok, because there is a well known procedure and paperwork. To get the sword in, sometimes does not work out as you expect. All while NTHK NPO essentially gives you one day turnaround judgement. In the US shinsa - with a possibility of more extensive explanations, which really helps folks with failed submissions. 3. Any Honami papers produced prior to 1690 is a rarity among rarities. One very seldom owns one. One actually seldom sees one. There is no uniform opinion regarding how some of those should even look like, i.e. what can be accepted as authentic. 1700-1735 - everybody who wants to own one can really get one "right away", with Juyo blade or not. Its a question of money, not of luck. Similarly, there are plenty of them in historical, unaltered collections, where they reside from the moment they were written. These are the papers largely responsibly for the Masamune craze. The craze, which in terms of the "ten students" legend does not seem to be let go by the "united choir" of the nihonto world. Kirill R.

I see Paul your point that the discussion might evolve into green papers etc. But it is unavoidable. This being said, I disagree with much of what was stated in your original post. So I have no choice but to upgrade my troll level to "department chair". First and foremost - collecting is a personal and subjective endeavour, and the notion that there is a "right way" to do that runs into a plethora of limitations. I much rather believe in what my tactics instructor said "The question is not what you can or can't do. The question is whether you understand the consequences". I am probably equally discusted (if I read your post correctly) with the fact that every discussion of a blade evolves involves 5% being said about the blade and 95% about the papers. This being said, I think the path of "buy the blade, not the papers" has its thorns. First, it is unlikely the said blade will be with you forever. And to sell any blade, one needs some papers. Otherwise at a show the buyer will walk away from your table, move to the next one, point the sword towards the next dealer with "look what I got... what do you think about it", and will come back enraged 15 minutes later after somebody sitting 40 tables over will tell him "well, it does have hagire". It ALWAYS happen. So must sell with papers. But then selling Juyo and TH are two completely different things time and economics wise and not to take this into account when investing would be unusual. Second, most purchases today are done online. In this case, papers help to put the item into ballpark of sorts and clarify what is missing in scans, photographs etc. Third, the argument which I disagree with, but it has its merits. Courtesy of my acquaintance. "nihonto is a field with a continuous 500 years long history of collecting", as he likes to point out. "If during this time the item was not recognized and assigned in the very least TJ, then it is not important. People buying things papered any level below either don't value their time and money, or don't understand nihonto, and most likely - both". Period. No excuses. BTW, I asked him sort of "what are the bad papers", and its definitely jubi. Garbage through and through. Let us return to this in a moment. Yet those who are collecting the same subject in fact have very different goals. I learned that for me the thrill of learning something new is a major factor. Studying something in hand, something that has potential, but where the truth is elusive and requires a effort, is a reward by itself. Which meant going through a lot of garbage in the very beginning. Which in good times means digging up either unpapered or unloved blade and having a top name associated with it couple of years later. So there is higher than average risk of gambler-like behavior, or having a very good blade, which yields a different name anytime its submitted. Is this an inappropriate way of collecting? It is not for everyone and it has its own risks. And maybe moneywise that is simply what a simple lecturer can do, and the rest of the many words is just a fancy justification of this path. Another approach is to say something like - you are better off owning one Juyo than 6-7 "regular blades". In some cases you learn more about what good blade is supposed to look like by having a single Juyo. But if 6-7 blades are at least decent to good, chances are you'll learn more about what you really like, or about the different styles that exists. But then if collector has been active for a decade+ and you see now hundreds of blades to his name and none are outstanding, that's an issue. But then again - it is an issue only if the consequences are not properly appreciated. So, now to the "bad papers". For me the