Jacques

Personally, I'm not competent enough to say whether this or that swordsmith is the better tanto maker. There comes a time when you have to stay in your place or risk making a fool of yourself.

You don't know what a good togishi can do.

No, if you have a cube with 2 cm sides and you remove 5 mm from each side, you'll have a smaller cube, but still a cube.

This shows us that gimei can be found in the literature, which is not designed to make things any easier.

Except that when you polish a blade, if you're competent, you remove the steel evenly over the whole blade, which means that the measurements change, but not the geometry. At least, that's what Zenon Vandamme and his teacher Kenji Mishina explained to me.

That's the one.

Wasn't it the one listed in Iimura's Shinto Taikan?

The very first thing a good polisher must do is respect the sugata. Under no circumstances should he change the geometry of the sword.

These are things that happen when you buy without seeing the merchandise, and you should be aware that the hozon does not protect against certain defects.

Since I'm not in the gods secrets (and I doubt anyone here is), I'll refrain. Who among us can say whether a given sword deserves juyo status or not?

Star stamp means it's a RJT smith nothing else. Each sword must be judged on its own merits. Some star stamped sword will pass hozon while others will not.

Blades and koshirae must be judged differently

I would say Morimitsu 盛光

I said in nioi-guchi not in hamon.

Inside the nioiguchi ? If yes it's a fatal flaw

Sorry but no, it's exactly the same behavior and you can extend it to all subjects. Human stays human with all his cognitive biases.. The worse being that he will never admit it.

Ask the NBTHK experts... What's interesting is that collectors have the same mechanisms as climate skeptics: they think they know, when in fact they've only scratched the surface of the subject. Studying nihontö also means learning about the history of Japan and its civilizational practices (religion, castes, etc.).

No sword is unbreakable; the Japanese swords broke on the Mongols' boiled leather breastplates, leading Masamune to devise new forging techniques. Most of the swords that have come down to us were never used in combat - many were hoarded as soon as they were made, and were only worn for informal ceremonies (which is to be expected, given their price). The vast majority of kazu-uchimono were made during the Sengoku-jidai, and are therefore koto. An art sword is functional because the quality of the workmanship makes it a work of art. A sword of art is not a sword with a flamboyant hamon, but a sword perfectly made at every stage of its manufacture. Quality of steel, uniqueness of the hada, homogeneity of the hamon, layout of the nie, etc. Robots and machines make cars, not people, so there's no comparison.

You don't understand Masahide's approach, just as you don't understand that we call a work of art. Comparing it to cars is irrelevant

To compare a Yukihira with the Takada school is utter nonsense. Shodai Tadayoshi has never done Bungo Yukihira utsushi; he has done : Yamato den, Rai, Naoe shizu, Chôji, Muramasa, Soshu, Aoe and Samonji. In each school, there is a difference in level between smiths, and this level often decreases over time

A sword work of art is as effective as it is beautiful, whereas the reverse is not true. As for the Wazamono ranking, it should be taken with a great deal of hindsight.

He is the third generation of the Osaka branch. How to recognize Osaka and Kyo smiths

Chu jo saku. Bungo Takada is considered a minor school due to the absence of top-level artists.

The subject is so vast that it's difficult to answer; among other things, the quality of a steel and a hada are things you need to know how to evaluate. For example, it's possible for a trained eye to tell whether a sword is Koto or Shinto just by the look of the steel.

It is more relevant to judge a smith on the basis of his entire career than to judge one or another sword. The subtlety lies in knowing which are the best works of a particular smith, which the vast majority of collectors can't do.