Hoshi

Alex, How to understand a relative rating system? Well, simply add baseline of skill from each period, which you add to the Fujishiro score. If we recode Fujishiro score from 1-5, and code period scores as follow: Kamakura +3, Nambokucho +2, Muromachi +0, Shinto +0, Shinshinto +1. Now if you take a Sai-jo saku Koto smith, his absolute rating is an '8' while a Saijo-saku Shinto smith is only a '5'. This is just for illustration as there are clear issues Fujishiro's relative classification system takes into account sub-periods it's not a true relative rating system in the mathematical sense of the word. If it were the case, we would say have 10 Sai-Jo saku smiths per periods and that's it. We have many more during Koto times than later times. This is not trivial because it means there is a relative component and an absolute component to model The baseline offset we devised is not constant per level of smith. The offset is more pronounced the higher the Fujishiro score. Kirill, I tend to agree with you w.r.t to the 'shadow effect' of being a 2+ gen. This is also where I see some undervaluation in the Japanese ratings. However, this is exactly the sort of 'error structure' you would expect if you devised a rating system. You need to start somewhere, with some sort of prior belief for the quality of work of someone without having access to much data, and if he comes second in the school's lineage, you'd be right more often than wrong by automatically assuming he's correlated but a notch under the founder which is in all likelihood a positive outlier. Thus, to move this 'prior' away from the baseline position that he's one notch below, you would need a lot of data and study.

This is a great example of a blade as a historical data point. The fact that it is signed AND atypical means a few things: If it were mumei, it would not get this attribution because it deviates from the smith's known work it's a very valuable datapoint to understand the range of the smith, and by extension his school and how it connects to later Soshu

Rivkin, The ratings system are arguably complex, and I want to clarify something: Muramasa is rated Sai-jo relative to other smiths in Muromachi period. It you want an absolute rating, you have the Toko Taikan ratings. Fujishiro Sadamune: Sai-jo Saku Muramasa: Sai-jo Saku Toko Taikan Sadamune: 2000 Muramasa: 700 The broader point you make is interesting - the Japanese culture is obsessed with ratings of all sorts. It doesn't surprise me because they put such an emphasis on perfecting their craft, and the only way to improve is to know what to strive for, which is the role ratings play in the cultural feedback loop. European fine art had all sorts of classical ratings and technical points which were somewhat objectively evaluated as part of the classical canon - this was all more or less erased in the 20th century. In part, some of the resistance against impressionists and those that came later was that nobody knew how to appraise with objectivity. This is nothing new, even Romans evaluated Greek Sculptors with some sort of Saku-ratings and grew obsessive over some of the old masters. I will add that this idea we have that all art is subjective and beauty is in the eye of the beholder is a very 20th century eurocentric perspective on Art which follows from the modernist/post-modernist treaties. It's hard to break out of one's frame of reference, in no small part because the majority of us simply refuse to categorically deny that displaying a broken toilet seat in a museum can be art. For the greatest time in human history and across culture, art has been primarily about skill. Nothing is easier than nitpicking about systems to evaluate art. For nihonto it's easy to nitpick on ratings and throw the baby out with the bathwater. Our culture has a very 'on/off' appraisal of evidence (just look at science where it's all about p>0.05 everywhere and p>3 sigma in physics for X to be true). Its easy to reason that because Fujishiro had some proportion of ratings which do not reflect one's perception or some external consensus, that all his work is basically wrong. Heck it even gives you clout. You've found the flaws. Now you can extend the argument until you reach the postmodernist take on value: everything is subjective. And that's a convenient thought to hold, as it allows hubris to seep in: if everything is subjective, nobody can judge that my collection - or my tastes in general - are inferior. This is what postmodern evaluation does, it allows everyone to be a winner in the great arena of collecting. Because obviously if you take a population of collectors, and you rank their collection according to Fujishiro, you will inevitably create some extreme pareto-distributed pyramid where a tiny minority of collectors sit on top of everyone else, and the vast majority sit on a few chu-saku waks. What belief system will this vast majority adopt? which one is more conducive to the projection of social status? The postmodern take or the classical take? It's just human nature in the end. A more useful way of thinking of ratings is in terms of Bayesian estimates and not 'on/off' point predictions - the mean of the distribution reflects the judgement, and the uncertainty around the judgement is the variance across that distribution. Consider that the more work one has access from a given smith, the more 'precise' the estimate and the smaller the dispersion around the distribution. Thinking in this way will allow to accept error as absolutely normal given the degree of uncertainty, while also realizing that the judgement has modeled signal which exists independently of noise. If you take this Bayesian approach all the way down, you'll soon come to intuit that to say that everything is subjective means there is no signal and that's its an untenable philosophical position.

