Gabriel L

Hi Markus, As expected, you have done your homework on this. I'm glad to have my suspicions confirmed, i.e. that the group size / one-time fee / non-sharing aspect all make a case for this being considered a "private" translation. On a more practical (less legally pedantic) level, I think the project makes perfect sense and should be acceptable. It is a common-sense arrangement. But my opinion counts for nothing when it comes to legal matters. Best regards, —G. (P.S.—both my Iron Tsuba catalog and Encyclopedia arrived recently and they are excellent additions to anyone's library; many thanks!)

Jean, I was going to address that. First of all, "February and August" is a bit of a poetic simplification. More accurately, the second and eighth months (nigatsu 二月 and hachigatsu 八月) of the year were considered to be auspicious / "lucky" months for smiths. 8 in particular is a lucky number in Japan, so you will see countless swords signed 八月, far more than could have been made only in that month. It should be understood however that these months were not "February and August" by the western calendar, but map closer to March and September (give or take a couple weeks). The Japanese calendar was shifted in 1876 to make the months correspond to the western calendar, so now 八月 is indeed August, but historically this was not the case. Now, I've heard the line about the water temperature being the same, and the color of the moon in autumn, and other romantic imagery… I don't know how common such concepts actually were among historical smiths, it seems to me that it gets repeated a lot more because of its dramatic power than because it accurately reflects the historical attitude. (EDIT: to be clear, I am not saying that these ideas are modern inventions; I am only arguing that they are repeated in modern sources disproportionate to how widespread they were historically. Also, smiths certainly did look upon forging blades as a somewhat mystical and spiritual practice, no question; I am only talking about the water temp. & moon color quotes specifically.)

I am not a lawyer, but I found the idea that there would be no copyright infringement an interesting one. I don't want to distract too much from the main topic, but perhaps anyone familiar with copyright law may want to review the hidden section below and comment? Presumably however Markus, as the responsible party, has already examined this issue carefully himself; so this all may be pointless musing.

Absolutely 100% fake, but quite atypical and with a surprising amount of effort put into it. Still completely off the mark in certain respects, but in other respects someone was clearly aiming at the real thing.

Sorry to say, but no chance…

For everyone's enjoyment and enlightenment, here is an actual kamasu…

Note: the musings below are made solely in the general/abstract sense, and do not pertain to nor are critical of any specific examples. In other words, this is not intended as a criticism of anyone here. :-) The mission of the NBTHK, ostensibly, is to protect and preserve the "Japanese Art Sword." Be that as it may, economic reality is that NBTHK papers drive price. The NBTHK will not paper blades judged gimei, but will paper mumei. The natural result is that historical mei are subsequently removed when a blade either fails to paper or when the owner suspects it has a better chance of passing appraisal as mumei. Sometimes (often?) this is fine. A mei may be so obviously false that it does nothing for the sword, even detracts from it in an aesthetic / philosophical sense. And there is an argument that gimei can be used to deceive less wary/schooled collectors. But other times a mei may seem questionable to some people yet good to others. There have been stories of mei being removed and the sword subsequently papering to the same smith. Common? No… but it has happened. We all know as well that shinsa, as good as it is, is not an absolute judgment; swords fail one session and pass the next, paper to different smiths in different sessions, etc. Here is something to consider: papers are transient and extrinsic, post-hoc opinions represented not only by the paper but in the records of the issuing organization. A mei on the other hand is intrinsic and historic, existing only as a part of the sword itself. To remove a mei is an irrevocable change and represents a permanent loss of potentially useful information. It does not directly improve the sword itself, except in the case where the gimei was so obvious and so poor that it might as well be looked on as an ugly defacement. I think that in the wider perspective, such trades (of historic data for current opinions) happening regularly can only serve to gradually reduce the amount of available information for comparison and scholarship. Perhaps the ratio is 99.9% bad data destroyed yet 0.1% good data also destroyed… is that worth it? Academic opinions and understandings change with time; who can say that 50 or 100 years from now, some of the genealogies and mei records may have been re-organized to fit better research? It has happened before and it will happen again. It seems a shame to look back on a decision born out of temporary convenience, just as we all wish more kotō swords had not been shortened for the sake of Edo fashion. The solution seems pretty simple… the NBTHK should paper gimei blades as if they were mumei, with an included description that the current mei is judged to be false and the new appraisal ignores it. The economic pressure to remove borderline mei would be greatly mitigated,* no possible shōshinmei would ever be lost, win-win. The bad data would be identified as such, with the caveat that future generations can do their own fact-checking. I can think of no particularly good reason why this shouldn't be acceptable. Of course, I am not holding my breath that this will ever be the case. Anyway, this is just my own opinion on the matter. I don't mean to treat gimei in general like precious artifacts that we mere mortals dare not touch… :lol: Rather as someone who spent a lot of time in research fields, I find the idea of altering an antique to fit our current personal narrative to be fundamentally suspect. It is bad science; if you think the data is bad, you say so, you don't pretend it never existed. Of course, not everything in nihontō is always very scientific. I welcome any contrary arguments and discussion. Cheers, —G. ------ *Unfortunately I can still imagine reasons someone might remove mei, e.g. if "gimei papers" are looked down on as one might expect…

