Hoshi

Hi, I replied here: Please try to keep NW feedback in the NW feedback thread. Any complains, wishes, and so on that might have, I want to hear all of it. Everything helps. Best, Hoshi

Hi @jdawg221 Continuing the topic here to keep things tidy into a single feedback thread. Can you explain a little bit more what you do not like with the artisan description? Your screenshot came from this artisan: https://nihontowatch.com/artists/yoshinobu-YOS648 As a side note, there was an issue affecting scholarly citations on a handful of artisans causing Japanese text to become intermingled in parenthesis. The artisan in question is Hizen Yoshinobu, a member of the Hizen Tadayoshi school. Thanks for bringing this up, it's fixed. Regarding the Artist pages, I set myself two goals: Scholarly accuracy All descriptions are sourced from the most up to date books and NBHTK records, and should in principle be remarkably accurate. You can click the citation markers (all citations are verbatim and verified) and find it in your personal library. That said, there can be errors (and we've gone a long way already). The general rule is: the less scholarly material available, the less the data is reliable. So it's perfectly possible that something on Yoshinobu is not accurate. Is there anything that seems off to you based on your knowledge of the Hizen tradition? Beginner Accessibility You can also click on specific technical words to bring up their meaning. This is something I found particularly frustrating when I was a beginner in the field. Now with inline explanation, the field is just much more approachable. There are 855 such complete and referenced descriptions in the encyclopedia presently. I once wrote an article on Bizen Mitsutada and this is the standard I would ultimately like to see for every artist, but It will take time to get there in a programatic way. It took me 3 months to write this article part-time, so this would be 214 years of work. Clearly, there needs to be a more scalable way. Regarding the design theme, feel free to select the one you prefer. "Classic" is there for visual accessibility. The theme is set to your browser's preferred theme. For some it's light mode, for other, it's dark mode, so users will have different experiences based on their default settings. This is why only some of your friends see the dark theme, while others see a light theme. The "Yuhindo" theme is the homage to Darcy (Black and Purple), and it is not a default theme and needs to be selected manually in the theme configuration toggle, it really is the night owl theme. I really want to improve it, so let me know how to make it perfect for you. Best, Hoshi

