Gabriel L

More data! This is a little messy — I could have split it into several graphs, but it didn't seem entirely necessary. The main thing to notice is that the Motohaba is fairly well-correlated with nagasa until about 40cm, after which point it is less consistent and less correlated (more constant). That is also when sakihaba starts appearing (i.e. a yokote). The sakihaba & degree of taper (motohaba minus sakihaba) don't trend dramatically with nagasa (slight increase), and there is a lot of sword-to-sword variation. Same thing with kasane. Uchi/muzori ends around 31 cm, giving another indicator of when tantō end and ko-wakizashi begin. After that, sori is so variable that I used a moving average rather than artificially impose a best-fit line.

Peter, it seems, the x-axis is the number. I don't see an average length of blades, but in the range of the measured blades there is a significant number with a typical WAKIZASHI length and a typical DAITO length between 65 and 73 cm. Nothing extraordinary. I think the objective was not to find the average length but to explain why a certain length was predominant. Just my personal interpretation. This is correct. This isn't a plot of one variable against another, the x-axis is simply a way of stretching out the data to make it easier to see the groupings. Putting it another way, this is like if you lines up all the swords in a row. So the x-axis is, strictly speaking, the ordinal number of sword in the sample when arranged by height (i.e. x = 1 = sword #1, x = 2 = sword #2, etc.). I saw fit not to include an x-axis label because it seemed intuitive to me to the point that rigorously defining the x-axis would be likely to confuse more than help. An alternative way of displaying this data would be a heat map. But I didn't have a quick-'n'-dirty way of producing one via Excel.

An excellent question! Aoi doesn't explicitly list nakago status in a simple way (sometimes Tsuruta-san mentions if a blade is suriage, sometimes not). I did in fact mark down my very quick impression of whether the nagasa had been shortened and distilled that to a very simple binary 1 or 0 for "Ubu." I then tried a few graphs with the entire sample and with just the "ubu" blades. Clear trends did not emerge, except that the groupings were less distinct, not more. In a way that is itself an interesting result. Unfortunately there is the problem that restricting the sample size makes the results that much less valid, and also since my "ubu" column was suspect (literally I spent about 5 seconds guessing each time, except when explicitly included in the item description) I elected not to produce a graph to post here. However I think I will go back and do so anyway, in the interest of discussion.

Hi Peter, Of course it would be, if I did that, but I didn’t give any kind of average, just plotted the raw data and identified groupings. Or are you referring to the time series? For those I limited the samples to specific regions (the definitive/characteristic groupings on the chart above). Still not very clear results, would probably need a couple thousand blades to be more revealing. To be specific, the average of the subjectively-defined “definitive sample range” for daito (everything from 65.0 to 73.0 cm) was 69.4 cm, with a standard deviation of 2.22 cm, for a ±sigma range of 67.2–71.6 cm.

Jean, But the data does not strongly support that. If the falloff was purely the result of natural considerations for size based on practical use, you would certainly expect to see a change around there (and to be sure it does contribute to the grouping). But it would likely be a smoothly accelerating falloff, reflecting myriad differing opinions about where precisely the lower bound for a usable katana lies, and the myriad body sizes and strengths of users — all of which lie on smooth distributions. For example, the upper bound does seem to obey such a limit: interest in long blades is not constrained by the legal limit, but rather practical limits, resulting in a smoothly-accelerating curve after about 73 cm. Instead, there is an extremely well-defined point at *exactly* 65 cm (or, if you prefer, 2 shaku 1 sun 5 bu). People are willing to go down to 67 cm, 66 cm, 65.5 cm, 65.25 cm, 65.0 cm… but the moment you cross that threshold, interest plummets. That kind of sharp change is much more parsimonious with a specific, *explicit* limit. Examples might be: 1) some sort of law regarding minimum katana length, 2) some sort of widely-accepted and well-published specific idea about what is appropriate or practical, 3) similarly, some sort of universal superstition / numerology. Of course I have to admit that the sample size is not quite large enough to be definitive, but on the other hand the effect is dramatic enough to be suspicious. EDIT: another possibility is that, with the explicit legal definitions for wakizashi, there is an indirect pressure on katana length to be at least a “significant-number” greater. For example, that lower bound is close to exactly 5 sun above the Edo Castle norm for wakizashi length (1.65 shaku + 0.50 shaku = 2.15 shaku or 65.1 cm) and 3 sun above the 1645 limit. But this feels weak to me. ------ Rich, I actually tried a few date-series graphs, but very little came out of it except a slight increase in the linear fits for moto/sakihaba, kasane, length, etc., and a very slight decrease in the linear fit for sori. A moving average might have worked better, but really what it comes down to is that 140 examples isn’t a very good sample size to reveal chronological trends. I may try a few more graphs based on subsets of the data though. ------ I actually have some more explorations of this information but I wasn’t able to post them this morning thanks to a faulty internet connection. I’ll be back in a bit with some more! —G.

