Hoshi

Hi @eternal_newbie Oh my, you're fast. I just started working on this - it's highly experimental, the data is currently filled with errors, and it needs a lot of tuning. They will live under their own category, and hidden by default. If a user wants to venture deep into this swamp, a disclaimer will be shown... "DRAGONS AWAIT THE DUMPSTER DIVER" Best, Hoshi

Dear @ROKUJURO, The dealer’s description is automatically translated into English, you can also press “view original” for the original Japanese description. The translations are high quality, but there can be mistakes, and it’s always good practice to check with different translation software. Regarding the artisan identifier, this is a much more complex issue. The listing is matched to a database of 13’000+ known artists, this means that if the artist is not in the database, faulty matches can occur to a “near match” as is the case here. It is not an exact science, especially for tosogu where innumerable unlisted tosogu artists exist. To correct the case above, I have to add the missing artisan to the database. I do regular passes on this to improve the system, but it takes time. Best, Hoshi

Hi @PNSSHOGUN, Could you elaborate? On my side, I can tick specific options by taping the filter without activating all the filters for a given attribute category. Best, Hoshi

Hi, Thank you for all the club suggestions, I've added them all. It's possible to set specific alerts based on specific makers, even obscure makers. Here is the artisan Senjuin Yoshiro: https://nihontowatch.com/artists/yoshihiro-YOS1441 You need to click: Set alert for new listings - and anytime an item with the artisan code YOS1441 comes to the market, you will get an email notification within 15 minutes. Thank you. Feedback is super important, especially during the public BETA. Keep it flowing. Best, Hoshi

Hi @Toryu2020 I've added your society. As for the other ones I'm missing - please reply in thread and I will add your society.

Hi @Toryu2020 My apologies, It will be added very soon. It’s a good occasion for me to ask what other clubs and societies I’m missing. Do we have a directory somewhere of active societies? Best, Hoshi

Hi, The codes can be finicky at times due to the way Email works. Check your spam folder, and if still nothing - retry a few times. It’s working over here. best, Hoshi

Hello, After discussing with experienced friends in the business, generating credible and professional .pdf brochure is basically equipping scam sellers with nuclear-grade fraud material. My north star is to create a more trustworthy and reliable market for the field. So, can't have that, at least not in its current form. Shortest lived feature on NW, it will be accessible in a gated form at some point in the future. Cheers, Hoshi

Hello, @Rawa, you can now download a structured PDF of the item from the listing page. It takes about 10-15 seconds to generate a .pdf, which you can save on your computer. Press the "download document" button to begin the generation process. It will show you, in order: item, item photo, artist overview, and market comparables. Few observations: 1) On-demand PDF gen really hammers the server hard. I will be gating this behind login and possibly adding a per-user cap. 2) It will take time to polish in order handle complex edge-cases such as long dealer photos that need computer vision for page-size segmentation before vectorizing. Before I invest more time into this, I would love to hear from other users of the platform if they value this feature, so - let me know. Best, Hoshi

Hello, Yes, this is a core part of the product BETA features we are testing out. Oh my, I'm really dismayed you did not find the feature on the app immediately. Please let me know how to make it more obvious @Lewis B After running a search, simply press the "Get Alerts" button. It will add the alert to your account, and send you an email. Because the app is not an iOS native app, the notification will happen through your email notification on your phone. You can also go on the Artist pages, and select an artist you're interested in: Set your alert parameters: Alternatively, the easiest path is to conclude the onboarding via "Update my collecting preferences" in the app triple dot menu button. This will trigger a short questionnaire and tailor alerts to your preferences. You will then get email alerts as soon as an item appears in the market in the next 15 minutes. Best, Hoshi

Hi, What would you “save as PDF” - the listing image and metadata? Tell me more about it, I’m curious, and I want to make sure I understand. Best, Hoshi

Hello, Great to hear, yes - it is built as a modern app for tablet and mobile. We're now up to 66 dealers worldwide and over 8000 items to choose from and compare, updated 12 times daily. Yes, a great amount of AIs are running tirelessly behind the scene to normalize, triage, translate, assign and understand the data coming in from unstructured websites across languages. This would not have been possible without recent advances in frontier models. Now a question for you @Rawa - What would make this app even more valuable for you? Cheers, Hoshi