Hello everyone, Big news! We are nearing the release of the V1, scheduled for August 17th. The "Beta" tag will be going away in a few days. After six long months of near daily improvements and development, I feel like we've earned it. What began as a small seed experiment has now grown into a promising young Bonzai worth nurturing. NihontoWatch has been a labor of love, something I always yearned for. I like to think of it as zen garden, where you can go and study the Samurai Arts market, presented beautifully on a modern platform, and deeply contextualized far beyond what information dealers make available. You can learn about their markers, influence, schools, and much more through the item itself. A digital museum and gallery at the same time. All of this, at your pace, during downtime, anywhere, anytime, on any device, and across language barriers. A deeper part of me always believe that Samurai Arts truly deserves a better market with more accessible knowledge. It is a such a deeply enchanting field replete with truly magnificent objects, be it nihonto, tosogu, or armor. It is also a form of human expression unlike all others, conjured at the junction of the functional imperatives of the battlefield and the aesthetic currents of eastern philosophical and martial traditions. But it is under-appreciated. It’s fair to say that it is extremely difficult to study, especially for a foreign audience. Reliable information is hard to come by, not to mention to all the traps out there that are inherent to the art market where serious money is involved. When a curious beginner has a poor experience, they simply leave the field and conclude it’s not for them. First experiences matter a lot. It’s a problem many larger arts and collectible fields have faced. Unlike ours, other markets are large enough that pouring development resources into them is a worthwhile business endeavor. Trading cards, fine watches, wines, paintings, musical instrument, etc, all benefit from impressive market aggregator and trading platforms. Samurai Arts, in the other-hand, leaves us meandering over the web on decade old websites all fragmented across linguistic barriers. To keep an eye on the market, it’s 80+ tabs in a browser, one for every dealer, and with many adding new stock every week, it’s simply impossible to follow. It’s also difficult figure out why something is priced the way it is, or to know who to trust for that matter. It can take decades before you know and understand what you’re looking at. As a result, mistakes naturally follow, and the market remains impenetrable for newcomers. Collectors need is more accessible knowledge, more price transparency, comparables analysis, and better security when making a purchase. Dealers, in turn, need more collectors to inspect their items and draw new customers, as well as an easier way to establish trust with new entrants. NihontoWatch today: Tracks 88 dealers all over the world and indexes more than 29’000 items accross nihonto, tosogu, and armor, with 10’000+ currently for sale. Every item is deeply enriched with data on the artist and his school. Connects listings with comparable items (same artist, same school, same tradition) directly when examining an item. This means you can easily explore the styles of a certain school, compare prices and traits. Provides collectors with a comprehensive encyclopedia of the field with with 1752 artists and 144 schools documented and connected to the items. With hundreds of artists with comprehensive profile pages built from the latest knowledge in the field drawn directly from the latest NBHTK’s publications. You can search for specific makers, item types, dealers, schools, sub-schools, and phases of a school precisely. This means you can type various technical terms such as “Ko-Aoe tachi“ and it will surface all tachi attributed to Aoe smiths of the Ko-Aoe phase of the Aoe school. You can follow specific artists, schools, or search queries and setup alerts that sends notifications straight to your email within 15 minutes of the item being discovered. This is especially useful when 60% of collector interest happens in the first 48 hours of an item appearing on the market. Items either sell fast, or stale for a while on the market. All of this, as you can imagine, is expensive to run. NihontoWatch has been my night job for the past half year, and while it has been a labor of love in a field I deeply care for, it has taken its toil financially. The infrastructure runs in the four figures a month to support the load, and It has to have a commercial component to stand the test of time and be there for all of us tomorrow. I believe there is no silver bullet here, and it will need to be a combination of collectors and dealers chipping in. With that said, if possible, I'd like to be able to keep the vast majority of it free for everyone: Browsing the entire market. Every listing, every detail page, search, filters, currency conversion. The encyclopedia. Every artist and school profile, lineages, designation records, the glossary. This is the field's public record, and I believe it should stay open. Saved searches, follows, and email alerts. The weekly digest What membership adds: From August 17th, the free feed will refresh every 48 hours: new listings enter free browsing, search, and alerts about two days after we first spot them. Members stay on the continuous feed, seeing new listings an receiving alerts the moment an item is discovered. This means that if you're actively participating on the market and looking to get these rare gems first, this is the membership for you. If you are actively buying items on the market, and have ever lost a piece you had waited years for because someone else placed it on HOLD before you could make a move, you know what those 48 hours are worth. If you are simply here to window-gaze and study, I want the site to remain genuinely good and free for you. As a bonus, Members also get access to the private collection vault for cataloguing their own pieces. This lets you catalogue your collection in great detail in your own private gallery. It's packed with useful features, such as generating compliant insurance reports, and much more. Membership is $99 a year, which works out to 8.25$/mo. One price, billed yearly. It renews automatically and you can cancel anytime from your profile. To everyone who used the site during the beta, reported bugs, voiced your concerns about changes you didn't like, flagged bad data, and wrote to me with ideas: thank you! If you have thoughts on any of this, I read everything here. Feel free to drop me a PM. See you on the Watch -Hoshi

Hi, While it is theoretically possible to de-register and export Jubi items, I do not recommend it for a number of very important reasons. First of all, it is considered poor taste. Jubi was initially done (in a rush...) to prevent swords from leaving the country during difficult economic times. This is therefore a sensitive topic, and the reaction to de-registering and exporting a Jubi can vary from a frown to a perception of national treason. While one can probably reach the level of respect in that community where it's considered "mostly OK but only for you" to do this, the mere fact of having the money and not the standing would be considered exceedingly poor taste. Second, it destroys value. Once a Jubi is de-registered, it is no longer Jubi for collectors in Japan. Expect a value hit of 50%. Third, there is a significant percentage of Jubi items whose attributions, provenance, etc would not hold up to today's standard, and there are also items that would be considered gimei. It is therefore a real minefield. Fourth, the quality aspect: the average TJ blade is superior to the average Jubi blade. What differs is the variance: there are a few great Jubi which are true outliers in terms of important and quality, such as the Sagara Mitsutada or the Ko-Bizen Tomonari in the Taiwan exhibit. However, the average price of a Jubi is typically around the price of a high TJ because ownership of these items carry status, and collectors pay for this rare status and especially, the frozen supply. So, to sum up: You will be spending more money than on a TJ, you take an immediate haircut of 50%, you hurt your reputation in the process unless truly special circumstance, and if your knowledge is not sufficiently advanced, you may end up with a poorly attributed item that does not hold up to modern standards. As for this specific blade, it is attributed to Aoe school (Not Sadatsugu, unlike what the listing present). It is a typical Chu-Aoe blade of the Nambokucho period of upper Juyo quality. Probably the work of one of the "-tsugu" smiths of that period. I hope this helps, Hoshi