Hi everyone, On mobile so I can't write much. I whipped this up: EDIT: I notice two errors already, haha: it should say last *muzori* (not uchizori) blade, and also the academic lower limit for chu-wakizashi is listed correctly but marked 1cm too low. It is clear the academic wakizashi classifications are based on the historical laws. Thought this was surprisingly more interesting than expected. Sample size is low, but it certainly seems to explain wakizashi well. My biggest question: why the sudden inflection at 65 cm??? Regards, —G.

From the link list I sent, the Vancouver Japanese Sword Appreciation Society is at 1100 Chestnut Street, Vancouver, BC, Canada V6J3J9 (Telephone 604-943-7171). I know Vancouver Island is not Vancouver, but some parts of it are still relatively close… is it still too far for you? Fred has been on this site a while, sold a number of items in the classifieds section with no complaints I know of, and his own site http://www.swordsandtsuba.com lists good stuff. I have never dealt with him myself but he certainly knows the subject.

:lol: Yes, should have mentioned that. That has the advantage of not having to send them to and from Japan, with the shipping fees and waiting times.

As I said on Reddit, I think you should take them to a sword club or sword show (Tampa, Chicago, San Fran etc.) to get looked at by collectors and dealers in-person. That will give you much better info than you can get from online photos, give you a variety of feedback, and won’t cost you more than transportation cost. Plus you’ll get to see some real stuff (blades & fittings) as a bonus. You could of course submit them to shinsa (professional appraisal, e.g. NBTHK) but when it comes to fittings usually only high-end stuff is papered, so I would advise against bothering in this case. It costs a bit, too.

One more update. The owner has registered for the NMB and is waiting for approval, but in the meantime he posted this closeup of the Soten-stye tsuba mei (again, color-corrected by me).

Update, the owner has submitted new photos: http://imgur.com/a/XWNtx

I confess to my embarrassment that I find my opinion swaying back to the possibility that they are real, especially since color-correcting the photo to remove the strong blue cast. Never let it be said that I am too proud to admit when my first assessment is wrong… I will refrain from further comment in the interest of letting others have their say.

Geraint, Can you give reasons? They are certainly much better than the average POS fake, but I am not convinced they are Japanese, and I see multiple reasons to suspect they are not. EDIT: I added a color-corrected version, assuming that the windowsill in the photo is white. Looking again with the better color rendition… I admit I am not so confident as I initially was. Reasons I suspect them: Patina doesn’t look quite right to me, especially the thin silvery areas. Gilt is similarly not very good. Mei has poor spacing / positioning. Hitsu-ana appear a bit large and round. The fish depiction seems off.

Hello, Sorry for diluting this lovely subforum, but a Reddit user asked my opinion on these items. (EDIT: here is a color-corrected version, assuming the windowsill is white…). I told him that the ones with square openings were (probably fake) Chinese coins, about which I know less than nothing. And I added that I was “99% sure” the others (the “tsuba”) were Chinese fakes, for myriad reasons (odd depictions, wrong colors/patinas, strangely-proportioned hitsu-ana, soft details, similar to each other in their alienness, etc. etc. etc.). In the interest of giving that 1% remainder its due diligence, though, I promised to confirm with some of the more knowledgeable tsuba collectors here. Thanks, —G.

Japanese dragons are strongly associated with water as has been stated; not just visually, but in terms of their intrinsic mythological character. The menuki on your koshirae are also dragons. Appropriate as dragons are never depicted in full, but always partially hidden (the idea being something along the lines of “mortal eyes could not survive seeing an entire dragon”). This koshirae appears to be top-notch. As enjoyable as it is, it also makes me wonder about the sword it was made for.

