Markus

The most common name reading of (記) would be NORI but I can't find any NORIYOSHI either.

I'm not involved in any part of that collection/publications. However, I was once invited by the Mayor of Steyr to view and possibly assess the Japanese blades in the Petermandl'sche Messersammlung but that was exactly right before I moved to the US so it never worked out, unfortunately.

Thank you guys for the feedback so far. I got a proof copy here which looked jut fine like Grey said and when I was asking around here in the US, no one was experiencing that weird phenomenon. So that's why I was already positive that the glitch is connected to the edition I had to chose with Lulu for non-US orders. Back in the days in Austria, I was receiving my Lulu copies from France and I think that all EU deliveries, maybe even Eastern Europe and Russian deliveries are catered from France, except for the UK where Lulu has another printing partner. So any of the UK readers, do you have the issue too? My working theory is as follows: The pics of the series are in gross rather on the low side and also Fukushi says at several points something like: "Unfortunately, I only have that a bad picture of this or that piece." As stated earlier, I was scanning the whole series with the same scanner and with the same settings, so differences in picture quality reflect Fukushi's pics he provided to the NBTHK accordingly. As Lulu is a print on demand provider, they are of course cutting costs everywhere. So I think that the same PDF I uploaded is "interpreted" differently depending on their print partner. That is, I think that the France/EU printer renders/aliases/converts pics that are under a certain quality threshold in a way that differs from what the computer things is a decent image. As Andi said, one pic on page 312 is fine whilst the other one (one of the low-quality pics in the magazine) is crap. I don't know yet how to solve that because it seems that the US and non-EU printers don't do that, i.e. make the already low-quality pics worse by some faulty aliasing algorithm. In other words, I would have to make the EU guys use another algorithm/program whatever. Or, play around with the low-quality pics, upload the PDF again, have a proof copy shipped to someone in the EU (Germany?), and rinse and repeat until these pics look okayish...

Hi Andi, So with your copy, it is only certain but whole pages, not all pics throughout the entire book, right?

Joining the conversation I was made aware by Chris and a couple of other readers about that issue. For some reason, I thought to have narrowed it down to prints delivered to Germany as I was asking around if others are experiencing it too. Short background: I had to use a slightly different print option for international/non-US destinations (Lulu doesn't offer certain things outside of the US) and only readers from Germany told me that they too have checkerboard images to some extent. So that's why I was first positive that this is an isolated phenomenon that firstly may only concern readers outside of the US and secondly, may only concern German buyers. However, I was a little suspicious about that because from the past I know that Lulu caters German buyers from their printing partner in France, so French buyers should be affected too. Now as Jussi says he too has the issue, I am getting even more nervous. I have been in touch with Lulu of course since Chris and my other (German) buyers made me aware of the issue. Lulu is very courteous and always offers me to send out another copy if something is wrong with a delivery on their account but I need to know if this is something more sensitive (what I guess it is) rather than an one-time glitch with a certain printing partner. Discussing concrete printing issues with them basically ended up with the "maybe baby" game, i.e. they were suggesting maybe I did something wrong with the DPI or maybe with the PDF or maybe with the raw JPGs. But that's the thing, all pics were scanned at the same time with the same scanner and everything was written with the same MS Word version and exported with the same Adobe PDF app. So I know for sure that I did not do any changes I am aware of between volumes one and two. This now leaves me with a "stupid/weird" decision to make: When the identical approach yields different results, what approach do you take to achieve the same results? If you know what I mean. Still trying to wrap my head around this issue but I want to go sure that everyone who got a subpar copy gets a proper one on the one hand, and that this is not an ongoing nightmare with local Lulu print on the other hand (I have a few more book projects in the oven). So if anyone is reading that and noticing, hell yeah, my copy looks like crap too, please let me know as I really have to narrow this down. Thank you!

You are welcome Ron. Was just quoting from my book, i.e. I thought I might better add the quote rather than just translating the term for those who haven't heard of that kind of ornamentation. Cheers, Markus

The term is suri-hegashi. From my Encyclopedia: suri-hegashi (摺り剥がし) – Areas on sword fittings where the iroe coloring shows abrasion and exposes the underlying metal. Usually along protruding, e.g. takabori motif elements. Fittings with such areas have a special taste as they suggest age and wear. The term suri-hegashi is primarily used to refer to decorations where the abrasions were artificially applied. Areas which were actually abraded by use and over time are namely referred to as suri-heri (摺り減り).

The (刀) reads horu in this context, i.e. "carved (this)."

Glitches like that will be eliminated in the upcoming Gendaito book.

Its was originally the Saikoji. https://www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g1066459-d8733671-Reviews-Saikoji_Temple-Sumida_Tokyo_Tokyo_Prefecture_Kanto.html I think the original grave was destroyed in the Great Kanto Earthquake and they put up a new gravestone at the Sofukuji in Shinjuku. http://www.kanko-shinjuku.jp.e.xm.hp.transer.com/spot/kw-%E5%8D%9A%E7%89%A9%E9%A4%A8/article_406.html

Got your PayPal, thank you!!