Hi, Thanks for pointing this to my attention. As the saying goes, copying is the most sincere form of flattery. Grace is the best response, I wish them luck. Best, Hoshi

Hi, Please be careful with AI translation when you’re using a commercial model not trained on this specific task. This warning holds for any kind of field-specific questions, exercise care and assume it is wrong unless proven otherwise. NihontoWatch detects NBHTK Setsumei, classifies them, and uses a translation system specifically tuned to our specific field. As a result, the translations are generally highly accurate. However, before a big purchase, get a professional translation. In the certificate section, just press the Japanese Setsumei extract from the zufu and the translation will appear. Currently, It only works for item where the dealer posts a zufu extract. Yes, this is umegane on the blade. You can see it in Eirakudo’s original listing, albeit faintly and you really need to squint. Excellent blades attributed Norishige blades have become exceedingly rare and prices for this artist have gone vertical in the past few years. It is the most searched for artisan on NihontoWatch. Also be aware of the sessions in the 70’s, while there are many treasures contained in the “phone book” sessions that made tokuju or can still make tokuju today, the variance is large and many pieces wouldn’t make the cut today anymore. Regarding the interpretation of setsumei themselves, it is quite an advanced topic and I would caution against “reading too much into it” - one needs to be aware of linguistic trends, and so on. Likewise, a blade being “Den” has no impact on elevation odds. There are many things like that are not intuitive. I hope this helps, Hoshi

Hi Nathaniel, I realize I did not express myself very clearly. What I mean is that for Magoroku blades, the difference in kasane between the shinogi and the mune is small, the blade feels almost flat as a result. It's not "high vs low" shinogi (in fact, I would say the shinogi height is 'average' overall for this maker). Picture a diamond shape for the cross-section, you can have a squarish diamond or a flatish diamond. The Magoroku cross-section is a flatish diamond shape, and as a result, the blade feels slim and sharp, optimized for minimizing drag in soft targets. And since the blades are so flat, you will rarely ever see a bohi in a Magoroku blade (there is simply not enough metal to make the removal worth it). It is quite a special and innovative geometry. From a functional perspective, would go as far and state that this is the geometry of the real innovation of Magoroku that made his blades famous for their sharpness, not the sambonsugi hamon. Best, Hoshi

Hi, Oh no, you found my old meme. Mino was solving for a different challenge: manufacturing at scale a sufficiently good product while minimizing cost (raw materials, labor). In this, the Mino enterprise succeeded greatly. But one should make a 'carve out' for Nosada. His Rai Utsushi are genuinely impressive works. Kanemoto the 2nd has a few (rare) impressive works as well, but they do not reach up to Nosada's level. The key trait to look for in their highest tier works is the absence of shirake utsuri. Shirake utsuri is one of the hallmarks of Mino in general, and one of the key detriments in the field of Nihonto that marks the great fall as it becomes pervasive in the muromachi period. Shirake is the opposite of nure-gokoro, or uroi. When we say a sword looks "whitish" (Shirake) - we really mean that it feels flat, and that its jigane lacks profoundness (absence of jinie), and therefore, in aesthetic terms, the ability to elicit a sense of Yugen (a gentle form of awe, as unfolding mystery). In purely subjective and poetic terms, it therefore elicits the impression of a "mundane pragmatic object" as opposed to an "mysterious ethereal beauty". As to where this detriment come from, we can speculate that it may be due to the raw materials used and their processing, with shirake marking an industrial advancement in cost of production through material sourcing and processing. Nie utsuri and Shirake utsuri are mutually exclusive, with the former being a positive trait, expressed in the best works of Nosada. An interesting point is that the dreaded Shirake appears also in Sue-Soshu around the same time. However, It was not "invented" in Mino, either, as provincial traditions of the koto period and lesser schools do display it at times. As for Magoroku and sharpness, the key trait is not the hamon, it's the blade profile. The best ones are wide, slim, with high shinogi yet little width (kasane) difference at the the highest point of the shinogi, and and excellently balanced curvature at the mid-point of the blade. By holding one in your hand, one cannot escape the feeling of aggressive sharpness. It forms a cohesive whole with the irregular sambonsugi hamon. I will concede that this draws on a different subjective repertoire centered around pragmatism, which has an appeal in itself. Here is an interesting Magoroku with a Kiritsuke mei and a tradition that it was once owned by the third son of Oda Nobunaga (the tradition is, to the best of my knowledge, not verifiable prior to the pre-war period). https://nihontowatch.com/s/598722?v=1784619665 Best, Hoshi

