Hoshi

Completely agree Michael. The auction house business model and it's absurd value erosion isn't attractive anymore with the advent of the internet. For example, big name Gimei at the Bonham: https://imgur.com/a/knqYfds

By price-testing I mean they set a reserve price which is too high to mitigate the risk that it may sell for less than desired. Usually these are close to dealer prices, and if you add the auction house commission then it ends up being a terrible deal indeed. There are many reasons to try this and very few of them are legit. A blade is too toxic (has been around for too long and isn't selling, people get suspicious) and a sale needs to be attempted outside the usual channel because all the usual suspects know it's bad. You can try to get gamblers in: don't send the papers, just Honami old paper, set big price, hope for gamblers to bite. If you have a Honami Shizu Kaneuji attribution and NBTHK says it's Naoe Shizu you're far better off withholding the papers and getting gamblers on board. In auctions, people pay a premium for lottery tickets. You're boneheaded and keep thinking you can get more for your blade than what the guys in the business suggest you sell it at so you parade it around aimlessly.

I agree Michael. I think the results of Compton and Museum of Sword fittings made top sellers realize it's not in their best interest to proceed with auction houses. Nowadays it's like you say, top collection just vanish through the back channels. The auction houses get either the problem pieces - this is what we see with Hermann and Czerny, and bonham/christies get the price-testing pieces with very high reserves, such as the Ubu Senjuin or that strange Mike Daito.

I haven't seen a good blade offered on auction in a while now. There is that ubu Senjuin on Christie's which has been circulating. We see 'price testing' blades once and a while, but nothing really special. But nothing new and exciting. I wonder if we will ever see an important collection, like the Japanese Sword Fitting Museum or Campton, being offered on auction. It could simply be that other retail mechanisms are now the preferred route...

Let's qualify this statement before it gets branded on my forehead for all eternity. Emulation in Shinto period, which was a time of peace, is based on attractiveness not functionality. Transition to Muromachi was a period of economical and socio-political turmoil for all sword schools. quantity over quality became an wartime necessity, which is the default hypothesis to explain decline everywhere. The additional contention is that the decline of Soshu is not just a decline in skill, but also one of access to specific types of iron ores which became accessible when its founders moved to kamakura. The hypothesis is that a loss of access to these raw materials forced last ditch innovations such as Hitatsura. Hitatsura is not structurally sound, especially not on a Daito. The underlying premise here is that raw materials had a lot to do with the technological transition from Yamashiro to Soshu methods. Then this brings us to Ted's contention: For Ted, Soshu Hitatsura was applied on thin shortswords, which was the style of the time, to make them sturdy. This gives the method a functional justification. The fact that there are no soshu daito (?) in Hitatsura is an indication that this style wasn't used on longswords. My stance is that even on a thin shortsword, random hardening will make it brittle compared to a more controlled, notare hardening pattern. This is compounded by the fact that these pieces were very thin. I contend Hitatsura was not a successful functional innovation. The lack of daito could indicate that a) they were never popular and/or b) they broke in great numbers. But this brings us to another great hole in knowledge which is the study of regional metallurgy. We have 'blackish' 'greyish' and 'bluish' steels widely documented as a Kantei point, but basically very little idea of why these faint hues occurred. We also have impressions from polishers of 'hard' Kamakura steel vs 'soft' Bizen steel. How much of these variations are due to ore processing vs the ore itself is a big looming question mark. In the shinto period once steel production became centralized all of this is lost. Variability in steel - and access to ore with specific qualities - is in my view a very understudied topic.

From what I've seen it's simply that this board is not the place to sell 10K+ items. Which is a bit of a problem: these items have nowhere to go in terms of sale without being exposed to big commissions.

Kyomaro to Shizu and Chogi, Hankei to Norishige and Masamune... Shizu and Chogi to Masamune... Masamune to Ko-Bizen and Norishige to Ko-Hoki... The trail goes down to Amakuni... And who then came before? Do you really want to know?

Good choice. This blade has utsuri, complex hamon with a conspicuous folding pattern. Bizen is a fantastic place to start your journey.

The eternal return to the Ko-Bizen, where the Nihonto journey ends, the last step before enlightenment... These swords must be the close to the top surviving creations of their makers, with the exception of the Tomonari which is priced at a lower level. We just don't have enough information to evaluate the pricing in context. The Masatsune Tachi, also Ko-bizen, fetched far higher price. The Yasutsuna, another venerable blade, fetched a similarly top price. The one to top them all was unsurprisingly a Yoshimitsu Tanto... Now imagine if this selection was presented to you for a Kantei session.

We're talking across each other and there is more we agree on that meets the eye. The next step of this conversation will turn into a dissertation that I don't have time to give proper justice to at the moment. I did employ provocative language to advance a position. I'm glad that stimulated a debate (and triggered some of you ). The fall of Soshu is a key topic in the study of Nihonto and it deserves far more attention than it currently garners. Naturally, advancing a hypothesis beyond the one "in the books" requires a lot of evidence and study to be considered competitive. The next step is comparing dates and places of work, continuity in skill transfer, local economic conditions in the transition to Muromachi and metallurgic comparison of steel from Hitatsura work. It's enough work to write a thesis. But this is a hobby and not a PhD, so I'll opt for discussing this - with drinks - at the upcoming DTI.