Hi John, I am clearly no expert, but seal script is often a bit odd in that way. With respect, I humbly refer you to the spine of the Nihon Tōkō Jiten (日本刀工辞典). EDIT: image for convenience at http://cdn3.volusion.com/tpyzq.qbzsg/v/ ... 3-01-3.jpg

Ah, now I understand, thanks.

Alex, the signature is the same as listed in Morita-san's link… not sure what you mean? Mei "handwriting" is the same too, see http://www.samuraisword.com/nihontodisp ... /index.htm

Column on the right starts 以東竜斎？ I believe. If correct that might be read as "with Tōryūsai…"

Thank you very much Morita-san! I am now doing some brief reading online regarding Takemikazuchi. Glad you were able to shed light on this motif.

Hello everyone, Admiring this 1841 Naotane katana for sale (I keep coming back to Katana no Kura for "sword centerfolds," haha). Like many Naotane blades it has excellent horimono, presumably by Yoshitane. I was just curious, does anyone know the motif on the ura, of the nobly-dressed archer on the elk with a deer? It seems from the document imaged at the bottom that this theme has been used in other Naotane swords (on the nakago too, how odd). I don't recognize it at all but there are countless Japanese legends, literary references etc. which I have yet to learn. I also remember reading somewhere a more detailed explanation of the hatahoko (on the omote) than simply "spear with banner." I cannot for the life of me remember where though. Any insight would be welcome. Cheers, —G.

I don't know tōsōgu well enough to begin to kantei, but I'm with Brian on the qualitative assessment!

Looking at other examples of his work it appears that this dramatic "kink" in his main horizontal strokes (e.g. the tops of 藤 and 原, the cross bar of 大, etc.) is an idiosyncrasy of his. Though on this piece it is even more extreme than on the other few swords I found in 30 seconds' worth of googling.

Hello Gray and welcome to the NMB. Sadly I must agree that this object is absolutely a recent Chinese / Indian / other SE Asian fake… a bad one at that. Such items are pounded out in absolutely massive numbers every year. In the last sixteen years I think I must have seen at least a thousand. Just as true nihontō have many qualities that give them a certain recognizable "flavor" or characteristic, so these kinds of fakes have commonalities that make them instantly discernible with just a little experience. Some concrete examples (many of which this object exhibit) include: terrible shaping / wobbly lines / soft lines unusual proportions on everything elongated lumpy brass fittings poorly done artificial aging with patchy application and weird colors (usually via sloppy chemical application or simple weathering techniques) labor-saving "decorative" methods (e.g. thinly stenciled designs) lack of hamon or very bad cosmetic (fake) hamon coarse puddly low-count pattern welding masquerading as hada aggressive acid etches of the above meaningless kaisho kanji horimono in the blade area, usually acid-etched complete lack of seamlessness and alignment between components nontraditional materials, missing samé incorrect tsukamaki patterns (e.g. all the twists in a pseudo-hineri-maki going the same way, à la Satsuma-style work but worse) a horribly formed kissaki with no crisp yokote or mitsukado etc. etc. etc. However it is not so much an issue of going through a checklist so much as it is about developing a gestalt sense of "rightness" or "wrongness" that comes simply from study and exposure. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news. I strongly recommend that you hold off on any purchases for a while, and commit to some studying. I wrote a basic beginner's guide on Reddit which includes book lists, information site links, club and show directories, etc. At the very least I suggest you check out Rich T.'s nice article on real vs fake swords, and pick up an intro book like The Art of the Japanese Sword. Although this is probably a disappointment, I sincerely hope that you continue to hang out here and view lots of real swords; you will quickly pick up on the differences. Regards, —G.