Hi Caleb, Welcome to the forum. This is an interesting blade you posted, could you tell us more about its history and how it came into your family? The signature looks old, but the first kanji does not appear to make sense. The best guess is that it is a "助真" (Sukezane) with a missing radical for the first character (possibly erased, damaged, or omitted by a forger). The style of the sword is not consistent with Ichimonji Sukezane, one of the foremost smiths of all time (https://nihontowatch.com/artists/sukezane-SUK460). It could, however, based on the gentle suguha pattern be the work of Senoo Sukezane, a great and extremely scarce Bitchu province smith of the Middle Kamakura period (https://nihontowatch.com/artists/sukezane-SUK456) This is your best candidate, as far as I can tell. This is the good news. Now, the bad news. One of the mekugi-ana is in a meaningless position (the bottom one) - which is a sign of shenanigans (something trying to be passed off as old). A radical is missing on the signature, which can be forger error - or, in the best case, a deliberate disfiguration to avoid "gift-giving" ceremonies (sword extorsion by powerful feudal families). For a sophisticated forger, it may also be an attempt at imitating disfiguration. Someone appears to have heavily damage the area near the base of the blade causing significant and irreparable damage. There is what appears to be an extended chu-kissaki or even O-kissaki (hard to discern, I can't see the shape properly on your photos), which are inconsistent with the period attribution of smiths signing Sukezane. This can also be a sign of shenanigans. This can invalidate the call. The "真" character deviates significantly with the way these smiths executed the kanji although the variance is admittedly large. For these reasons, the odds are stacked against you, just to set expectations. But nonetheless, it is well worthy of further investigation. My recommended course of action, given that you live in Australia, is to send it to Andrew Ackermill. Posting more and better quality photos would also help going a step further. What you have could be precious, and it is well worth further investigation. Best, Hoshi

Hi Chandler, Wonderfully insightful and well-researched article, thank you for taking the the time to research this topic. I can recommend. Best, Hoshi

Hello, Rejoice everyone, the beloved speed is back. I found the technical solution Keep pointing out things that matter for you, the faster the better. Best, Hoshi

Hi, I much appreciate the feedback. I am working on lightening the text, make the pictures overall more central, and make it feel much snappier and responsive. In the meantime the bug that interfered with "open a new tab via right click" has been fixed. Good catch. Best, Hoshi

Hi, Yes, there is a large update underway which calls for a change in architecture, the quick popups don't really work well for this. Transition times like these with many updates in a row can be a little turbulent, this is why I so much appreciate the quick feedback I get here when something is off. Keep it coming. Best, Hoshi

Hi, Much appreciated report, this is an oversight in a major update that made it through, half-baked. "Contact seller" is now replaced with "Visit dealer site" Question for feedback: What is missing on the NW page that is present on the dealer page, which adds to the study process? What more would you like to see? And thank you for the swift report, Hoshi