@Chris: There will be oshigata for sure and the book will also be in the ballpark of the Koto-kantei, i.e. around 700 pages. What you addressed is exactly why I am between a rock and a hard place: Slightly less information but great pictures or great info and lesser pictures (also taking into consideration the recent Lulu quality drop for non-US prints as you know). The book will feature more than 1,100 gendai smiths and I think that hardly any (non-Japanese) publication has come anywhere near that number and depth of information. Also, and halfway through the project, I have met with Chris Bowen who has an incredibly extensive archive on gendai smiths. So I have to wrap my head around the best way to incorporate the valuable info that he has (and that we would have to sort out together) into the book too. EDIT: Just checked my Gendai folder. It contains of more than 10,000 pics/files, many of which I have received from supporters of the project. So the final website should be an awesome database on gendaitō.

Sorry for being slow on this lately. I am about two thirds-through with the book. When reaching the half-way-through-the-book mark, I realized that I slightly have to change the concept. That is, I had to remove oshigata and blade pics and focus more on details in the careers/CV's of the smiths as I was foreseeing the physicals limits of the book. All references will then anyway be available for free online on the website of the project. Apart from that, I still try to edit/add a few smiths every day so that there is no standstill.

Will keep my eyes open as well and update if I find one depicted/mentioned in a period painting/source.

Jean made me aware of this thread and asked me to join, so I want to add my 2c to the issue: First, I want to address period written sources. Problem here is that earlier ones usually only refer to kubitori (首取り), i.e. the act of taking a head, and not to a specific device. To my knowledge we have to wait to the early period to see devices being address. For example the Musha Monogatari (武者物語) from the mid 1600s and the Zōhyō Monogatari (雑兵物語) from the late 1600s. In the former we find a detailed description of how a certain Mukai Noto no Kami was taking his heads: "First you pin down your enemy to the ground and stop with your right foot on his right arm. Then you fold back the shikoro and cut his windpipe. After that, you hold your wakizashi in reverse grip [...] and cut off the head." The latter source says that it may be difficult to cut off a head with an ō-wakizashi and that rather shorter blades should be used. Now what is interesting to me is the explicit mention of holding the hilt of the wakizashi in reverse grip. Take a look at the pics below. They all show heads being cut off with the handle being held in reverse grip. As the nata-style blade has the cutting edge inside of the curve, obviously none such blade was used in any of the pics shown above. They all cut with the curve outwards (see detail below, don't know why they had to anonymize the guys with bars ). Another problem I am thinking of is that I can't remember seeing any painting of a warrior in armor wearing some extremely curved dagger in his sash like the mounted one provided by Bob in post #36. But that might mean nothing as I probably just don't have come across one yet. Just anecdotal evidence. Now thinking of nata being of exactly that shape, I can't help thinking of samurai sword-style mounted short blades with the cutting edge on the inward curve being just that, i.e. fancy gardening knives maybe worn by a merchant or tea guy who wanted to have something special or by a bushi who was into gardening... So that are basically my thoughts on this issue: No such old blades extant, no explicit mention in period texts, period battlefield depictions ambiguous at the best, fancy mounted ones all date to the (later) Edo period.

From my book: "But what about the standards for the ranking of the smiths? [...] There had already been the term ō-kiremono (大切れ物, lit. “great cutter”) to honour a sword which had cut with ease through the central chest of an adult man. The emphasis here lies on with ease because the majority of sword blades should be able after a while to cut through a human chest. The cut going centrally through the thorax, the so-called chiwari (乳割, lit. “breast splitter”), was one of the toughest tests as it had to go through several ribs. Now, when eight or nine blades out of ten from a certain smith turned out to be ō-kiremono, the smith was ranked saijō-ō-wazamono, for seven to eight ō-wazamono, for five to seven ryō-wazamono, and for two to four out of ten wazamono."

Oops, didn't know that I'm behind with drinks. More than happy to catch up

Argh, would love to go but flights are insanely expensive from here, like $1,800-for-a-roundtrip-for-that-time insanely expensive Have to see if I am somehow able to secure funds...

Thank you guys. I will ship out to all those who have prepaid automatically. Will probably tackle that tomorrow or at the latest by Friday. I now always wait until the PDF has gone completely through the Lulu system of printers. A while ago, when I published by Masamune book, I placed several orders immediately but then Lulu cancelled them, telling me that something was wrong with the PDF (even after it smoothly went through the first scan but later internal scan said no). Some might remember. Was a little nightmare. IMPORTANT: To all who have prepaid, please let me know if your address has changed since last year. Thank you.

Adding to Brian's comment: ... and if you are seriously considering buying something for $15k, can't be wrong to have someone translate the native Japanese description for let's say 50 bucks, *cough, cough*

Unworthy? No comment was made about the blade itself, which doesn't look bad at all.

Thought it is a two character signature... Having now the whole context, I tend to think it is only one character and somebody clumsily put a Sa (Samonji) gimei onto a mumei blade. Edit: Its the same character though, 左, which is read SA by itself and SUKE in combination with another one (focusing on the readings of swordsmith's names).

Side by side with handwritten SUKE (左).

Suke (左). http://clioapi.hi.u-tokyo.ac.jp/ships/ZClient/W34/z_list.php?title=%E5%B7%A6&resourcetype=0

General info: These "updates" are a reason why I am not going to turn my Kantei series into any monetary venture (as many suggested I better do). In other words, the Kantei series reflects my most recent research and will always be free because it is so to speak backed by the support I have received from readers like Guido who actually buy my books.