Fujishiro was an incredible scholar. His ratings are on point. In fact it's remarkable how some of his theories and ratings have been vindicated historically, despite the fact that he did not have access to the amount of blades we have today. That said, he did go wrong on a few occasions. I know of one 'mistake' he made: Kencho Jo-Saku -> Jo-Jo Saku

I don't think you've missed out on much. It looks to me like a poor restoration job on a sub-optimal postural design from an otherwise great school. 'Miss' a few more like these and you can go for the real thing, which will undoubtedly be a better investment.

That's an interesting take Jussi. I'd like to try and break down why you value Mei. Because it indicates that the sword hasn't been mangled (Original form value) Because it increases the probability that the attribution is correct (Certainty of origin value) Because it's an artifact which contains data for attributing works of this smith (Rosetta stone value) Because it's rare (scarcity value) Because it contributes to the aesthetic value of the Nakago (Nakago aesthetic value) If it's 2, then you'd agree that a Yamato Mei (Work is difficult to attribute to specific smiths) would be far more valuable to you than a Norishige mei (work is very recognizable). But broadly speaking, how do you weight these five different factors?

From my understand when 'kasane' is posted without precision if its moto or saki, it means moto. The pictures are hard to interpret because of the photoshop mune addition, it can give off the wrong impressions. Robert, that's a topic in itself. I think it could be useful to review all the Japanese and western dealer sites, state their business models (high/low volume, 'problem specialized' / 'problem averse', high fixed costs / low fixed costs) etc. Once you have the business model nailed down you know more or less what to expect and can shop with this in mind. But that's just a third of the picture of an informed shopper. Something like: Classify business models on a per-dealer basis to infer their margin making mechanism (and by extension the 'dealer fee' you pay) Classify segments of blades as value preserving or depreciating Cross-reference [Dealer, Blade] with Jussi's database to highlight example of good buys and model where these tend to happen dealer-wise. It's a feather ruffling exercise though.

What's Imo-no-Zuru? Is the argument that because it's tokuho, the thickness is not a condition issue but by design? (e.g. utsushi inspired work). I think that's also the most likely explanation, but it still doesn't make it a good sword for that smith and the period especially where high ranked ones tend to be imposing in stature. Ultimately we shouldn't try and read too deeply into Tokuho since its basically what you get for a blade with disqualifying flaws, except for Gendato where its a real battle. All in all It's likely that the .5 kasane is a typo from a copy past job.

This is exactly why we need an appraisal sub-section

He's one of the underrated late Edo smiths. Jo-Saku does not do him justice. However I disagree on this one. It's in the danger zone, and with a .5 Kasane I wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole. .5 Kasane is just too thin, what you'd expect on a ko-bizen polished six hundred times. Moreover, I really don't see much of the 'Shizu' vibe which characterises his top work. The thing with this seller's blades is that you need to play 'where is the catch' very carefully. These blades are triaged and funnelled on our market, it's big volume work and sometimes they make a mistake and there is a really good blade hiding in the bush, I've seen it happen and it's great when it does. But more often than not you'll find something which justifies the 'special price' - be it cheap juyo from session 22 sold just under ladder theory price, real Kyomaro that are unfortunately mumei, mumei sushu work which has a 'Den' in the paper gives off a strange Hankei vibe, real Rai work with the most disgraceful horimono on earth that dumps the value near zero, etc. dangerously ambiguous boshi which deviate from the oshigata... be attentive. Aoi is like a freak circus with the occasional orphan child which shows high potential.