Hi, Go is first and foremost a kiwame given to particular group of traits, chief amongst them the clarity of the work. As I explained previously, deviations from these canonical traits will lead to different judgements (e.g., violently turning Kaeri will bring the work to O-Sa, etc), a more stormy character will lead to Masamune, and so on and so forth. Go is simply the pinnacle of Soshu clarity, with ichimai, some masame, etc as reinforcing concordant traits. Whether the historical person called Go made the sword is not an answerable question. However this is besides the point, the NBHTK states in its attribution that according to tradition and study of the canonical traits present in the blade, then amongst all historical person, it is most likely this specific historical person who made it. Now everyone can assign a percentage to this. There is a Juyo Sanakage that went Tokuju to Go. This is normal, judgement can shift upon further study and as new evidence emerges. It was sold on Christies shortly after. That some blades are in between, for instance - 50% Go / 50% Masamune is also possibility. This is the case with the extraordinary video of the Go shown above. This blade, in the eyes of Tanobe sensei, would have gone to Masamune was it not for the widely hardened near ichimai boshi. Kojo says Go, and hence there is no "Den" attached. The old judges are respected and on masters with no signed works, their opinions is the basis of the system for modern attribution. This is not a problem at all. One must simply accept that such Kiwame are simply the best possible opinions given the current state of knowledge. The sword in itself is magnificent, and the monouchi is simply out of this world. I call it affectionately the "8 centimeters of God" Go, and all who have seen it agree with this statement. The stormy character of the activity, with plentiful inazuma dancing in and out of the ha, are however more distinctively Masamune than Go, specifically the hatsuboku-sansui manner for which he is revered. The way the ha widens gently towards the monouchi, and the near ichimai qualities of the boshi are canonically Go traits. https://nihontowatch.com/artists/go-yoshihiro-YOS1434 One can adopt various beliefs in the matter: 1. Hon'ami Conspiracist: Go is a fabrication by the early Hon'ami masters serving Hideyoshi. No signed works exist, and the Muromachi period text as not hard evidence. They took a guy without any works left and made him famous for some occult purposes. (Imamura Chogi famously held this theory for Masamune, which nobody serious really accepts today...) 2. Uncertainty embracers: Go most probably existed, along with other famed masters without signed work lefts, but one cannot deny the existence of a certain high-class cluster of Soshu works with co-occurring traits that represent the Apex of Soshu-den. It is perfectly reasonable that Go, the historical person, produced such works. 3. Authority literalist: Attribution on top class mumei works pinpoint the historical figure with perfect accuracy. When there is a congruence between the best experts and bodies - Honma Junji, the old Hon'ami, Tanobe Sensei, and the NBHTK - then there can be no other possibility and it represents not simply the best theory, but absolute truth. And there is a vast continuum in between. One can be midway between 1 and 2, or between 2 and 3. Currently, I would rate myself at 2.3. This does not diminish the material value of the items themselves unless one collects because one insists on the "Authority literalist" stance in order to accept value. A masterpiece is a masterpiece, regardless of who made it. One must learn to separate the 'brand' from the 'work' from the 'historical person' - and while these are tightly interlinked and highly predictive of each other, the goal of study is to appreciate swords as Art Objects. I, for one, am completely comfortable when discussing my collection to state "Maybe Norishige, Maybe Go" - it's part of the beauty and mystery of the field. On collaboration And finally, a point that is often overlooked in the field, is that these smiths worked with each other. Most if not all top-grade Soshu works are collaborations. This is true for every school. Nagamitsu worked with Mitsutada and Sanenaga, they made blades together. In every prime and late period Mitsutada, there is some Nagamitsu, and probably some Sanenaga. Just as a late Nagamitsu has some Kagemitsu in them, and Kagemitsu has some Kagemasa. Awataguchi Kunoyoshi contains some Awataguchi Yoshimitsu. Masamune, Norishige and Yukimitsu made swords together, alongside Go and Sadamune, albeit later. Sword making was a collaborative enterprise. There are phases in a collector's life. Remember that the position you hold today may change in the future. Hope this helps, Best, Hoshi

I am rooting for you @lewis, this is a great adventure. This has always been the case. There is no assurance that they will read it, though, given the volume that they face. It is one of the only ways to get certain fittings unstuck from the perpetual "Horyu" state. Furthermore, when it comes to provenance information, they are unfortunately not consistent in incorporating the information, even when provided with well-respected primary source data. For high-level submissions, I can be helpful to write a short dossier on a submission, but not engage in theories outside the mainstream. Remain 100% factual, and collate only canonical or primary sources. Best, Hoshi

Truly an amazing accomplishment. Heartfelt congratulations.

