Gabriel L

My understanding is that nugui isn't deposited / doesn't form a coat on the blade, it's just one more polishing compound with its own characteristic method of abrasion & hardness. I could be wrong on that, but if I am correct, then again it is simply a physical process, leaving a steel surface with which the iPrOH will have no interaction. Otherwise the effect of nugui would be wiped out quite quickly by other cleaning methods, e.g. uchiko, anyway. Would be good to get some hard info on nugui's precise mechanism of action.

Isopropyl alcohol doesn't react with steel and certainly cannot change the underlying hamon. It just acts as a solvent, e.g. for dried oil. There are several possibilities I can think of: The alcohol left some water streaks which are masquerading as hamon/hataraki The details of the hamon were previously masked by dried oil etc. You simply never noticed this detail in the hamon before If the alcohol is brand new 99% then the first (water streaks) is less likely, but still possible. There is kind of an art to wiping down with alcohol without leaving streaks. But this isn't necessarily what's happening. I suspect the answer is a combination of the second and third points. BTW, anhydrous alcohol is hygroscopic, meaning it will pull water out of the air and dilute itself over time. Just a side note.

Ford, Lovely tsuba and film. I found the concept of yūgen very compelling. Anyone who has seen me on SFI or myArmoury may remember my signature for the last 10+ years, the following quote: (From "The World as I See It" by Albert Einstein.) That sense of wonder is a powerful motivating factor in my interest in any and all forms of art. Thank you for reminding me of that.

Your comments are all appreciated. Kevin, certainly these themes exist beyond horimono. Keeping the article centered on horimono was a convenient way to limit the scope, but it would be nice if there was a comprehensive dictionary of nihontō/tōsogu-related motifs, wouldn't it? There are actually elements of vajra etc. that I was continuing to discover as I was polishing the final draft. For instance: * A closed vajra (with the prongs meeting at the tip) is peaceful, an open vajra wrathful. * The male double-sided vajra vs the female vajra bell. * The quatrefoil vajra, which is basically two crossed vajras. * The "shoulders" on Japanese vajra prongs were originally sculpted "makara" mouths in Indian vajra, a sort of aquatic mythical beast, and the prongs were tongues. * At least one example of a Shingon ritual involving the ken. * At least one example of a Shingon ritual involving fire. * Many complex interrelated concepts regarding the five wisdoms, the five wisdom kings, the five great Buddhas, lotuses, mantras, sutras, circles, etc. At some point however it would have stopped being a nihontō article and started to become a Buddhism book. I also slightly regret not including more example photos of fine historic horimono, since a central point of the article was that originally they had more personal meaning than they may have for many nihontō owners today. The modern ones I included are gorgeous but I think swapping a few out for some Heian/Kamakura examples might have been a good idea. Anyway all this is to say that there is a lot more to the subject than I could really fit in an article, but that is trivially true I suppose. Just more incentive to keep studying. Thanks again, —G.

Thanks for the kind words everyone. Brian, you are certainly welcome to host it. Cheers, —G.

Super interesting sword. One does wonder whether it should be polished. I would lean towards "yes," if only because it does nobody any good in its current state (it's not serving as a temple sword anymore, if that's what it was). But more research would be necessary to make that kind of decision. Good luck finding out more, —G.

Hello everyone, A while back I posted a breakdown of ken horimono terms and their Buddhist context. Barry Hennick graciously requested to use that material for the JSS/US newsletter. I was happy to oblige, except that I was not wholly satisfied with the forum post. Accordingly it has now been expanded to a more complete article format which makes a few small revisions/corrections and includes more information on Shingon Buddhism etc. You are invited to read the full PDF (~7 MB) here. This is the final draft that was submitted to Barry last week, and it should be 99% of what appears in the JSSUS bulletin. There were some growing pains in expanding the post to an article, and I realized along the way that these topics and themes could fill a book or more. Nevertheless, I am happy with the final result and I hope you all enjoy it. Special thanks to Barry Hennick, Ford Hallam, Darcy Brockbank, & Pablo Kuntz for their help and contributions. Regards, —G.

