Gabriel L

The swords were lit well enough to see details. I found that to really make the hataraki stand out required stooping or kneeling a bit... but there's always a limit to what you can do with a museum display anyway.

A very nice story. I particularly liked that they had old photos of the original owner with the sword, and how the village pooled their money to afford the sword. However, if it hasn't already been published, I would edit the opening paragraph wherein you state you were "perving on the internet"—this isn't a word, and even if it was, I'm very sure it's not the word you would want to use (sounds dirty)! :lol: Perhaps you meant "perusing the internet"? That would still be a classic misuse of the word, as peruse means to read thoroughly, not to scan or browse. Anyway, I'm not one to play grammarian, but this is one typo I for one would want to avoid.

I seem to remember a whole online gallery of masterful contemporary horimono. Right now the mental cobwebs are hampering the search, I'll post back if I can figure out where I saw it.

Looks like NY is going samurai-crazy with a sale at Bonham's to accompany/compete with the Met show and Christies. Oct. 22.

Thanks for the heads up, ordered a copy.

YOU SUCCEEDED (caps intentional)

I know I've seen these extraordinary Araki Tomei mounts before – but where? Well, Christie's will have to do without me in any case.

I agree with Stephen, this just has way too many problems (and the problems are too serious) to be worth spending money on. Save your money and pick up something that's in better condition and is better made.

Hello Dana, Just saw you updated this (and posted a few interesting kris, kindjal etc. on myArmoury). Everyone's already said more or less what can be said at this point, but I wanted to add just a few points. P3: New wrap for the tsuka is a relatively affordable restoration, but don't unwrap what's left of the old tsukaito before handing it to a professional; after all, it would be nice to reproduce the particular style of this tsukamaki (it's a slightly "upscale" style). P5: Wacky... despite being very poor quality I personally think it's an interesting piece for its especial unusualness, even beyond the standard Meiji-era tourist pieces. Re: maintenance, at this point a certain amount of damage is already done and as far as the blades are concerned, merely keeping them in a dry clean environment will be a step in the right direction. Plain old pharmacy-bought mineral oil works fine as an oxygen barrier. The traditional "choji" oil can be bought easily from a number of sword dealers, and would be the recommendation if you ever get any of your blades polished, but in their current condition mineral oil should suffice. You don't need much, just put a few drops on a cloth and give the blade a thin coating.

Hi Barry, Yes, you are correct. It's a good point, but for the purposes of this discussion I think the "negative space" of the yakiba is a good enough indicator for where the genuine hamon must be. At any rate it doesn't change my argument (and I don't hear anyone else who thinks it's a different sword). Shashikomi vs hadori is a discussion for another day.

I agree that the hadori seems (from the pics) a little "generous" in the polished sword, but that doesn't mean it isn't the same sword. And the lighting of the unpolished sword makes it difficult to tell exactly what's going on in the kissaki region anyway. This is the closeup of the polished sword. With this lighting, angle, and jpeg compression, I pretty much cannot even see the actual habuchi. So I don't know what you're claiming to use as a comparison. Actually, if I look closely, I can start to convince myself that some of the shaded areas in the polished hamon could very easily be the low tani you talk about. But the quality of the photo doesn't allow for any real evidence anyway. ---------- Here you can actually see the tani, and yes they are quite close to the ha. ---------- This is in a different setting / lighting, so you may not be inclined to take it as evidence of anything, but the hamon is much clearer in this pic (and matches the original). Now if it was the opposite case, with the hamon being wider than the hadori, it would be much more likely something is wrong (and much easier to see as well).

Lining up and overlaying (using the kissaki, machi, and mekugi-ana as guides) in Photoshop yields the same sugata. Not only that, but very careful comparison of the hamon and the hadori polish yields a couple areas where it seems clear one follows the other (and note the hamon is pretty much always within the hadori). Note that in the comparison below, a well-known "nested curves" optical illusion makes it look like the swords change size - this is false, I copied and pasted without any scaling for each comparison. They are the same sword.

Impossible to be sure from the pics, but looks pretty close to me... bear in mind the new hadori polish, of course. I wouldn't think there was anything amiss without this thread, and I still don't think so.