classical example are those issued by Honami Kachu. The knee-jerk reaction, taught to us by dealers - "oh, he was a great appraiser, just there are many fakes". No, the appraisals he did for Owari Tokugawa, they are still in the collection there. They are about as bad as a random selection of his papers purchased on yahoo Japan. Burned blades, horrible as life blades, given the top names. In fact, before him Honami barely issued any papers at all, and then he opened the floodgate. But because his papers are still commonly encountered with the masterpieces, we opt for a polite "there are many fakes". Yes, there are, but it is not where the problem is. Then comes jubi. Dismissed papers. Yet the market on them is 5-20 million yen. Many quietly argue it is extremely overvalued, and if those were to repaper - the names would be a notch smaller, and the price would be in 1-4 mil range for quite a few/majority of those. Would I recommend burning jubis? Well, that's quite a bit extreme. They can be overvalued, yet there are some fantastic jubis out there as well. Greenpapers… The great obfuscation lies in blaming "provincial branches". Pretend outrage, yet no exact name from NBTHK being mentioned. How familiar it is to those experienced with Japanese business model. "In the act of noble sacrifice our President retired to take responsibility for the acts of provincial account department, of which he obviously had no knowledge". Been there. The reality is that if you are to track the "ambitious" green papers, chances are - they originated in the head office. In 1970s the market for swords was booming for the first time in many decades, NBTHK was a monopoly (seen many NTHK papers from the period? Overall pre-2000 NTHK, non-US papers?). Two thirds of judgements rendered at the top level were optimistic. Juyo papers... Many would not repaper today at all, most would be just run of the mill koto blades. Optimistic sayagaki by Dr. Sato. There is a reason they cost less than Dr. Honma's. Even if you don't believe that after 1976 he was in a hospital where blades were not allowed. And yes - optimistic green papers. Which are apparently the only things maligned - because they are relatively proletarian in price today. The facts are that a very solid majority of them are as honest as any papers issued today by any group. If you suspect that Mino Kanefusa is troublesome only because it has greenpapers - the problem is not in papers. The problem in not being able to kantei even simple and straightforward examples, and not understanding why those who can do not put great emphasis on whether these papers are green, blue or yellow. Green with Yasutsugu attribution - I personally would not go for that. Shinto kantei is hard and peculiar, I don't know how to do it and will always suspect some issue with the blade - even if I like it. Buy the blade not the papers - if I understand the subject, and here I don't. If you know your Yasutsugu - who am I to suggest what you should or should not buy. Green with major koto names and sayagaki. I take those by default as optimistic, one notch up from what they should be. Top name in the school instead of a representative name in the school. As I said, maybe I am a gambler. So far I did not run into problems (yet, with a notch-down expectation) with repapering, though I am certain that sooner or later there will be a day when I will. I personally am ok with that. It is unfortunate that in Japan these items still yield larger prices than the notched-down attributions. But such is the market. What is being sold in "green" in the US are honest mid rank blades and I don't know why am I supposed to have problems with them. So finally - to the question of Studying. I suspect because of the frequency it is being mentioned, the hardships of this path are not fully appreciated. Maybe in 1950s-1960s some roads were more open and the officialdom more relaxed or even helpful. This is very much not the case today. Unfortunately, more often than not the lack of personal experience is filled by "logical extrapolations". Certainly gentlemen of the nihonto world do not concern themselves with studying even the most important collections of continental tsuba or chokuto before publishing works on the said topics. But you'll be surprised it is not that different when things come to Yasutsuna or Masamune. And really, really, finally - a dilemma of sorts. Robert Haynes went through a whole bunch of tosogu and dismissed a number of papered (modern NBTHK) tsubas as "obvious gimei". What to do if one is to sell those??? I heard from quite a few tosogu collectors believe that NBTHK shinsa is bad, but I don't have strong background in tosogu to understand the issue myself. Aaagh! Kirill R.