Hello, Delicate questions. In general, I recommend staying clear from recent TH papers to big names if you cannot assess it in hand and with sufficient experience studying higher level designations for said master. If this is not possible, only go in after having it appraised by someone who can hold it in hand, and has such experience. This is the value that a trusted dealer or collector friend brings. The reason for this is that the Shinsa panel is in a succession phase where it has to invest into new judges and ensure proper knowledge transmission - and this is a bumpy road. I has been so for a few years, let's see what happens at the upcoming Tokuju Shinsa. The last session had some eyebrow raising anomalies. For pieces attributed to Awataguchi Hisakuni, Shintogo Kunimitsu daito, Go Yoshihiro, Masamune without historical kiwame a respected Hon'ami judge or an entry into the Kanto Hibisho, it is quite delicate at the moment. I would even be exercise caution right now with zaimei pieces. With this wide caveat in place, there are still incredible pieces that can surface from time to time. Value wise, every tier of paper de-risks the object, that's all it does, the object does not change, and it is this de-risking that drives market perception and creates the price premium. If I'm a dealer and I tell you I have one of the best Nagamitsu, and it's sitting at TH, and I ask you 40 million yen for it, you're going to think I'm crazy. You won't believe me unless you have the knowledge to truly and deeply assess it, in relation to the corpus, and come up with your own conclusion that it is, in fact, one of the best extant Nagamitsu. Now if I tell you it passed Juyo session 3, then Tokuju session 6, all of a sudden it's a different story probabilistically speaking it is very likely amongst the ultimate blades extant. Sure, it might be the 'lesser' of the series, but these sessions contained an incredible density of treasures and on average, they contained more peak works. Advanced collectors know this, and dealers too, forming common knowledge around these heuristics. On the other hand, if you're one of the most experienced collectors in Japan, and you've "seen it all" - you look at the blade and you just know. You don't need the Juyo or Tokuju paper, you know what's out there, you've experienced most of it, you've been in the circles. You're ready to pay 40 million JPY in a blink for that blade sitting as a TH Nagamitsu. What's the value of his top blades? It's price = n/a. And the dealer might be very relieved you recognized it as such, and happy to sell it to you, because time is money and waiting for submission cycles is financially painful. He will put you into his serious client book, and propose you more such pieces in the future. If by miracle you get handed to you a zaimei Hisakuni tanto with denrai to the Imperial family -at Hozon- in good condition, it will be millions of dollars, and now the paradox kicks in that the buyer will be even happier as it's a secret blade that isn't recorded anywhere as some collectors just enjoy the secrecy a lot. This can help - for artists you follow, as you're looking for comparables out there, check out NW's artist database: https://nihontowatch.com/artists/nagamitsu-NAG281 Just be careful out there, if it looks like it's too good to be true, it probably is. I hope this helps, Hoshi

Hi, This is an delicate topic. Swords do get elevated to Juyo Bunkazai, albeit rarely. As far as I know, 3 Tokuju blades have been subsequently elevated to Juyo Bunkazai. As you rightly point out, there are many Tokuju swords deserving of the Juyo Bunkazai designation (The Tokuju "long tail" is vast, and arguably goes all the way to National Treasure). Amongst them, the famous Osafune Mitsutada ken. Owners of top Tokuju blades, however, are uninterested in upgrading the status of the blade to Juyo Bunkazai. This is because ownership becomes a burden, you have a duty to exhibit, and your home will be inspected by police officers to ensure proper care is taken, and the state gains the right of first refusal on any transaction. Any increase in value from the designation becomes subject to the 40% Japanese capital gain tax, and you are obliged to report the sales in a world where discretion prevails. As the Uesugi family council once said "these laws smell of communism" - and this attitude still exists today. This is why the Mikazuki Kanemitsu, along other masterpieces, never got the designation. The trend has been the opposite: Juyo Bunkazai blades "get lost" over time. As always, follow the incentives. Best, Hoshi

GOAT book. Absolutely necessary in every library, and I do not say this lightly.

