zanilu

@Ford Hallamit would be great to see a tutorial of yours about the construction of Shingen tsuba. Of course you can youse may pdf as you see fit. Glen @GRC if you are able to find the reference you mentioned we could add more information to the Mukade tsuba that I think they deserve their own category. Grev @kissakai your piece is really interesting and unusual say the least, the internal iron core is visible but not the brass wires on the engrqved side. Also there is no brass plate covering the central region on the brass weaving side. Can I ask you if you can post a picture without the highlighted engravings. I would like to add your tsuba to a future revision of the paper. As for a similar paper for on Namban tsuba is not planned at the moment. I like to look into pieces of my collection at the moment do not include Namban tsuba. However I have recently acquired a nice Hizen Yagami tsuba, and stared collecting information about the school, let's see how it goes. @Brian, @Curran thank you for your kind words...

Thank you Dale for the correction! It was the android auto correct function.... Regards Luca

Hello Brian has just posted a small paper I have written about Shingen tsuba. You can find it in the download section I have recently added to my collection some Shingen tsuba and I did some research about them and wanted to share the result with you. If you have any comment, corrections, line of improvement and further information to add please let me know. English is not my mother thong so if you find spelling or gramma mistakes please point them out. I hope you find it an interesting read. Regards Luca

Thank you Moriyama san and Piers. Definetly the flowers do not look like clematis on some papers they are classified as Chinese Bellflower (kikyo-zu- 桔梗図) or Dianthus (Nadeshiko- 撫子). As for the attribution to Kaga Zogan I have seen pieces that were blatantly Heinajo zogan attributed as such in old papers and publications. Regards Luca

Dear All I have recently acquired an Heianjo Zogan tsuba: The tsuba come with a NBTHK Hozon paper: And a Hakogaki As far as the Hozon paper I had no problems with the translation. The hakogaki is a little bit out of reach at the moment. I was able to guess some of the character but not all. I would be grateful if you can help me with the missing characters and correct the mistake I made. Thank you in advance Regards Luca

Thank you Dale and Geraint. A lot of info to study... Regards Luca

Dear all I am looking for information about Yagami School of tsuba makers, Hizen province I think. Information in general and in particular this article: Robert Burawoy; Mitsuhiro of Hizen, identifies the three generations. Published in; Bushido, An International Journal of Japanese Arms, vol 3, No 1. Pages 18-21 In volume 3 number 1 of the Bushido Journal. If any of you has access to the printed copy and is willing to share a scan of the pages from 18 to 21 I will be grateful. If you happen to have other info about Yagami school or references it would be great. Consider that I have in my library the two volume of the Tosogu Classroom translated by Markus Sesko, the Toso Kodogu Koza by Wakayama and the Nihonto Koza. Than you in advance for all the info you can provide. Best Regards Luca

Than you guys. It seems to be a rather gray area... Regards Luca

Hi to all I have a question that is nagging me about the best way to write romanization of Japanese terms. For examples I have seen 土手耳 written as dotemimi, dote mimi or dote-mimi or 丸形 as marugata, maru gata or maru-gata. You got the gist. There is a correct way to write them, or a preferred way or we have just to keep it consistent throughout the text? Thank you in advance for all your comments Regards Luca

Nice to hear that my judgment has not gone astray As said by Richard, the piece seems to me a little too busy and overdecorared and this to me does not match with a washida attribution to me. Also the execution of the kebory on the inlay does not reach the level of that found even on mid range Heianjo pieces I have in my collection. Without mentioning Washida... I have one Washida papered piece, one non papered but almost certainly washida and one probable and this piece is not even close to those. As Dale said the final price could be due to bidding frenzy but that seems too much... I was bidding for the piece too but I had set myself a limit well below that. Regards Luca

Hello to all, I have been following this auction on Yahoo (https://buyee.jp/item/yahoo/auction/1098488866) and I was quite baffled by the final price, 290000 JPY. I mean considering the conditions, the lack of papers, the quality of the decoration design that is not Heianjo zogan at its best, the missing inlay and the quality of the execution I would have guessed a price below half of the final hammer price obtained by this auction. What am I missing? Are my eyes failing me? Do I have to question my judgment? I do not want to offend anyone in case the winner of the bid is reading this post! I am just curious. @Brian if this post is inappropriate please remove it. Regards Luca

Brian, This set is on sale right now on yahoo Japan. https://buyee.jp/item/yahoo/auction/p1096546559 Hope its help. Luca

Since I prefer to display my tsuba within their boxes I use these: https://www.ebay.it/...id=710-127635-2958-0 Regards Luca

Grazie Mauro!