Hi, I understand your constrains. I built a tool to help with these searches. Try this search: https://nihontowatch.com/?tab=available&type=katana&cert=Hozon%2CTokuHozon&period=Nanbokucho%2CMuromachi%2CKamakura&priceMax=700000&sort=price_desc These should fall within your budget, have appropriate papers, and allow you to make an inform decision on what the market can offer at this specific price point for Koto works. If you explore outside the bounds of Koto, you will have much more choices. Play around and see what you can find. I hope this helps. Hoshi

Hi, Regarding the provenance confound you mention, I think it is not so pronounced that on average, it prevents inference. When comparing Jubun to TJ, there is an average difference on many dimensions, especially condition, signature status, motohaba. A fair minority of TJ (10-20%) I would estimate as "Jubun class". This is not to say provenance plays no role, only that it is not strong enough to invalidate the approach on its basis alone. That said, it is a good addition to the limitation of the Pass Factor analysis. 6. Provenance confound: provenance can steer a blade to higher designation. It does raise the broader point of what it means to be a 'the most historically important' smiths. Is history of ownership not an intrisinsic part of this measure? We certainly cannot make the claim that we are looking purely at artistic merit in these rankings. This is part of the reason I systematically extract provenance from the data (which has another big limitation of its own: it's incredibly incomplete). I would like to understand how to both control for it, and how to make it legible to the market. Work in progress. I think this is spot on. Excess granularity is meaningless and error-inducing because of all the above-mentioned limitations. Noisy continuous measures should be normalized into distribution quintiles, for instance, and the 'score' presented with a large warning as to avoid misunderstandings. More broadly: I tend to think that works across certain schools cannot be compared: Bizen vs Soshu vs Yamashiro is apples vs orange vs milk. Who was better? Masamune, Mitsutuada, or Yoshimitsu? There is really no answer to this question. Comparison is meaningful insofar as the ideal that is driving the work is comparable. Another analysis that I find personally promising is lexical-based. Rather than relying on designations, analyze positive vs negative descriptors along the saeru/uroi axis, which is the central qualifier of artistry in the field. In the end, we will probably land on combination of equivalence classes over elite factor, provenance factor, with qualitative honors, and lexical analysis along the saeru/uroi axis. Music for the future. Hoshi

Hi Brett, This is a fascinating topic. This analysis is called "Pass factor" and was first proposed by Darcy Brockbank. You can find the original blog post here: https://web.archive.org/web/20210123052432/https://blog.yuhindo.com/pass-factor/ There are a couple of issues you will run into as you refine your analysis: 1. Small sample sizes: prevents you from drawing valid inference due to the statistical noise. 2. Unequal value of the higher designation: A Kokuho ought to be worth more than a Tokubetsu Juyo. 3. Contaminated categories: there are arguments in favor of excluding Jubi and Gyobutsu post-Nambokucho. 4. The condition confound: signed works can achieve high designation on a condition basis rather than workmanship. 5. Some elite smiths such as Tomonari or Masatsune are actually sub-schools within Ko-Bizen, but they are treated as a single individual. To solve for (1) you may try setting the different levels of thresholds on the minimum n of blades. Test 5, 10, and 20, and see how the ranking evolves. Alternatively, a more formal statistical way is to use a Bayesian Shrinkage estimate which is in my opinion the elegant path. Essentially, you have a prior that everyone is average, and the model must 'see data' in order to change its mind. To solve for (2), you can use a frequency-weighted approach (more defensible), or assign some other weights that fit your mental model of the gap between the average TJ and the average Kokuho. For (3), you can run the analysis excluding Jubi and excluding post-nambokucho Gyobutsu and see how the rankings evolve. Regarding (4), you can rerun the analysis while controlling for the ratio of zaimei to mumei works, but you enter rarified air territory. The best you can do is just accept the state of things and hope for statistical independence between the observations. Regarding (5), one just has to live with it. You can find a draft of an article on the topic here: https://nihontowatch.com/eliteranking This is what NihontoWatch uses under the hood for rankings. Here is Awataguchi Yoshimitsu: In the end, whatever method you choose, once you control for the unicorns by setting a threshold or a bayesian prior, you will converge on the traditional literature such as Toko Taikan and the list will begin to look very familiar. Personally, what I find most interesting is not where these analysis converge, but where they disagree: there are historically underrated smiths by Fujishiro and Dr. Tokuno that will "pop out" and this is what one should look for as it is the most informative. Correlation with Toko Taikan: Period-adjusted correlation with Fujishiro: Hoshi