Gyaku menuki always made much more sense to me ergonomically, although I prefer normal menuki visually. I never knew however that they were virtually limited to Yagyu koshirae, that's interesting. Dr. T has a related article (related to menuki placement, I mean, not left-handedness). Very interesting that left-handedness seems to be so globally discouraged through history. Perhaps because it's an automatic minority regardless of other demographics? Not one of humanity's nobler track records it seems.

Mr. Bottomley and Franco to the rescue. For non-nihonto, I invite you to post at myArmoury.com, which has a broad world focus with a special strength in European arms.

I agree, re-done patina, not simply "cleaned." Very humble opinion.

Hello Dana, So nice to hear from a beginner who has already done some homework before posting . [EDIT]. The mekugi would be under the smaller, circular menuki (sometimes seen on aikuchi koshirae like this, when there is no handle wrap). Unfortunately I don't know if one or both of them are attached to or form part of the mekugi proper, or if they are just glued to the same (rayskin); I don't have personal experience with that kind of "concealing" menuki, so you may want to wait until someone who does comes along. Take care because the menuki look like the nicest part of that package in its current condition, especially the full-size menuki. Like Stephen said, the blade is a bit opaque right now; red lacquer in the hi is not promising though. That's done often for stylistic reasons on yari (spears), but on a tanto/wakizashi it's much more likely to conceal flaws in a low-grade blade. Looking forward to seeing some more examples! If that's the worst condition any of your items are in, then they should be salvageable with expert restoration, but the trick will be figuring out which if any of them would be worth the expense and time. Oh, and PS - length is measured from the machi (where the spine meets the habaki) to the tip, it doesn't include the handle. So when you say "a little under two shaku," I tentatively assume that's actually longer than this blade; it doesn't look quite that long to me. Feel free to report lengths in centimeters.

WOW I am flabbergasted, and so so happy I live in Manhattan.

Edited by mod: My apologies - I tried to split off this discussion regarding Gimei from the original thread and found out that it doesn't work as anticipated with topics that have more than one page - only the posts from page one were split, page two is now lost in cyberspace. At least that had one positive side-effect: some very heated posts that were getting kind of personal are now gone . Again, I'm very sorry for deleting valuable contributions, please feel free to re-post (after taking a deep breath). Guido Schiller Posted by Gabriel Lebec: Hi Markus, Just for your information, it is not "bad" for a sword to be gimei (false signature). There are plenty of good swords with no signatures, false signatures, etc. Yours at least looks like a good sword although that is not an official appraisal, it would take a closer look to tell more. Sometimes professional sword polishers can remove the gimei if you wish, although I personally don't feel strongly about it so long as the sword is advertised truthfully if it is ever sold. It is important that you do nothing to the sword yourself; do not clean the nakago (tang), do not attempt restoration on your own. Andreas posted a good link for you to read. Congrats on your new sword, -Gabriel

I'm sorry I cannot contribute to the kantei, but that is one stunning tsuba.

Well, I'm 24, bought "The Craft of the Japanese Sword" at age 12 and was hooked. I think Mr. Bottomley's story "wins" so far, thanks for sharing. What I find interesting is that the histogram on the first page actually shows a pretty ordinary gaussian distribution.

Without getting into the nitty gritty details, this is pretty much nonsense. -GLL

Very expressive! I also like suaka, especially as it seems to come at a discount. :D

Of course late 19th c. "Japonisme" and 19th/20th c. Art Nouveau are closely related, but I was referring more specifically to the interwoven "whiplash" curves in many art nouveau works (especially those of Victor Horta, as well as some by Alphonse Mucha). Although organic, graphic curves are certainly a common Japanese artistic and decorative motif (e.g. hair, waves, kimono, etc.), this particular style seems more specifically art nouveau to me and I do not recall seeing many Japanese examples that so closely match it as that tsuba. I recognize the irony in saying that something Japanese looks like Art Nouveau but in this case I actually did mean it in that order. On a related note, if anyone has any examples of Japanese art that do in fact display this design trait, I would be very interested to see them. Cheers, -GLL

Do you have any stories or pictures of items you wish you had picked up but didn't? They don't have to be fancy or expensive, just speak to you. For instance, Fred Weissberg once sold the attached tsuba and I always thought it had one of the most unique, beautiful, sensitive designs - almost art nouveau.