Fugh. I'll try to be a troll here, i.e. more direct and arrogant-professorial than usual. So disregard everything said here as a purely personal nonsense. First, the big elephant in the room - green papers. There are no official explanations regarding what's happened, but frankly the most common rumor being spread around is Hiroshima's branch leaking the paper and then it being attached to gendai fakes. However, these Masahide, Naotane, Kotetsu are sold today with green papers 600k yen a piece in Japan. Not too many of those exist, the market knows about them, for a short time the head NBTHK office thought to simply modify the green papers in appearance to devalue the impact of the leak. But this story is a minor issue. The larger issue is that a considerable portion of green papers issued to top names by the head office does not repaper to the same names - by any shinsa. NTHK NPO and not, NBTHK, Tanobe. Very often these blades have kantei points which directly contradict the judgement rendered. Quite a few have late Honami sayagai, some have sayagaki by Dr. Sato. Which brings another question - why such extremely unusual kantei decision was done BOTH by Dr. Sato and the shinsa team. The answer most likely lies in accepting the rumor that these judgements were not independent to begin with. First Dr. Sato (and the practice was/is not limited to him) saw the blade in private (I will skip here the hospital rumors, which are more sinister, but I don't trust them), often accompanied by previous judgements/registrations, then the blade was recognized in shinsa and given identical attribution. The practice continued later as well, but never on the same scale. Again, the "issues" segment does not involve signed Mino Kanenobu with green papers, where any doubt would be most likely misplaced. They are green because no one doubts them. We are talking strictly Juyo+ class names and blades. Frankly, the Juyo segment itself was the most affected in 1970s, about 50% of the 2x shinsa results being quite optimistic. Not in dealers' interests to raise this point. And all this being said, the green papers+ market is quite strong in Japan: https://page.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/auction/470538221 Personally – over the years I went through about a dozen of blades with green papers and Dr. Sato's sayagaki, all mumei koto smiths of high caliber. NONE papered to the same name. However, none so far papered (either with NBTHK or NTHK) to something exceptionally different either. The great discount for the great names, assumed with the green papers has to be taken into account, so getting Shizu Kaneuji papers to Sadamune does not destroy the value altogether. The worst-worst case was Hasebe which went Tsunahiro. A very good Tsunahiro, still with a Daimyo provenance, but a mumei Muromachi blade nevertheless. Overall, I do think that green papers market to top names in Japan are still overvalued, and the market needs about 10-15% further discount from the current level to become “reasonable” and more or less consistent with what these blades are expected to yield when repapered. Once the blade repapered (NBTHK) to higher level smith. So that’s it for the green papers. BTW, the earliest NBTHK papers, while highly praised, are the worst in a sense that they were not devised as papers – but as a parallel alternative to similar police sheets attesting the sword has an artistic-historical value. The reason for provincial branches at the time was that it allowed to work more efficiently with the local police which was in the process of collecting the swords. The notion that occupational forces were going house to house, arresting the shrine swords en masse is false; there were a few instances where such things did happen, but most of the enforcement was done from 1946 by the police, which also provided the earliest registration-like documents. NBTHK was not doing papering but rather attesting to the sword’s status of an antique as well as citing its provenance. More to the point, aside from the abnormal cases – kantei of real world blades is HARD. First and foremost – it actually has limited overlap with the kantei you get in competitions, which involve the Very Typical blades by only about 150 or so of the top makers. To be really good in official competition one has to drill-memorize kantei features and learn reading them from the blade. The goal is to be able to kantei the blade without seeing them altogether by going through the list of points. The obvious problem is that in reality the makers were far more diverse in their individual work, there were 15,000 and not 150 of them, and the items come in a range of conditions and polishes. The greater problem – if you can’t kantei by filling out the table of features, and in the real life you can’t, then everything becomes murky. While living in Japan, short as it was, I handled very many great blades. Today I am ashamed to say – I remember very little of them. Couple of minutes while standing in line, with some random light overhead is not enough. Only doing the oshigata or even better – photography, helps to etch the blade into one’s mind. And unfortunately the access to the very top (kokuho) level blades in Japan is VERY spotty. There are selected very few, including a certain NBTHK official, who are dedicating their every ounce of strength to make it as difficult as possible. The person in question does an extraordinary job ensuring the top blades even in the US museums do not get either displayed or exhibited. Boston MFA is a great example of how effective his efforts are. So if you think the judges judging your blade have a bunch of Shintogo Kunimitsu daito lying next to them for comparison, or even have access to things like this on a regular basis – this is not the case, period. Unless you have a signed Edo period blade, anything classifying as “dozen” may set you back financially if you paid full name premium, but frankly represents a confirmation of the original judgement. Otherwise, the criteria used by different appraisers are different enough to create a lot of honest differences. Soshu sunnobi tanto with thickish kasane will ALWAYS be papered by NBTHK to Shimada or other later Muromachi name. Independent of work. It can be drop dead gorgeous with killer hada and divine hamon. You will not get a Nambokucho name out of it. Both NTHK will entertain however the possibility of Nambokucho name, usually Hasebe or Nobukuni. There are dozens of little quirks like this one. Bungo Takada is famous for the later blades. Kirill R.