Brian, thank you for your kind comments. There are few hard facts in my Reddit post that have not already been stated or written by other people, but as most Redditors are not nihontō-obsessed I tend to err on the side of verbose explanation and contextualization. Ultimately too it is always good practice for me to research a blade and its maker, if nothing else it serves as more kanji practice. FYI if anyone else reads this, the Markdown-based tables I tend to use frequently on Reddit don't really work when copy-pasting text… the formatting is clearer in the original post.

As to photos, I think you are on the right track Kunitaro-san, but the biggest issue is that the light is very "hard." This means a direct lamp close to the blade, creating extreme contrast and one bright spot with very dark falloff. It reveals much, but only in a narrow region; everything else becomes under- or over-exposed. I think you could improve the results using lights left and right, angled lower, at a distance. Then you will have even lighting across the blade—no "hot spots" or dark shadows—and still reveal a lot of activity. Overall though these are certainly useful photos which do show some features for kantei etc.

Nagashi / togi-mei / kesho-migaki. The answer is… sometimes. Maybe. http://web.archive.org/web/200807201336 ... migaki.htm

古銘 Looks pretty good to me! Guess my 左 interpretation was off. And this explains the overall meibun.

I can at least confirm that 刕 is a somewhat uncommon way of writing shū, so 相刕 should indeed be Sōshū. I've only ever seen this kanji used for Noshū before myself, interesting. I'm not sure that the first kanji on the sashi-omote is ko 古. To me it looks a bit more like sa 左 or similar. The left radical of the second kanji seems to be kin/kane 金 but I don't recognize the whole kanji. Will be interested to see what people dig up, I don't have the time to look further at the moment.

Ah, the owner has my thanks then. :beer: Glad I caught it while it is on display!

Stephen, I don't know offhand, but the polish was good and the condition of the piece overall was remarkable with the exception of the missing bōshi (some minor openings that you would expect for Heian period). It had a tremendous amount of presence, very robust construction.

I took a stroll to the Metropolitan Museum today and was very happily surprised to see a wonderful ubu & signed ko-Bizen tachi by Masazane on display. I'd been to the Met many times before but I had never known they had any ko-Bizen work. I just got home and did some digging, and I quickly found a perfect match in this Bonham's auction page. I guess we know who bought it now. I think they made out like a bandit to pick up such a work at $47,500… even without a bōshi. Anyone in the area, I highly recommend you take a look. It's a grand piece at 78.9cm with funbari, utsuri, and all sorts of hataraki with a jihada that practically explodes in rainbow-colored interference patterns. I didn't have my camera on me, so you'll have to forgive the one measly phone pic I snagged: Of course all the usual reasons to go to the Met's A&A gallery apply, like their Rai Kunitoshi tantō, Hizen Tadahiro II katana in guri-bori fittings, Sōshū Fusamune wakizashi, Gassan Sadatoshi etc., an embarrassment of Gotō / Hirata / Ishiguro school fittings, Kanō Natsuo tsuba… you get the idea. :D

Thank you Greg, an interesting discussion on SFI. Always glad to have the semantics cleared up a bit too.