That's a good observation Michael, Rai was not an improvement over the top work that came before for the Buge market. Whereas Ichi is a step above it's Ko-variants and it branches out over time and space in multiple sub-groups with their own take. More broadly I find this to be a very interesting point: peaks, improvements, stagnation and descent and transformation in traditions. Soshu for me is fascinating because it's so amorphous: starts out near-peak Awataguchi with Shintogo, transitions in Yukimitsu, peaks Soshu with Masamune an takes on a completely different style 'rustic' style with Norishige who was presumably after Ko-Hoki, then spreads across the country with his students while the mainline faded away. It doesn't look to me like 'Soshu' applied to the smiths in this lineage really capture their very heterogeneous work. Soshu was more of an event in time which led to crazy experimentation and fundamental shifts in style using new materials, and then got synthesised back into the main traditions as Soden-Bizen, Naoe-Shizu etc.

Bizen and Rai don't provide a good comparison to each other. Bizen is a tradition represented by a broad set of schools, with a lot of between-school variations within the Bizen both horizontally (between schools active at the same time) and vertically (expressed at different time points). Personally, I love the work of the Osafune branch and how they took in some Soshu influence with Kanemitsu, and generally the Chogi offshoot and its Soden-Bizen style which I find very attractive. A more apt comparison would be so say that 'Ichi' is to Bizen what 'Rai' is to Yamashiro. A brand name for a fashionable product, where the maker's name was eclipsed in favour a singular brand to carry a reputation. More generally we find this across the world in swordmaking - for instance 'Assad Allah' blades in the Middle East or 'Ulfberg' in the northern countries. Interesting phenomena in itself, and perhaps one of the earliest example of branding known to mankind. Hitatsura is the late Soshu death rattle. Darcy's theory is that raw materials ran out and this led the later Soshu generations to experiment with Hitatsura. In The idea is that it was a novelty to make up for the loss of primary materials which allowed better work to be made. Once hitatsura starts to kick in we very seldomly see good Soshu work anymore, and then it vanished into oblivion. I think its fair to say that Hitatsura was not successful but its also fair to point out that these Soshu guys were endlessly innovative.

I chose Rai school because it's my most unpopular (and arguably prejudiced) opinion. Rai has produced extremely high quality work. In fact, the highest volume of preserved juyo and above swords attributable to a single smith, and its not because Rai was valued higher than Awataguchi, and thus preserved with more care. It was pure volume. These are facts. Now in my mind, Rai was 'mass producing' a luxury product and innovated on slicing production costs (QA systems in Mei, mass apprentice chaining work, etc). This is something I do not associate with art or innovation on the product itself (which brings value to the customer). In contrast, it's easy to pile on Mino and once we get into Shinto Seki Mino, it's game on and we can all form a dog pile and clobber these guys to oblivion. The unpopular opinion would be for someone to make a case on why Mino is underrated...

Paul, Awataguchi made one piece construction tantos that's clear, and this begets the question: why would Rai school use core steel in tanto? Aside from saving on raw materials, I don't see any good mechanical reason. For swords, some proportion of shingane to complement the hard steel is functional, but on tantos it rings to me as a purely cost-saving process. My theory is that as the iron sands which fueled Awataguchi and later Rai began to run out, it became more cost-effective to use a veneer of the material to cover the tanto, compared to a solid one piece construction. It's possible awataguchi gently faded away and Rai rose. But it's also quite clear that both school used closely related jewel steel. I think the construction methods of Rai suggest they were cost-conscious more than art-conscious, maybe because they had to adapt to increases in rarity and thus costs of the raw materials upon which their work depended.

