Gabriel L

Redditor is asking about this eBay auction. Before I had access to all the photos (only had nakago photos), my alarm bells were tripped. It looked mostly like nihontō, but sub-par – wobbly shinogi in the nakago, inconsistent yasurime, somewhat clumsy mei, weird small second mekugi-ana, irregular shape primary mekugi-ana, awkward nakagojiri etc. The mei content is also odd – date is ok (平成二十二年二月日 = Feb. 2010), but the name is a bit mysterious (次奉<漠/里/?>作 = Tsuguyasu <?> saku). Once I saw the rest of the photos, my thoughts were that the mounts were pretty bad even for iai, and the blade does look like nihontō but not exceptional. So I am left somewhat puzzled. Matsuda Tsuguyasu is a mukansa smith. Some resources: * Video with mei: https://youtu.be/LTR0BY8IOxA?t=84 * Example sword: http://www.samuraisword.com/nihontodisplay/no_papers/Tsuguyasu/index.htm * Article: https://www.renesas.com/en-hq/about/web-magazine/edge/takumi/09-master-swordsmith.html So… what's your verdict? Lower-end iai sword made by an otherwise skilled smith? "Gimei gendaitō?" Or am I just paranoid? Not sure what to think here.

Stunning activity in the hamon:

Thanks for the comments, all. From the photos it doesn't have some of the hallmarks of the best Norishige work I have seen, and as an ōsuriage wakizashi I could certainly understand a lower price, though ~17k USD seemed even lower than I would have guessed. Appreciate all of your perspectives. Yes, KnK is one of my favorite sites to browse, but the owner not only does not export blades but pretty much does not respond to English, from what I have experienced once in the past. If I saw something I was tempted by I'd find a proxy but until then I will content myself with admiring photos.

https://katananokura.jp/SHOP/1203-W02.html Hon'ami Koson kimpunmei, NBTHK papered. At 1.9M JPY = ~17k USD, seems a bit discounted for a Norishige, no? Am I missing something? Just curious, cannot see myself spending that much any time soon.

Hah. In this case it was simply because I was eyeing a lovely Terukane and doing a little searching. Stumbled across one of my own old comments and had the out-of-body experience of disagreeing with my past self.

NINE YEARS LATER At the risk of being quite annoying, I am resurrecting this old thread. It's funny how time can change a person's attitude, if I had an apparent Terukane with only old papers now I would very likely send it for modern papers, as high as I can get. I wonder if CJ ever did so?

As I said on facebook, I was shocked and deeply saddened to hear this, and my condolences go out to those who knew him personally. Josh, respectfully I cannot say that I wholly share your perspective on the matter – on certain points I would disagree strongly. But I also do not want to distract from what is important now, which is to support his mourners, and to honor those aspects of Alun's life which bettered the world. So I'll just leave it at that, and hope that anyone else who is so troubled manages to find or be provided the right help in their time of need.

Just don't read any of the YouTube comments about Mike, the swords, Japan, history, or nihonto in general.

Not mine, but Darcy had a really nice one a while ago: http://www.nihonto.ca/terukane/index.html

Darcy: also, a *long form* date!?!? On a Kamakura tantō? And then someone drops it. PLEASE tell me there was no damage. Or just say nothing, not sure I want to hear about how there’s no more bōshi because someone managed to forget how to stably hold a piece of metal above a table…

Interesting, a Redditor appears to have a sword made for the same award ceremony. Thread here, and Imgur album here.

Google Translated:

Well, I can at least point out the literal meanings (as I understand them): Hoso 細・ほそ (fine, detailed, thin) vs. Ito 糸 (thread). Connoisseur's (Nagayama Kokan) states that hoso is in comparison to hiro / chū (wide / medium), and that "extremely narrow" hamon are also called ito. Harry "Afu" Watson's glossary treats them as synonyms. I've seen many swords described as having "hoso or ito suguba". In general then, I think they are somewhat synonymous, but as ito ("thread") has a narrower connotation, it tends to be used for narrower hamon than hoso ("narrow") on average. But that the distinction is fuzzy. I also have in my notes that one of them might refer more to the width / tightness of the habuchi, but I didn't write down where I read that or how it applies exactly, just as a point to keep researching. --- On a related topic, people don't always use these terms to deliberately mean one thing vs. another. If I write down that a blade is "elegant," and somewhere else I describe a blade as "graceful," it would be kind of silly for people to try and dissect why I used one "term" for blade A and another for blade B. It's not classifications, it's language, and although language has nuance it is also often messy and arbitrary. Not saying that ito vs. hoso necessarily falls under this, just pointing out that sometimes we treat Japanese like a code or scientific taxonomy, but it's not.