Thank you brett, great work! I would highly recommend reading the book "Honma talks" - I think Markus has a translation available. It gives many details on the "behind the scenes" of the Imperial collections an many other high-ranking collections. The challenge with Gyobutsu is that the majority of them do not have any designation from either the NBHTK or the Ministry of Culture. Items of great scholarly importance, such as a zaimei Masamune tanto, or a tachi signed by Kagemasa and Kagemitsu as joint work, or a Mitsutada with a complete long signature, and many others - are not documented anywhere else. it's crucial to keep track of these important and undocumented pieces. Even if they have lost their status post-war due to the tax regime change that ruined the Imperial family and its Junior branches, these blades do not carry any official designation and are thus the 'dark matter' of Nihonto. On another note, the post-Nambokucho blades in the collection can be eyebrow raising - there are many lower quality works there, and Honma remarks on this. One thing that is incredibly interesting: the vast majority of their holdings consists of signed blades, and with a clear statistical preference for Bizen and Yamashiro over Soshu, which perhaps reflects a certain disdain towards swords produced to the taste of the Kamakura warrior class. From the Meiji to the pre-war era, there was a great re-evaluation of schools such as Ko-Bizen, which has remarkably low origami valuation by the Hon'ami family compared to where they sit today in the elite hierarchy. Figures such as Imamura Chogi were instrumental in shifting the balance of taste amongst the elite. Honma Junji did not hold Imamura Chogi in high esteem, and takes a number of jabs at him in his book. Emperor Meiji's collection was probably the peak of the Imperial family's sword holding and accumulation. During the Meiji restoration, many great industrialist families heading the powerful Zaibatsu have gifted Emperor Meiji incredible blades. Best, Hoshi

Hi Mike, You can compare with other Omiya offerings on the market here: https://nihontowatch.com/artists/NS-Omiya Hope this helps, Hoshi

Hi Janne, Great feedback. I implemented the report feature, which also lets user ask for new features, report item data bugs, or artisan data bugs, or general bugs. Top navigation bar: Item card: Artist/School page: And good idea on the dimension filtering. I added it for Nagasa, this is the easiest. Weight, I'm afraid is not documented consistently, more than 90% missing data. Motohaba and sakihaba I would say are of marginal utility. Note that there are some data errors on some items, as is to be expected. Best, Hoshi

Hi, yes. This is a data bug. A juyo item by a unicorn smith called "Iemura" from the Oei-period has been mistakingly assigned to the Showa smith Emura. Thank you for the report, the error is now fixed. Note on the BETA: There are many data bugs currently. For obscure smiths with 1 Juyo, best assume it's an assignment error. Best, Hoshi

Hello, Following on popular demand, show all items is now the default. If you want to hide items under 100'000 JPY, you can toggle the option in your profile. There will be issues with strange items appearing (books, flyers for museum visits, other type of objects) appearing in this price range which are misclassified. If this becomes too much of an issue, I will revert. In the meantime, this change has added about 1500 new tosogu items which are now visible to all. This brings our total items for sale to almost 7000! Happy hunting, Hoshi

Hi, I added a toggle in profile that lets you enable view on listings less than 100K. Go to profile -> activate toggle. https://nihontowatch.com/profile You'll see absolutely everything. Enjoy. Best, Hoshi

Hi, Thank you for your feedback. Convenience is important. Now, you can tick all dealers from the North American continent. I genuinely appreciate the feedback, and more feedback would make me even happier. I want to hear it all. Best, Hoshi

Hello, This is super valuable feedback, I've made the appropriate changes to make the registration pathway much clearer. Thank you, Hoshi

Hello, Are you referring to the email verification code? I'm aware email codes have been slow since the announcement, this is to the traffic on the email service. Otherwise, let me know what you mean by 'not obvious' - I'll make it better. Many members here and dealers have written over the last few days with requests, we're up to 52 dealers today. PM me what you'd like to see. Best, Hoshi

Hello, Great feedback. I added a special UI mode for accessibility. It's called "Classic" Click the right most icon: In the dropdown, select "Classic" And from there, it should be light mode with large fonts. I hope this helps. Currency conversion is already implemented, and takes the live FOREX from the Frankfurt exchange. In the filter panel, on desktop and mobile, select: Keep the feedback flowing, it helps tremendously. Enjoy everyone, Hoshi