Very good documentary, quite different from the re-hashed intro stuff that's been covered many times before. Really enjoyed seeing a few recognizable members of the international community and the insight into the uchideshi culture / Sasaki sensei. The segment with excerpts from street interviews was a little depressing. I had to wonder how editorialized / representative it was, I would have thought there would be more appreciation even on a casual level than what they played. In any case it was a sobering moment.

Interesting about the fake nodules, never knew that. You learn something every day as they say. Yes, nothing so classic as tsumami-maki. Maybe not as tight as hineri-maki on most modern iaitō or as showy & elaborate as jabara-ito-maki, but occupies that sweet spot of elegant and restrained. Anyway, congrats on your very nice "unreal" daishō, Stephen.

Fantastic! A very interesting sword David. Glad you posted it.

Glad I got 無 at least, I had no chance with the other three. Many thanks once again to Morita san. I found the story behind the phrase very interesting.

Bazza, Maybe. I didn't spend any time checking the signature in records or anything. I could buy a possible hisa but I'm not sure myself.

Try rotating it so it's right-way up (about 120° counter-clockwise) and give it another go. Spoiler below if you need it.

How interesting David. FWIW I would like to agree that you have the one side down, 明和辛酉秋勝金道造. However I can't really make sense of it. Meiwa 明和 (1764–72) would seem ok, as would kanoto tori 幸酉 (58th year of the zodiac). But they don't work together, do they? The cycle restarted on 1744, which would make kanoto tori 1801. Looking at other combinations and characters doesn't gel either. Aki 秋 (autumn) works in a zodiac date, but then Katsu Kanemichi/Kinmichi 勝金道 ? That's just odd. I feel like I'm missing something but I don't know what. As to the seal script, I have no chance, except to surmise that the third character is 則. :lol: Need to get Markus's book… Good luck, I will watch with interest.

Good job on the mei Harvey. It does indeed read 備州長船祐定 Bishū Osafune Sukesada, 天正三年八月日 Tensho sannen hachigatsu bi. That would translate to Sukesada of Osafune, Bizen province / a day in the eighth month, third year of Tensho era. 1573 was Tensho 1, so Tensho 3 (two years later) is 1575. That may seem trivial to say but when starting out a lot of people make a calendar addition error via an accidental "year zero" assumption. Now that you've done this mei, the next time you will probably find it slightly easier… "oh look, another date, well I can recognize year and month…" that sort of thing. Every time gets more and more natural. BTW, please remember that the NMB rules include signing your name at the bottom of each post (you can set it as your signature in your profile options).

Hi Harvg. With practice this particular mei (maybe the most common mei of all?) will become an instant recognition pattern for your. For now, I recommend you check out this page and note that the "naga" character 長 has another reading when it's part of a certain town name… the biggest production center for Japanese swords in history. A good thing to learn! Then the last two characters are part of the smith name. Check out here: http://jssus.org/nkp/kanji_for_mei.html As to the reverse side, it's a date. The first two characters are in the link Thierry sent you. The following characters are a mix of numbers and time units, if you check out the common characters page again (http://jssus.org/nkp/common_kanji.html) you should find them. Good luck!

Poor Sergei… hope he isn't too discouraged by all the ribbing. C'mon guys, we can do better. I mean mu 無 is clear enough, right?

Thanks for posting this interesting mei, Jan. I am a little busy this weekend so I will not attempt this particular challenge, but I just wanted to point out that you should be careful when translating dates as they should not be read so literally. The date does say the twenty-sixth day* of the seventh month of the first year of Meireki (1655)… however, that is in the historical Japanese calendar, and so is not July 26 as you know it. In fact, it actually corresponds to August 27th (which was a Friday) in the Gregorian calendar. I used NengoCalc to do the lookup. It doesn't make any serious difference, it's just a small pet peeve of mine when historical Japanese dates are translated as if they were modern Gregorian dates. Carry on! --- *assuming that is an archaic character for 20, which I don't doubt it is… I just don't recognize it offhand.