Signed Edo period, probability of another opinion from another group - 1% Unsigned Koto: 5-10% on average, very strongly dependent on school and very strongly dependent on what to consider a different opinion. Dozen in general is not a different opinion. Koto Soshu sunnobi tanto with little to no sori: 25%. Yoshioka Ichimonji - about 1% (excluding dozen). Chances of fake fake papers of any issuer and level - 0.01%. Realistically unheard of. There are stories about Jubi, TH, but realistically you see anything like that a few times a lifetime. So many papers in nihonto world boost the value tremendously with relatively little effort required to fake them - and little to no ability of verification. Police registrations from 1946-1948 (arbitrary sheet in poor English). First year NBTHK papers (those of arbitrary form). Daimyo stamps. Daimyo sayagaki from Edo period. Letters of princely ownership from the Household Agency. Yet you seldom see any of those, fake or not. And almost always - they don't look fake. What is common is sayagaki married to another blade, with no papers attached. Letters from Compton to Japanese prime minister saying its a great blade. Wooden box signed Masamune, Tokugawa collection. Compared to those any paper (save Fujishiro and Jubi, but even those) can be verified with a phone call in Japanese, a personal visit to the issuing agency in Japan, an email to shinsa organizer if issued in the US... Too much trouble. Kirill R.

I am seldom the right person to argue about the terminology - because usually I am in the wrong! This being said, the 5cm definition of fumbari works only for really early blades. Kambun fumbari is however a sentence widely used, even though it refers to the tapering which occurs more or less uniformly within the lower half of the blade. The complication here is that I suspect the lens is wide angle, and the picture is taken off-center, which creates significant distortion towards the kissaki. So its very hard for me to say how much of tapering really continues past the mid point. In any case it does have taper, which does exclude quite a number of periods. Kirill R.

Basically my take is that wide bands of nie, separating from the rest of the hamon and kind of sitting on top of gunome peaks and being very obvious in boshi - that's a common Kambun Soshu interpretation. You don't see them so pronounced as stripes per se earlier in Kunihiro's time, and in shinshinto the interpretation is more Masahide based, not so much long stripes, as ara nie, Satsuma jigane etc. In a related style, Kotetsu, Shinkai are the big names, but a lot of followers or even predecessors. Hojoji, others included. But I am not that good in shinto schools. Kirill R.

Very personal guesses: Very pronounced fumbari, with some sori - probably around 1660. The bands of nie is one of the more popular styles of the period, and its hard to be precise without seeing the kaeri in particular, some hada etc would help as well. I would say from what is seen in the boshi, it kind of goes after Inoue Shinkai. But you do find similar things even in Edo Hojoji. Kirill R.

Dmitry posted a detailed and well researched (as expected I guess) lineage of Tsunahiro-Masahiro http://www.nihonto-museum.com/blog/soshu-tsunahiro Unfortunately over the years I let go of a few more Tsunahiro then I should have, as it seems they now do not stay in stores for any prolonged time. Here are couple of images of an example attributed to one of the generations.

In meetings I much rather see swords than people, and zoom unfortunately does not help with that. Kirill R.

Most of the photographs I take with someone else imply not displaying them in other means rather than publications. But there are obviously photographs which I use for other means as well. I have to admit one of those below is from the blade I tried to purchase on this message board. It did not work out in the end, my fault, but I took a picture when unpacking it. So here are six photos of five blades. All are influenced by Norishige. I think kantei-ing them more or less accurately based on such small segments alone would be extremely difficult. In fact one of the gentlemen here is not in a Meikan, which would ruin any fairness would this be a kantei competition. On top of that in roughly half of the cases the work is somewhat atypical (i.e. better than average). I can add however that one of these was favored by Kanzan Sato. But could be a nice opportunity for the willing to look into the interpretation of this school over the years.

