Gabriel L

Hello, Someone on Reddit posted the nakago of a blade signed Kagekiyo saku. The only gendai smith I could find is Matsuba Kunimasa's early mei. Superficially the meibun style seems similar but it would be nice if someone could corroborate — anyone have images of Kunimasa's early mei, or know of any other gendai Kagekiyo? https://www.reddit.com/r/translator/comments/635rx3/japanese_to_english/

Thanks for the thorough reply Darcy. There's a lot more we could discuss for fun but I don't want to derail the thread too much, so I'll give just a few reactions. I am entirely sympathetic to the number of variables that go into photography — especially sword photography — and the somewhat alchemical nature of the process, meaning that what you see with your eyes vs. on the preview screen vs. in Lightroom / PS can vary. To some extent, at least in my own experience, there is an element of applying and refining a process, but hoping for results which may or may not always materialize in a perfectly consistent way. I think you hit the nail on the head when you note how some magic can pop out of a shot that wasn't necessary planned for, and which you cannot necessarily reproduce at will. Reshoots are another round of rolling the dice — even if they are weighted dice — seeing what the new result is, and maybe shaving the dice a little more for next time. You and Ted have done a great job of pushing the envelope in presentation, detail, balance of hataraki / hamon / ji / etc., depicting more of the "color" and emotional aspect of a given sword, etc. I didn't really view the narrow DoF as a "flaw" so much as one more dimension that (like everything in photography) interacts with every other dimension. It's impossible to complain when the trajectory has been, as you reflect on, steadily upwards. I am personally pretty bullish on video. Once upon a time I even did stereoscopic images as an experiment (with mixed, but interesting, results) — so much of qualities like interference, reflectivity, luminance, metallicity, diffusiveness, depth, iridescence, etc. are not only about a single PoV but a product of the brain trying to superimpose conflicting images. Proper stereo is tricky however: what is the right inter-aperture distance, for a given focal length and aperture? Do you angle the lenses toward the subject or shoot parallel? Is crossview or parallel going to give a more accurate impression? How do you deliver the content in a way that the public can easily consume it? In contrast, video (through constantly changing PoV) informs many of the above qualities in a way which the general public is used to consuming and interpreting… but also with a tremendous increase in lighting complexity and other issues, as you note. Ultimately I'm also looking forward to seeing what progress is made in these areas. On a tangential note, a project that has been rattling around in my brain for a while now is to do a sort of update to Rich T.'s fake swords article. In trying to point out differences (online) between swords of various characteristics, qualities, etc. I realize that a barrier to comprehension for beginners is a lack of normalization between photographs. If you already have a mental model for blades and what they look like in person, you can more easily adjust for these differences. But it would be nice to have a page to point out in which a variety of swords (including terrible fakes, guntō, swords in bad condition / polish, functional Chinese production blades, non-Japanese custom art swords, low-level / mid-level / high-level antiques, etc.) were all photographed in *exactly the same conditions and angles*. Of course this presents a logistical problem of gathering such a collection together in one place and settling on a photography setup which reveals all the characteristics you are attempting to illustrate… etc. Better, but not mutually exclusive, is to simply convince people to get off their rears and get themselves to clubs / shows / museums / etc. Gotta go, but thanks again for the reply. Like I said, many other things I'd be happy to talk about at length, but no need / there are only so many hours in the day. Cheers, —G.

Hi Darcy. The shot above is gorgeous both in content and execution (kudos to Ted). However it does bring up a side topic — the angled shots on your site often have extremely shallow DoF. I know that's a natural consequence of macro (although I wonder if perhaps you / Ted could stop the aperture down even more), but have you ever experimented with focus stacking? It would be too much work for the number of shots you typically include in a gallery, unless you write a batch script… of course the artsy effect of shallow DoF doesn't hurt per se. I just itch a bit to know if more detail could be eked out.

I was in the middle of typing "I would love to see Darcy post photos of a piece by Hankei" when the notification came in that you had just posted the above. Quite possibly the only time in my life I will be "disappointed" by Norishige? Really though, fantastic stuff as usual. Cheers, —G

Well it's much appreciated. Cheers, —GLL

髙岳芳烈. Awesome Steve, and thanks to all who helped. I don't suppose you can share any other info listed (e.g. nengō)? I don't have Wakayama…

John, that looks pretty close. It would be great if we could match this to an artist. Fingers crossed. Thanks Stephen, I was tempted and that final price drop was just too good to pass up. You'll get the next ones I am sure.

Not sure whether to put in the translation forum or not. Picked these up from Kevin Adams here on the NMB. Nice copper patina & some fine katakiri-bori work. Photos were quick snaps, don't do the set justice. Having a hard time deciphering the mei and I don't really have any references on fittings artists, so was hoping some of you all might help ID it. If not, please enjoy the pics.