This remains an unanswered question and Suguha is a good guess. However, swords have areas which get more stress than others, statistically, because they are the strike zones. A structural engineer would model the stress distribution given the shape and optimize the hamon based on this. It's an open question if the result is suguha, notare, ko-choji with plentiful ashi, etc. But it's going to be one of those. Definitely not wide Togareba, O-Choji, or Hitatsura. Soshu is a short story with a sharp peak and a sudden decline. While the Muromachi crisis is certainly a contributing factor, it does not fit this data. Soshu to Sue-Soshu is simply too steep a fall in quality and occured too soon. By comparison, Bizen to Oei-Bizen is a far smoother transition. Both produced top quality products and Soshu had aquired a great reputation in Kamakura. Why would demand for luxury Soshu swords die off suddenly while it persisted in Oei-Bizen? We need to be a little critical here and think outside cudgel explanations. In my opinion, the key to understanding this lies in the stylistic transformation of the late hasebe/akihiro experiments in Hitatsura and why it was undertaken.

I'd say it's a pretty good start. Let's compare perspectives: What's your theory on Hitatsura and the downfall of Soshu?

Let's break down those broad strokes. Hitatsura was the death rattle of Soshu. During the late soshu time, something remarkable happened: Hasebe, Akihiro, and other great Soshu smiths transitioned to Hitatsura. A style which is functionally unsound. Why move from the 'top product' which made the glory of the Soshu towards a high-risk innovation which looks good, but is not structurally sound? We know it's not a sharp skill drop-off since Hasebe and Akihiro have some great work in classic Soshu We know later work features more Hitatsura than early work We know that the classic Soshu products had a lot of demand because the predecessor had established a solid reputation There aren't many explanations and we will never know the truth, but the best explanation I have encountered is that they simply ran out of the best ingredient with the metallurgic qualities used during the Apex of Soshu. Thus, they needed to source elsewhere, and their methods - applied to this new material - did not yield satisfactory results. The school would simply die off if nothing was done and they attempted a last resort innovation: Hitatsura. This is supported by the fact that if you ask Soshu experts, they will tell you that the steel used in Hitatsura appears, superficially at least, of lesser quality. It is simply less prone to creating activity and lacks the glimmer of the top stuff. The rest is history and the school peters off into oblivion. As for the wide O-Choji. These swords broke a lot. We can see that the top Bizen Smith following Ichimonji slowly reduced the extend of the choji midare and implemented other methods to increase the durability of these swords. You find this in the works from Nagamitsu to Kagemitsu. The transition from flamboyance to a near suguha choji is not just a drift in style, but an attempt to improve structural soundness. Fukuoka Choji midare may be the pinnacle of flamboyance and activity, but functionally it was dubious. Now we can speculate as to why that was. One possibility is that the Ichi smiths did not optimize for the warrior customer of the time as much as they did for the tastes of Gotoba. And unlike the former customer, he certainly didn't swing these blades on Kabuto to appreciate them. As an analogy, think about modern architects who optimize for prize-winning rather than for customer well-being. When the judge is sensitive to a dimension which is uncorrelated to the function of the product, you see these departures.

It’s on purpose that it looks O-suriage. It’s an elaborate dress up. Signature filed off, nakago aged and altered in shape, bo-hi extended and fake mekugi Ana. Also just to make it clear again the seller is perfectly reputable. This dress up was performed way back, probably 19th century but who knows.

Hitatsura killed Soshu. It was a high-risk innovation and it failed to convince its market. It’s not structurally sound at all. I regard it as one of the corruptions which would soon follow in the Shinto Era. Choji was an attempt at bling. It failed. Hitatsura was an attempt a bling. It failed. And then during peace time we have no more metrics of failure and things like drawing Mount Fuji in the Hamon suddenly become popular. The other way to see it is that Wild Choji and Hitatsura were ahead of their time...

Very interesting data, thank you Jussi

No. As kirill said, this is not a desirable modern sword because of the dense steel pattern and the inactive hamon. This is bling to new eyes, I understand that. For this kind of money, you can get a better hitatsura sword which is 500 years old. Your preferences will change as you go deeper into this hobby.

Great information, thank you. Just to clarify: Tokka is reputable and in fact, they're one of the best value for the money dealers in Japan in my opinion. And yes, the fact that this is mumei cuts off 80% of the blade's value. Price-to-quality ratio on this one is very, very hard to beat. Tokka is awesome and once in a while they really dig up great things. Thank for the clarification regarding the distinctiveness of the Hizen school. I know very little about this school. I did not know that the style became distinctive with its rice-grain hada during the course of the second generation. I agree this could be passed off as an older Yamashiro blade... I do not think it is Suriage. At best it's Machi-Okuri, at worst it's dress up hadori to make the hamon appear to slip off.

