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Thanks Chris and all! Sorry for being not clear enough. Would love to have such a big oshigata rubbing experience but the mei I have in my archive were all published somewhere and were collected over the years.

Haha, the workshop strikes back. I am not going crazy right now but as mentioned in the other thread, it doesn´t make much sense to let my signature archive rot on my HD. Apart from that I will be in the US soon and finish there the other big project mentioned. This is also why I push all these things right now to focus then on just the one thing. Forgot the mention: If you have all the thick Japanese meikan at home, mine doesn´t add much of course. But if you don´t have a meikan yet and need a reference on your tablet (or as hardcover copy) for signature comparisons, mine is probably the easiest and most affordable option.

As promised earlier in my discussion thread on future publications, I started to make available my signatures archive, beginning with koto. Of course I am working hard on finishing the Tameshigiri book which is the actual work, i.e. the KOTO-MEIKAN was "just" organizing pics of mei which are already on my HD. A SHINTO-MEIKAN will follow soon. The book comes as hardcover, 696 pages, and presents about 2,000 nakago pics of about 900 koto smiths. Also practical should be the eBook version to compare signatures on the spot with your tablet. Details can found on my blog: http://markussesko.wordpress.com/2014/0 ... to-meikan/ Thanks for your attention and now I am going back to write on sword tests...

I thought the same and with all the explanations in mind, I tend to interpret turnips as one of the numerous "auspicious symbols". I think that´s the lowest common denominator. But an educated samurai would have got the hint to Zhūgě Liàng too I guess, if it was meant as an allusion.

@Pete: I think it stands for shares, kabu (株), or in the generic sense for profit. There were also the kabunakama merchant guilds BTW. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kabunakama

The Tsuba-kodôgu gadai-jiten says that as kabu (蕪) and daikon (大根) are - as Guido already pointed out - related, (大根) was sometimes also read kabu. The mouse is regarded as messenger of Daikokuten, one of the Seven Gods of Fortune, and was used as "increasing" or "emphasizing" iconographic element. That means a mouse emphasized the lucky effect/symbolism of Daikokuten and thus the duo was extended by the turnip where kabu has to be understood as play on words, referring to kabu (株) which means "stocks, shares". So Daikokuten, mice, and turnips meant altogether "fortune + prosperity + happiness + profit". Thus the combination motif of mouse and turnip has to be seen in this context, even without Daikokuten. So when a motif doesn´t make much sense at a glance, it is always good to check if there is a play on words. For example the combination motif of horse and turnip: A horse jumps (haneru, 跳ねる) and so this "jumping/leaping" goes quasi symbolically over to the turnip, kabu. Kabu ga haneagaru (株が跳ね上がる) means namely "the stock prices are skyrocketing".

She is not related to me Curran. :D And I didn´t know about her thesis until about an hour ago.

As I got so much support and feedback in the field of Gendaito, I have decided that this will be the subject of my next big project but what might not be tackled until fall. I will go through all relevant references, let them suggest, and decide then if it should be something like an advanced Nihon-gendaito-shi (with details on workmanship), as follow-up to my previous "shi´s", or if it should be something on its own and in a format of its own. Apart from that, I will also publish my sword signature data base, split into a koto and into a shinto/shinshinto volume. Just because I have the files on the PC anway and it makes no sense to have them rot there. Thanks again to all of you!

Thank you for the correction Morita san! I had a hard time trying to find the first character but wasn´t able to see that it is a variant of 春.

I am not 100% sure about the first character but I think the mei to the left reads: 眘目包則摺揚之 "Tsutsushime Kanenori kore o suriageru" - "carefully shortened by Kanenori"

Thanks a lot Jussi! That helped me a lot as I can now forward the info that writing another glossary doesn´t make much sense.

@Joe: Thanks for your offer! @Pete, @Curran: Something big is released later this year which goes towards that direction. So please hold on. :D Apart from that, I was asked off the board to write something like my Handbook of Sword Fittings related Terms, just for swords and more detailed. I know that there is Hawley´s 1100 Japanese Sword Terms so I don´t want to rewrite something what is already available (at least not when in English). I never owned this book by Hawley so I would greatly welcome any info on that, maybe one or two scans from the inside of the book to get a general idea and to see if that is something to think about or if Hawleys´ is still up do date. Thanks.

Thanks so far guys for the input! What I see is a tendency to Gendaito and one to another comprehensive book on nihonto. I was already thinking about a follow-up Nihon-Gendaito-shi but did not tackle this so far because of the lack of reference material. Not that I don´t like Gendaito but I had to draw a line somewhere and that line was Shinshinto. Thus also my library is lacking any reference books on Gendaito so I have to get these first and work through them. And then I need someone like Chris who can tell me more about characteristic features of Gendai-tosho workmanships because such a book will be incomplete without addressing basic and individual styles. As for a new "Nihonto encyclopedia", I did kind of such a thing in German but was always hesitating to write something introductory as the Connoisseur´s Book and the Facts and Fundamentals are already quite good. That means you can find all the Nihonto nomenclature and parts explained and I don´t have to show again what is a bohi, what a kurijiri, and what an o-kissaki. On the other hand, just because this info is already available does not render useless a new big encyclopedia with all the terms and features. I was also thinking about what Brian suggested, i.e. something with more pics to support oshigata. But for this, I probably need one of the dealers in the background who supports me with data and a publisher who gives me a decent offer. High-quality color pictures is what you don´t do with Lulu. For example my Natsuo volumes are probably the top you can get there and the quality is not that bad, but the printing costs are so high that I almost earn nothing with them.