I got the set of the original posts on Buyee.jp. I was just curious about the missing data for my archive and if translations were available. Regards Luca

Thank you Dale. The Varshavsky website mention an English translation of the green book on Higo tsuba. Any idea about its availability? Regards Luca

Maybe I was too quick in posting: Green One: Sasano, Masayuki, Kagamishi Tsuba, 1980 Red One: Sono Heiji, Higo Irogane Tsuba, 1984 Blue One: Sasano, Masayuki, Tsuba To Koshirae, 1987 Questions about Publisher and translation still pending. Luca

Hello to all of you I am looking to bibliographic information about these books: Author, publisher, year of publication the usual stuff. To your knowledge there are translation in English? Thank you in advance for any information Regards Luca

Stephen I am aware of Mr. Varshawsky site. In fact I used it as a reference for the historical prespective in the evolution of the definition of Shingen tsuba. Not all the pictures of the website have enough resolution to allow to see the presence of lacquer on this kind of tsuba. On some it seems there is lacquer on others not. On higher resolution pictures found on the web or on books in my library there seems to be no lacquer. I have no definitive answer at the moment. For sure on the piece in my collection there are no traces of lacquer in the woven brass wire region. Regards Luca

Hi Stephen No traces of lacquer on this piece, and as far as I can tell from pictures also on similar pieces from the same class of Shingen. If you have seen examples like this one with lacquer it would be interesting if you can post some images. On the contrary there is a lot of black lacquer on other styles of Shingen Tsuba. Like this one for example In the close up shots you can see some corrosion on the iron core but nothing major. If there is relevant corrosion in other ares I can not tell. The Tsuba is coming straight out of Japan. I do not know nothing about it's whereabouts before that. Regards Luca

Thank you Roger Regards Luca

Thanks Brian No need to do it. I am working on a review on Shingen tsuba similar to that I already did for Kaga Yoshiro. Regards Luca

Good morning everybody! I have in my collection this Shingen tsuba: Dimensions 86.9 mm x 87.4 mm, thickness 4.6 mm at seppa-dai, 5.7 mm at mimi. It is rond shape (marugata - 丸形) with a three layers structure of brass and iron (tetsu/shinchū san-mai shitate - 鉄・真鍮三枚仕立). The the main decoration is made of woven brass wire (sinchū harigane amiko (真鍮針 金編込) while the central brass plates and the fukurin (覆輪) are decorated with small flower-like punch marks (kohana ishime-ji - 小花石目地). The two hitsuana (櫃孔) are also lined in brass. The following aspects can be noted: The tsuba has an iron core that extends from the nakago-ana (中心孔) to the brass fukurin (覆輪). A magnet is continuously attracted to it going from the center to the outer edge. The iron core seems to be a solid plate underneath the woven brass wires of the main decoration of the tsuba. See Figure 2. The “radial” wires are passing through holes in the central brass plates that are staggered between the omote (表) and ura (裏) sides. Those on the ura side are located approximately halfway between those on the omote side. See Figure 6, where the holes on the omote central plate are shown as withe dots. The corresponding holes on the ura plate are located at the end of the red dashed lines. The holes show, in most cases, a lot of burr on their edges, see Figure 3. Underneath the “radial” and woven wires, here and there, a “stray” wire can be seen running on top of the iron core at an angle relative to the “radial” wires, see Figure 1.77. These “stray” wires seem to have a diameter similar to those of the woven wires. Looking from the outside toward the center of the tsuba in the area where the central brass plate ends where the “radial” wires are we can see that below the holes in the central brass plate there is a sort of cavity in the iron core, see Figure 6. The thickness of the brass plates is approximately 0.6 mm, for both the central one and the fukurin. The “radial” brass wire have a diamter of approximately 1.2 mm, the woven ones of 0.6 mm. This is what I have seen so far. What follows is just speculation based on the above evidence and some imagination from my side. The arrangement of the “radial” wires, with the staggered holes in the omote and ura central pates, suggest that they are not individual wires but are rather a single wire woven in some way around the iron core. The iron core shall have some kind of opening allowing the wires to go from the omote to the ura central brass plates as shown in Figure 7. The wire is then woven around the circular crown between the openings and in the center and the edge of the iron core to form the “radial” wires. To keep the omote and ura brass plate are extremely important for the weaving of the “radial” wires thus they are likely held in place and secured to the iron core by brass pins hammered and chiseled to hide them. Figure 2 Figure 3 Figure 4 Figure 5 Figure 6: Schematics of FT-0142 obtained by tracing on top of overlapped images of the omote (表) and ura (裏) sides. The woven brass wires are not reported for the sake of clarity. Blue stands for the brass plate, red for the brass wires and grey for the iron core plate. The “radial” brass wires on the omote side are reported continuous lines. Those on the ura as dashed lines. Figure 7: Possible shape of the iron core with holes passing through to allow a single brass wire to be woven around the circular crown between the holes and the core edge. The portion of wire that are not visible are shown in purple. What is your opinion? Do any of you have additional information on the construction of this kind of Shingen tsuba, maybe from damaged ones? Please feel free to contribute with any idea or fancy hypothesis! Regards Luca

Thank you for your answer Richard @rkg! It is in time like these that I miss the input of @Guido Schiller. We had some interesting discussions about Heianjo-like washida school pieces... Thank you for the appreciation @Bazzabut I think this piece will stay with me for a while Regards Luca

@Jorgensen your pictures look pretty good to me. I struggled a lot to produce acceptable pictures, at least to me. I always prefer to take my shot with a dark background inside a lightbox made of withe plastic with led light placed outside to provide a diffuse light. To avoid sharp shadows the tsuba is suspended 50 mm above the background. I always place a white piece of paper inside the shot to do color correction with gimp taking the white as a reference. The two sides of the box opposed to the light sources are obscured with a sheet of the same material used for the background to avoid reflections. To avoid stray light I shot in a darkened room. The results are pretty good in terms of color. Here is an example from a recent post of mine. Regards Luca