This is an interesting case of a weaponized blade to pass as Koto Attribution clearly states it's a top quality hizen-to, otherwise it would not have gotten first gen. It's ubu but additional holes have been drilled to make it pass as O-suriage. A signed top quality Hizen-to with good length of 74cm must have been expensive. I understand weaponizing shinshinto blades in this way, but even in the days Tadayoshi school swords were pricey (recall the Sesko article). On top of that, it's not exactly like taking Hankei and trying to pass it off as mainline Koto Soshu. Hankei and mainline Soshu can get very close and made for top quality fakes, but Hizen-to hada, hamon and shapes are quite distinctive. What was the fraudster trying to pass it on for? https://tokka.biz/sword/tadayoshi17.html Something doesn't make sense here...

Kiril, What a good and nuanced writeup on your site. A pleasure to read. I second Michael's questions, and I think you're on the right track. My speculations as to the social dynamics at play in this time are as follow: Junji: Took requests and sourced elite blades for top collectors and museums, such as the Museum of Sword fittings. Sato: Took requests from each and everyone in a mission to popularize and 'open up to the public' the Japanese sword. Tanobe came later and took the middle path - not as liberal as Sato, not as elite as Junji, and more verbose than anyone that came before. I will add that it is interesting to note that Sato's demise and subsequent power vacuum may have triggered the reveal of the scandals and misgivings in the local branch. He could have been the lid on the pot. I would be tempted to further speculate that Sato's attributions were liberal on the level of Honami Koson, who initiated the path of broadening the audience of Nihonto.

I always thought the practice about sliding the blade in Shirasaya while touching only the mune was meant to prevent tiny scratches. I never thought one can break off your tip on the wood and then have a razor sharp piece of steel ready to grind a new Bo Hi on your blade as you slide it in and out. That's another one which will haunt me...

Georg, thanks for the clarification. That's harsh. It sounds like those obscure Austrian auctions are a great source of bargains, since the government is notoriously bad at pricing things and publicizing their auctions... What I want to convey by this statement is that the provenance gives this blade a chance to be real. If you had purchased it from Japan, from Ebay, Yahoo auctions, or some other sources where where is knowledge asymmetry in your disfavor, it would be a fake Kyomaro. The fact that it comes as government confiscated property from some unsavory character (to say the least...) is a good source for a lottery ticket like this blade. You have a chance. Michael S has it all outlined for you. I am eager to hear what Tanobe has to say about it in Japan.

Some interesting takes here. I strongly disagree with the notion that the blade shouldn't be inspected further and kept as is. While there maybe irregularities in the signatures, we need to compare to the full corpus of the smith and not a single exemplar to know which variations are acceptable and which ones are not. I also reject the notion that signature plays such an important role in the presence of irregularities which could fall within to the corpus of work: if the blade quality isn't there or the shape falls outside of his corpus even with a perfect signature, it's unlikely to paper Kyomaro. It's easier to copy a signature, especially in the times following Kyomaro, compared to copying the quality of his work. A window needs to be polished and checked for the traits of Kyomaro's period work. There is one canvas - It's arguable that for Kyomaro this is tricky because he was a drunk and did produce some very subpar work on occasion, and some of the bad stuff is probably considered Gimei even today. Finally, if the window reveals quality and there are no deal breakers, even if Gimei and Shinshinto, it will be worth its cost of polish provided it can be attributed to a top smith of the Period. Come on guys. Mumei attributed to a student of Kyomaro will easily fetch 5K. Now, there is a real risk that a gendai smith copied the original Kyomaro blade and it's sleepy and boring and basically there is nothing to it. This is the killer, and this was done in the past, and needs to be kept in mind. If that's the case you're going to lose money. There is a chance a good polisher will be able to discriminate and cut short your losses during the process. My take on this is that this is a bet with good upsides, and this is a tough thing to say for blades outside of the Koto range. To sum up: Gendai Gimei Kyomaro: Zero Shinshinto Gimei Kyomaro by top smith (e.g. student): you get your money back Real Kyomaro: tens of thousands of dollar Finally, remember the provenance: We are dealing with a stolen blade. If this was out of Japan nobody in his right mind would think twice.

Good on you for rescuing this one from the sharks, Brian. What can I add that hasn't been said. Excellent photos and topic description. Others, please take note! There is a chance this is a genuine Kyomaro. That in itself is an amazing thing to say. There are a lot of good fakes of him, so we will not know for sure until it gets to the experts in Japan. As others have said, I strongly recommend Darcy's services as the top person out there to handle this as your agent.

Mounting old Koshirae is always an exercise of caution especially if the fit is tight. Who knows what hides in those old sayas as well, haunting nightmares of Uchiko gunk balls... These are nice photos, I really enjoy the austerity of the Koshirae contrasting with the opulence of the gold foil habaki.