I will be a little argumentative here - your other photographs are very good. Here its very hard to say anything without seeing the boshi at least, a little bit more of ha would also help. The shape is dead ringer kambun I guess. Hakikake is common in Horikawa school, which however tends to come with Keicho or Kanei shape, which its not. One of the reasons I don't like and don't do shinto kantei is that it requires one to memorize tons of small things with little to no structure. We are looking for someone who did hakikake and utsuri, a very rare combination. Can be Edo Ishido. Can be Dewa no Daijo Kunimichi. Very different styles, but without seeing a bit more of those togari-or-choji, hard to say at least for me. Kirill R.

Looks like Etchu. Maybe Tametsugu. Kirill R.

Not bad for gunto mounts. Feels late shinshinto. Bizen style. Very hard to throw an exact name, but if required, can be Toshimitsu. Kirill R.

I feel there is a huge difference between mumei swords attributed to Bungo and those signed by Kambun era smiths. Motoyuki was a very decent Soshu smith, Yakinaga did impressive work in suguha, there was even a good done Bizen a-la Ishido Korekazu. The attributed pieces however tend to be... Kirill R.

The gentleman in question is Bungo Yukinaga. Kirill R.

I also would probably guess Hizen, but it was mentioned only 220 times or so. This school is much more popular. Kirill R.

Well, here is another brain teaser, equally malicious to the last one. Except here the work is a very typical style for the smith, though I particularly like the quality of this example. It is signed. The smith belongs to the school which is for some reason one of the most often referred to by its name on the forum! Actually I did a few searches and it came out as the most often referred to, but by a small margin I did not try very hard - so one of the most. Anyone cares to make a guess?

There are indeed nastier collecting areas than nihonto. And far more dangerous ones. Nihonto is special in a sense that 99% of expert-researchers at worst are translators of papers and basic Japanese books, at best are capable of memorizing kantei features without giving much thought to whether these rules actually have a solid support in terms of signatures/provenance/other data. In no other collecting area a dealer with a website filled with translated pages from here and there would be automatically lauded as an Academic Intellectual. In no other collecting area the most important publication of a year, if not a decade would be something like if you take papers of this color, and the length of a sword is such, and the length of a signature is such, you can then get papers of that color. Kirill R.

Nihonto community at its usual. What puzzles me is how addicted it is to words Academic, Scientific, Research, Study. Otherwise it would be interesting to read seminar's publication, if it exists (probably it does not). Kirill R.

Rumor-wise I heard is that non-public guidance for basically all countries is to make sure the packages are held for at least a month at a warehouse. EMS from Japan is now being slowly loaded on container ships. Kirill R.

To me comes as classic Mino, looks like late Muromachi to early Edo. Sorry, did not notice the yakidashi -more likely early shinto then I guess. Kirill R.

They are definitely similar to 17th century European works, but my guess is there are too many small differences. They are flatter, uniformly patinated to black (as Namban Japanese works tend to), with deep cuts which go through the entire object, rather than at least big portion of the lines formed by more shallow engraving. If those were European, one would indeed expect to see more "unquestionably European" guards, but 99% of the type are all "sort of", and are too similar to one another rather than to any random selection of period European works. Were there loads of such items in Indochina or China or anywhere else on the Continent, the continental theory would have been an interesting alternative. Kirill R.

The international air mail is stopped officially to most countries, and for the remaining it defacto stopped functioning sharp about 10 days ago. Everything before went through smoothly, everything after gets stuck. I suspect because this is a severe cut down from a much longer sword, what was there could have been a kinzogan mei or alike to, say, Masamune. So it was removed during the polish even without submitting it, as nonsense to begin with. I like uda for it because of utsuri, nagare close to ha and nie forming long, narrow stripes. P.S. I thought Showa 31 is 1956. Kirill R.