Absolutely not. Nakago (tangs) are supposed to acquire this kind of dark patina over time and it's a critical component of assessing the age. Removing it will destroy the value. A mei (signature) would still be visible except in the most egregious cases (when it was already extremely faint and then active red rust was allowed to mask it, or if it was removed, etc.). Sometimes light rubbing with choji oil will help reveal such a mei. But this is likely not the case for this sword; it appears to be osuriage, that is, shortened past the point where the original mei would have been (if it was ever there).

Naturally. Thanks, and best regards, —Gabriel

Thank you very much Mike. I don’t want to cause you too much consternation or embarrassment but I actually deduced several of these points and defended you in a totally different forum. I probably should have simply asked you directly about it but I didn’t want to be a bother or waste your time with such trivialities unnecessarily. I am glad to see that most of my assumptions/deductions were on the money (I certainly never doubted that everything was done logically and above-board from your end… but people do get hot under the collar about heavily-edited TV reality shows with poor track records for accuracy). With your permission I would like to quote your reply (or link this thread) in that other forum.

Funny thing, here’s one more: http://jameelcentre.ashmolean.org/colle ... 0351/20253

Absolutely the same sword (identical length, sugata, mei, patina, habaki, paper details etc.). Originally $15.5k, reduced to $12k. Would’ve been nice to have seen all these answers laid out so nicely earlier. Interestingly, the Pawn Stars four-seal paper is Aug/20/2010 shinteisho, which is at least partly explained by “open areas of hada.” Yet the Yoshikawa paper listed on sho-shin (I don’t see a photo) is Sep/8/2002 kanteisho with five seals? The plot thickens. Confirmed Chōkyō nengō and Kishū province, which is a little weird? I don’t see any Yoshitsugu smiths in Kii (the Chōkyō smith is listed as Kawachi in Sesko & Hawley alike). Too bad about it being pieced out; that’s a shame in my book. Also I like bat theme kodogu.

Peter, can I safely dispense with humility and assume you meant to write my name and not yours at the top of that post? :lol: If so, thank you very much. While we’re on the subject, I noticed another issue: the space between the mekugi-ana and the start of the mei is greater than all the other examples (except #9, the Kicho example that seems quite obviously gimei).

I have seen Edo-period designs which were virtually identical. Clearly some schools or makers kept templates or manuals rather than invent new work for every piece.

Hoanh is just playing it safe by being explicit, for Patrik’s sake. Patrik doesn’t have the kind of long and well-informed post history we’d need to be confident he understood all the implications in this thread—or that even if he did, that he would necessarily have the expertise to make a good judgment call a fair price for a gimei blade. Of course it is possible that he does have that capability, in which case I apologize for my assumption; but better safe than sorry (or putting it another way, we’re just trying to look out for you and your bank account!).

Thanks guys. Anyone want to guess / deduce what province they are listing? The left column seems to say ___ shū Yoshitsugu (_州吉次), so you would figure that along with the putative date of 1487 it should be easy. But I’m not seeing a very good match. I admit I am slightly surprised it “only” got shinteisho. At a distance (i.e. through the low-res TV footage) it looked fairly nice – long (30.3" / 77 cm) with a nice sugata, in fresh polish, apparently healthy. But of course we don’t have any truly good photos (including of the boshi etc.) so obviously we have to rely on the paper in this case. I guess the logical next question would be did Rick get burned by valuing a shinteisho-level sword at $10k? :lol:

Josh, is this a reply to my question about what’s odd with the paper? I was pointing out that there seem to be too few columns to be a “new” NTHK paper. I’m not sure that you are entirely correct that it is an issue of shinteisho vs kanteisho, given that there appear to be white-paper kanteisho with origami on this page and this page too. But I am very far from expert on the variations of NTHK papers… EDIT: so I noticed that in the overall paper shot, you could just barely see some characters on the reverse peeking through. So I flipped the page, de-angled it, and boosted the contrast, yielding this image: It’s hard to see, but there’s definitely a line “shinteisho” (審定書), as well as what looks suspiciously like Kishū 紀州 (Kii) or Hishū 肥州 (Hizen/Higo) in the left column. So you were right about it being shinteisho! Unfortunately I can’t quite match up anything that the left column (___shū???) might say to records of 吉次 smiths around the late 1400s…