Discussing with several members of the board and from elsewhere on my tameshigiri book, I would like to use this opportunity to ask freely what information might be desired? Not that I have much time at the moment anyway but I am really interested in what you guys think is still a white spot on the map of nihonto or tosogu and what might be worth it to talk about a tangible future project. Well there will be a big project published later this year and for my part, I want to publish a final supplement to my Kantei volumes. Also I am asked about doing the same I did with the kinko signatures for swords, i.e. a classic but English and thus accessivle and available meikan. Of special interest to me is the connection of Hon´ami Koetsu, his Takagamine artists´ village, his connection to Umetada Myoju, and the whole context of Momoyama culture. Anyway, what I tried over the recent years was to fill gaps and to make information easily accessible. With this in mind, I want to start a free discussion here for everyone free to give me some input on this matter. Thanks guys!

The signature reads NORIMITSU or JÔKÔ (乗光). Haynes lists one artist for each reading. The JÔKÔ entry (H 02160.0) says that he was a tachi-kanagushi from Ôsaka, active around 1750, but I´m not sure of that´s the man...

Thank you to all of you! Sometimes I wish I had the opportunity to delegate parts of my work to others but its still a one-man show. But what I have is a 110% devotion to the subject of nihonto so I keep going. :D @Brian: Would love to see the theories in some centuries from now. I can hear them discussing that there must had been a workshop or at least four generations of Sesko.

Patrick, there are only 4 French members at the moment.

Hi Branson, The Yamada were able to gain the sword testing monopoly for the bakufu in the early 1700s. Before that time, there was the not less famous Yamano family of sword testers of whom the first Yamada generation Sadatake had been a student. Before the Yamada monopoly, that means in early Edo (1600~1700), there were for example also Nakagawa Saheita, Ukai Yoshizane, Nezu Mitsumasa, Matsumoto Masatomo, and Kuramochi Yoshichika who made themselves a name as sword testers. Especially Nakagawa Saheita was the man when it comes to the establishment of systematic sword tests. All their applied techniques seem to be similar as they go more or less back to Nakagawa and his master Tani Moritomo (and Moritomo´s father Tani Taizen Moriyoshi). Regarding your question about gold inlay, we can see the trend that mostly "privately" tested swords were added with a kinzogan tameshi-mei. The bakufu-employed Yamada testers added, if at all, mostly "just" a kiritsuke-mei (i.e. with the chisel and not as inlay). We know from bakufu records that the Shogunate had the blades of their employed swordsmiths all tested by default with the rather easy first body cut (ichinodo) and that there was no need for the bakufu to have the results of "fancy and difficult" tests added on the tang. It was enough for them to know that the blades of their smiths cut well. Much more detailed information will be found by the way in my next publication Tameshigiri - The History of Japanese Sword Testing.

Also funny is that the 687 Shijo Kantei blade was just introduced as blade No. 5 of the previous 686 issue´s Teirei Kansho Kai. :D FYI: Alone the European Branch of the NBTHK has 110 members.

Thank you very much Morita san! Would you mind sending me a scan of the pages in question? I am preparing material for my next publication on tameshigiri at the moment and all I have is the entry in Fukunaga´s Kubikiri Asaemon Token Oshigata and the rather low-quality pic (p. 22, volume 1).

Hi folks, Does anybody have the 1927 published three-volume Imamura-oshigata (今村押形) at hand? I am looking for a Muramasa blade with a kinzogan-mei stating that it was a present from the Kanpaku Toyotomi Hidetsugu to Muto Nagato no Kami. If so, please PM me. Thank you all for your attention.

@Guido: Thanks a lot. That will surely help me in my pre-sorting of data process! And I guarantee you a free copy when the project turns out positive. Just a small request: Please send them either as mentioned early tomorrow or after the 29th because I dont want my email account getting full whilst on vacation. Or if the files are not that big, please go ahead and send them whenever you have time. @Jeffrey: Thanks or ordering a copy. The book was never intended as any replacement. The Haynes index is one of the most used books in my shelve. As for the story behind the book, I was requested by collectors who were tired of working with (sometimes doubtful) supplement translations and expensive books (and I mean more expensive than mine ) which have to be ordered from Japan or abroad just to "start working". Another big wish was to have this signature archive as eBook on the tablet when going to sword shows and the like to buy signed stuff without papers. So main focus was actually the electronic version but when doing so, of course also a real book comes along.

Oh yes, I am already at the Corinthians to Paul so it should be finished early next year. But joking aside, apart from all the other projects on my desk I want to write something on cutting tests next. There is no comprehensive book on this out there, at least not in English. Well, I haven´t started with a single word yet and all I have is just a basic plan so let´s see where it brings me. But it is another one of those very interesting topics where surprisingly very limited data is available...

Thanks Brian! A preview can be found at the descpription page at Lulu.com. Its hidden right under the cover pic. All pictures are from shoshin-mei or at least from reliable sources. But of course I can´t give any guarantees and please dont sue me when buying a piece on the basis of just my book and when then it turns out as gimei when submitted to shinsa. http://www.lulu.com/shop/markus-sesko/s ... 86801.html

I have been a little absent lately because of working on several projects at the same time. So I apologize for rushing in again for just advertising my latest publication. It is a classical meikan, a signature comparison, namely for sword fittings. It contains about 4,100 pictures of about 2,000 Japanese sword fittings artists. Its purpose is to serve as a reference for the comparison of signatures on sword fittings and is thus practical for both the collector and for antique dealers and auction houses. Thus it can also serve well in the run-up as an aid to see if a signature is promising enough to submit the item to shinsa. For more details on the book and for where to order please take a look at my blog: http://markussesko.wordpress.com/2014/0 ... s-artists/ There is also an eBook version available which should be a very practical aid when comparing signatures spot-on at buying. Thank you all for your attention and Happy Easter to all of you. I am on vacation from tomorrow but around to answer mails until tomorrow morning (European time) and I will be back on April 29th.