A solid start Sean, even when you condense all the redundant info there's still enough material / slightly different perspectives in those books to last you a good while.

From your initial list, the following two are the most important / high-yield IMHO: The Connoisseur's Book of Japanese Swords by Kokan Nagayama The Art of the Japanese Sword: The Craft of Swordmaking and its Appreciation by Kapp & Yoshihara The former is among the more encyclopedic references you can get for the money. The latter explains more about why and how the Japanese sword is the way it is, the metallurgy and artistry and craftsmanship that gives rise to its features.

I sent an email to Darcy since I figured he might not have seen the thread. I didn't specifically ask if it was ok to share his precise comments here, but I cannot imagine that he would object to my summarizing his reply as "amenable." I'm making something for our own club here in NY and will keep everyone updated. Cheers, —G.

As in, the military unit "Cody Bimore" was part of? That would be grand if those records exist, but they don't, seeing as how they burned in a warehouse fire (IIRC).

Brian, I'll see if I still have the original text still in the PSD file (and if not, I can easily just re-create it). I was also wondering where this image originally came from. I got the high res from someone else, perhaps Paul Martin (if I recall correctly), who used it in his Nyusatsu Kantei handbook. However, I remember seeing it before that book came out.

Jean, I've seen it that way before (especially in old auction catalogs), but I find it actually much harder to then adequately compare overall sori, and even length (because of how the blades tilt in various directions). Instead it just shows how much koshi-zori the blade has (or doesn't have), and exaggerates the differences in some blades based more on how much curvature happens through the nakago. An interesting approach that maybe accentuates different information, but I prefer almost any other approach myself.

PS — example comparisons lined up by mekugi-ana: http://i.imgur.com/vLb5JoH.jpg http://i.imgur.com/Xv5ldOk.jpg

When I do signature comparison charts for a single smith or generations within a school, I line up by mekugi-ana — it's one thing that is absolutely impossible to change about a sword. It can often reveal an obvious deviation in the placement of the mei vis-à-vis the mekugi-ana that can be overlooked if using a different (or no) alignment. For this chart, machi felt a bit better because it let you simultaneously compare nakago with nakago and blade with blade; lining up by mekugi-ana would give misleading results since the placement of the ana in the tsuka changed over time. I'd be happy to put the labels back in if I were going to use this image in a book / poster / banner whatever. This was for a Pecha Kucha presentation — 20 slides, 20 seconds each (on an automatic timer), text discouraged. I barely had enough breath to say "…collectors can use the shape, dimensions, proportions, curvature, and other geometric aspects of a blade to appraise it to a given time period. Here are blades from the last 1000 years, going left to right…" before the next slide popped in.

Ah, I wish I had known you were doing this — this image has always struck me as simultaneously very useful but also easily improved. For a presentation I actually re-did it with the following changes: Swords are now rotated so that the tips of their kissaki and nakago are now aligned vertically. This feels more harmonious and consistent, making it easier to compare curvatures in an apples-to-apples way and to identify where the focus of curvature is more easily. I also considered making the machi and kissaki line up vertically, I think it ended up looking weird though. Swords are now aligned vertically so that their machi line up. This was done to make it more obvious how the blade lengths compared, as well as how their nakago compare, again in a consistent and apples-to-apples way. It's a better fit for how a sword is actually handled as well — one's grasp on the tsuka is usually the same distance below the machi (give or take a little) from sword to sword. Swords now progress chronologically from left to right, following the western bias, rather than the Japanese bias. This is a wholly subjective thing since I was doing a presentation for a western audience. Anyway, I think the idea of a life-size banner is a great one. Cheers, —GLL

…on a follow up note, I am somehow perpetually caught off guard by the lack of honesty that exists not only historically but still today. What's the point? Is this really more profitable than just doing real work? Do these people really not care? I have a suspicion that if I'm lucky enough to live to 100 I'm still going to cling on to some degree of naïveté on this matter. It just doesn't compute.

Ah — the usual suspect(s). Now that you point it out, the photo is an absolute match in style to that particular source. Well, that's too bad. Amending my post. Thanks Brian & Joe.

Wow, recent fake gendaitō? That is news to me. I'll do a search on the board but also if you want to expound I'm all ears. That's pretty disappointing and surprising to hear, nothing about this piece jumped out at me except a certain roughness / lack of fluency in the mei (which I was attributing to this possibly being a very early work by Kunimasa san).