I think the round/flat distinction is being interpreted far too strictly. Edo court daisho koshirae were originally defined as having certain characteristics—black horn kashira, shakudo fittings, ro-iro saya, etc. In that context, the wakizashi saya did have a round end to contrast with the flat end of the katana saya, a trend which certainly became fashionable in general. However, I have never heard or seen any evidence that this was a "rule" that held for the country at large and distinguished samurai wakizashi from merchant wakizashi. Indeed, even those court fashions loosened slightly over time. Looking at daisho koshirae in general I have seen plenty with flat-ended wakizashi saya, and since the daisho was by definition restricted to the samurai, this should suffice to show that round/flat was in no way a samurai/merchant differentiator. EDIT: a few seconds' googling turned up these examples: http://www.aoijapan.com/aoi-mon-daisho- ... toso-paper http://www.tetsugendo.com/swords/MC-1_Daisho.html http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... irae_2.jpg http://www.sho-shin.com/judai1.html http://www.samuraisword.com.au/html/yos ... aisho.html

Welded? No idea. A correct tanagobara shape for nakago? Looks more like a bad approximation. Shōshin? In someone else's dreams perhaps… Also, I think there may be a karasuguchi if you look closely. But maybe it's just another hadaware, this blade has some ugly ones. Someone gambled too much on this methinks. Putting aside shōshin vs. gimei, this piece still has too many problems. Maybe I'm wrong and it'll turn some kind of profit, but I wouldn't have spent that much on it myself.

As you should be. Glad to hear it. Looking forward to the result of all that hard work! Cheers, —G.

Chris, I have seen you mention your book project a couple of times now. I was wondering, do you have a book designer helping you out or were you planning on doing the layout, typography, typesetting etc. yourself? I love that the self-publishing surge has helped niche markets like ours put more info out, but I lament that so many self-published works a so clearly amateur when it comes to classic rules of print design. If you are doing it all yourself, I would strongly recommend you read entirely through the free online guide Butterick's. Even better would be to pick up Bringhurst. A few key points that have a drastic impact: US Letter page size is a bad one for books. It's big and wide, making it cumbersome to hold and read; people also have a terrible tendency to put single columns of text that span almost the whole page width, vastly exceeding the most comfortable line lengths of 2–3 alphabets. Generally, a narrower aspect ratio is better, as is a slightly smaller size. But of course some art books with huge photos can be considered exceptions. Letter can be okay when set in two columns… but even when typeset well, a US Letter page screams "I am am an amateur writer" by dint of association. Times New Roman. Don't do it. Just don't. Many other fine serif faces exist which will not look so staid. 12-point body copy with automatic leading (line-height). Too big and random. 11 pt text over 14 pt leading, 10.5 pt over 13, and 10/12.5 are all much more typical in professionally-set books. Same with line length as I said above… 2–3 alphabets long, no longer, is comfortable for extended reading. There are many other points, those are just some that make my blood pressure spike a bit when I think "ah, if only they had changed even a few of these aspects…" I also don't mean to assume anything, for all I know you have designed a fine layout and/or have the benefit of someone with those skills involved. This also isn't an invitation to ask me to help, by the way. :lol: Though I love book design and typography, I am far too busy these days to spend the many many hours that task requires. My only interest is in seeing that more of the self-publishers in our community learn some basics of the field, so their rich & useful content is presented in the best way possible. I asked the same thing of Ford H. back before he announced his kickstarter, and was relieved to hear that he was going to hire a professional book designer for his Japanese Metalwork series. Forgive my rambling… hope all is well with you. Cheers, —Gabriel

Not bad, not bad. :D

Yes, you can clearly see the remains of the sanko/kongō-tsuka (vajra hilt), which would make this an example of the hōken (treasure sword) / chiken (wisdom sword) / sanko-ken (trident vajra sword) / kongō-ken (vajra sword). Take your pick as to which term you like best, they all apply. Suken 素剣 literally means "plain ken," referring to the simplified design. The first kanji Su 素 means undecorated or unadulterated, from the more concrete meaning of plain white silk; note the lower radical 糸 (thread). This is the same kanji in suaka 素銅, purified copper.

Thanks for all the feedback everyone. Barry did indeed ask if it could be included in the JSSUS, to which I was happy to agree. To that end, I am actually cleaning it up slightly and producing a PDF in more formal article form that will include a couple additional notes. I will post it when it's done (which will be before Monday). Regards, —G.