That's a wonderful find! Lots to like in that blade, and by a terrific smith. Super jealous…

Hey all, I referred Greg here from Reddit. With respect Tom, I think it's pretty clearly 安政五年 Ansei 5 = 1858, not Tensho 天正. As to the omote, I could only make out 為守藤 but couldn't corroborate that with any smith. Was hoping someone might have a brainwave…

A good one, I posted about it once upon a time: http://www.militaria.co.za/nmb/topic/14450-Japanese-date-calculator-inc-months-days-etc/?hl=nengocalc In that thread, Nobody-san also linked to this nice site: http://maechan.net/kanreki/

One might presume a later-generation Kanemoto but if you're asking if we know which sword / smith was used for this photo… well, I don't.

Eh. In the abstract it is hard to say. But consider that very few Shinshinto blades pass Juyo anyway, and that the smith has never passed… an obvious thought would be "why should this one pass?" Is it markedly better than even those other TH blades? Is it important? Is it truly exceptional? TH is a nice ranking but the jump from H to TH is smaller than the jump from TH to J in my opinion.

I'm surprised I had to scroll so far down to see someone mention kikusui. It seemed a given to me that the first is Fujiyama and the second kikusui. But I've been wrong in the past and will be wrong in the future, so I could of course be wrong now too. EDIT: and re: the floating tama-like structure… I don't know, but it certainly appears to be deliberate!

Carlo! Very sorry to hear about your health, you are certainly missed. Wishing you all the best, —Gabriel

Ben, I am not sure what you are talking about. The NMB community in specific and the nihontō community in general is totally supportive of qualified polishing — i.e. restoration by a trained professional traditional togishi. What we are adamantly against is uneducated, amateur, ruinous "polishing" of the kind that this sword provides an especially terrible example. In fact I'd say that it is precisely because of our deep respect for the tremendous craftsmanship, art, training, and dedication required for a traditional polish that we are so focused on preventing people who don't know better from destroying their blades.

It reminds me of some illustrations of Hotei carrying women / children across a stream, but this doesn't seem to be fat bare-bellied smiling Hotei — it appears to be some kind of half-human, given the toes and face. EDIT: definitely an oni, though why it's carrying a woman I don't know.

Ah yes, I see it's listed as consignment sale now.

That's a starting price. I don't even remember the last time I saw a Kamakura piece with long date. Wouldn't be surprised for this to pass $200k.

Congrats again Darius, great way to start a collection. See you at the next NY TK meeting, —GLL

I have it. It's just a tiny pocket reference, 48 pages: The first 18 pages are blade shape changes, etiquette, the exact same stuff you have already seen several times if you've read online / other books. The kantei rules are a nice thing to have if you go do a kantei session somewhere. It covers the grading scale / marks & the main roads in a just a couple small pages, and then the eponymous Dozen lists make up the last 20 pages. If you already have Connoisseur's or similar, the only reason to pick this up is for the convenience of checking it during an actual kantei session. Otherwise the info exists within larger references.

BTW, useful tip for those researching prices: you can sometimes see older versions of a page at https://archive.org/web/, helpful to change a "PRICE: SOLD" into "PRICE: $XXXX".

Congrats everyone! And thanks to Peter D. for the tsuba submission. Here's to another good year for the NMB.

Darcy, you bring up a point which has often bothered me (to understate it) between the Western vs. Japanese attitude towards "preservation." The modern western attitude is alter nothing, ever. The Japanese attitude is bring the object to its ideal state. Neither is wholly correct. If the western ideal were applied to nihontō, we would have only out-of-polish dull grey blades and togi as an artform itself would die out. But sometimes the Japanese approach is too cavalier — "The tsuba on this koshirae isn't to my taste, swap it out." "Hmm the polish on this 800-year-old sword is only at 95%, get it repolished." "Oh I don't think this mei is good therefore let's destroy it." That kind of stuff might have flown historically, but it's the 21st century, and many of these changes can never be undone. Incredibly ironic how the same collectors who recognize the tremendous rarity and value of ubu kotō can be so quick to make their own "edits" for the sake of convenience or worse. I am fairly certain the topic of what to do about gimei has come up before with no ideal solution. Even if we are all totally sure it is gimei, anything short of removing the mei still leaves the possibility of fraud down the line. But removing the mei is the height of entitled editorializing in this field. Okay, so some gimei are painfully obvious and nobody could object. But what about the ones people are 90% sure of? 75%? 50%? What about uncommon signature variations that people would notice if they only bothered to preserve them? There is a reason the western preservation approach is valued, and that is that we don't know everything, and sometimes what we think we know we find out was wrong tomorrow. That's science! The alternative — "this is what the references say, therefore what we are seeing now must be wrong" — strikes me as valuing narrative over facts. Anyway I don't know what the solution is, except to advise caution and circumspection. This was more rant than anything practical.

On the other hand you lose both the section of nakago under the gakumei *and* the additonal context of nakago surrounding the mei. But I agree that in two pieces the odds of one day the smaller part getting separated would be high.