Hi, This is the Juyo Oshigata of TJ 25. There are two Go that passed TJ on this session, only one has Ichimai. J35 does not have ichimai. Note that I do not presently count Kokuho and Jubun in the trait sums. The reason is that their descriptions are not adequate. Aside from this, the counts are exact, following the verbatim statements on the setsumei. Only Juyo, TJ, and Jubi have detailed and standardized descriptions of the traits. Regarding Nanki Shigekuni, I would not discount survivorship bias here: the one with ichimai are most likely to have been used for shenanigans. It's a grey area, in the end we do not know. I would not use the presence of an ichimai boshi as the strongest securing factor over the attribution. Rather, I would consider carefully the jihada and the hamon and look for an ancient atmosphere. Some expressions were simply never attained during Shinto times. Another such tell is the way the deep nie diffuses within the ha: if it forms a deep nie gradient, the shinto grandmasters could achieve this (Kotetsu, Nanki...) - on the otherhand, if nie is present all the way into the ha, without a clear diffusing gradient, appearing like snow all the way to the border, it is assuredly Koto. If there are inazuma and kinsuji forming cloud-like swirls, within the deep nie of the ha, then you double-assured. There are multiple factors to consider: one must integrate deki, provenance, and old and modern appraisals. Best, Hoshi

Hello, I am enjoying these discussions lately on high-quality blades, happy to chime in. I am in the process of building an empirical kantei trait library. What this means is that I am extracting the traits of a given artist not from the books as has been done so far in history, but from synthesis of the entire corpus of a smith's published works by the NBTHK and the Bunkasho. This reveals new data that the books, which are focused almost exclusively on the archetypes, miss. Note that this is an early stage project, and there can (and will be) mistakes. The count for Go ichimai boshi I have is 8, with ko-maru, hakikkake and midare-komi as being about just as common. https://nihontowatch.com/artists/go-yoshihiro-YOS1434 The most discriminating factor for an attribution to Go is the clarity of the work: the unrivaled luminous ha and clear jihada. It is, in a sense, an attribution based on grade of Soshu-den brightness. Ichimai boshi will certainly strongly pull it further to Go, but it is not a requisite as we see in the data. I would not read too deeply into the attributions to Go, in the sense that "This specific historical person made it" - and while it is certainly the best bet, if one had to bet on a specific person at all - it is best considered to be a qualitative judgement on a certain group of traits that tend to co-occur and set the work apart from the other Soshu Joko. A sharp turning and extended kaeri would move the attribution to Sa (also known for his remarkable brightness), a more stormy character with larger-dimensioned angular chickei to Masamune, a lower degree of brightness combined with more extreme activity in the ha to the finer and rarer ko-itame style of Norishige, and a calmer overall feeling to Sadamune. Such is the nature of attribution on mumei blades when the signed corpus is almost absent. However, I would be cautious with blades attributed to Go, as he was a frequent target of emulation during later periods (such as Nanki Shigekuni). For this reason, I would consider carefully blades that are not accompanied with a strong historical backing such as a Ko-Origami, or a record of gift-giving. I will say that in the blades attributed to Go that I have had the chance to handle or acquire, there has been so much variation in the execution of the jihada in particular, that I find it difficult to discern a single hand. It is important to understand that this acknowledgement of uncertainty does nothing to diminish the artistic appeal of the blades in practice. Clarity ("saeru") is one of the cardinal hallmark traits of high artistry in Nihonto, and blades attributed to Go exemplify this very characteristics. One must just accept the uncertainty, and appreciate the object for its intrinsic qualities. Best, Hoshi

Wonderful article, thank you sharing.

Hello, The Count is the model collector archetype, and amongst the ones I most admire. He lovingly invested into every single of his blades to leave them in a better, more complete state than when he bought them. Polish, Koshirae, habaki, name tags, tsunagi - he had an entire system, and these artifacts are precious today and add value to the whole. Here is one of his swords that just came out today, with wonderfully and tastefully created koshirae. https://nihontowatch.com/s/493024?v=1781928271 Best, Hoshi

This is now fixed, thanks again for the report.