Hi Marius, Sources are scattered and depends on the point being made. Japanese scholars cracked the code on the Rai mei, you'd need to look it up I can't recall the name. It's the same mei with encoded variations in stroke angles which indicate the Rai smith. Why do this? It was not for the clients. Why would the producer want to know? QA is pretty good guess. Numbers of preserved Rai vs Awataguchi extrapolation based on Darcy's pass factor data leads us to conclude it was a big shop with big output Overall below Awataguchi quality given the style. That's something you'll find in the big books, too. I believe also Yamanaka's newsletter. Shingane ('Rai Hada') showing through more often for the same state of 'polish' compared to awataguchi blade leads us to conclude it was a thinner sheet of the expensive steal covering the core. Branding. The dominant theory now is that Niji and Rai Kunitoshi are the same guy. The chosen name feels awfully like a remake of the 'Ichi' brand (the One) into something stylish for the time such as ('The Arrived One' ~ 'to come') when he managed to create a top quality product consistently. Rai putting awataguchi out of business. I checked the dates again and its unclear. If it happened, Niji saw that the Awatauguchi were going downhill while he perfected the style and then leaped in. Here are some very approximate dates from Sho-shin Awataguchi Peak: ~1200 (With Yoshimitsu, Shintogo, Norikuni...) Late awataguchi: Kunitsuna and students ~1249 Early Rai ('Niji') ~1278 Rai Peak: ~1300 and Awataguchi dead.

Some great replies. I'm with the Johns. I propose we name the worst offenders. Who started the trend towards these brittle, massive hamons that engulf the Ji? Any theories? Was it a gradual process during the Shinto epoch, or sudden stylistic rupture? I agree these things are very much distasteful. And in my opinion its even worst when paired with a 'precise, mechanically repeating pattern' such as Toramba or Sambonsugi hamon, and if we add a massive, carved-through horimono then we're at the peak of corruption. Paul, I'm not saying Rai works are not beautiful. In fact quite the opposite, however on the whole they are inferior to Awataguchi. It remains luxury stuff, but I'm prejudiced against it because it reeks of big volume production luxury goods with process optimization. I romanticize the Awataguchi smiths as the high-end artisans, true master of their craft, who were displaced by the cunning industrialist whose product out-competed its rival. In this sense Rai is the decadent continuation of Awataguchi. As for the 'Rai hada' being core steel, I know it's not settled but that's where I stand today. I'm of course opened to being shown evidence to the contrary. I don't know enough about Aoe to comment.

I like that package. The Koshirae is toppei koshirae, typical for the period just before the fall of the Shogunate. They're quite rare, and this one is done tastefully. It's serious looking also, and the 'utility knife' is a utility shiv in this case, with bevel on both sides. The leather covering makes is resistant to water, as well. This was not for display. Nakago corrosion and restoration is one factor killing the price, but the worst offender in my opinion is the size: 66cm is really short for Meiji, where 75+ is the norm for a 'good' sword. Because of its size it will never be considered an exemplar sword of its maker, for better or worst.

Something which I've realized lately: we get appraisal demands all over the place. It spills in translation, which veers off topic towards appraisal. You find them shared between 'Nihonto' and 'Nihonto general discussion' which aren't clean categories either. I understand we can't just re-organize these sections, but 'Nihonto' could be renamed as 'Nihonto appraisal' to differentiate it from 'Nihonto Theories' I'm more interested in the theory topics, but there isn't a section devoted to it. And there is a lot to be said on the topic, and has been said - but it ends up all crowded in en between the wak appraisals which are posted at the highest rate. It's also not clear what we learn as a community across the plethora of wak threads and rust-bucket identification, but we do provide a valuable and free service and that's cool - but it shouldn't crowd out areas where we can be challenged and learn the most.

Title says it all. A fun thread in between the more serious ones. What school do you think is overrated for reasons which may or may not be justified? I'll start: Rai school. Why? To me they were the Louis Vuitton of Kyoto. They put awataguchi out of business by skimming on materials to cut on production costs (leading to the infamous 'Rai Hada') and churning out the production of a luxury product at an industrial scale. Heck, they even had secret artisan codes embedded into their Mei for quality insurance. Rai isn't art, it was the astute, large scale copy of Art from Awataguchi, orchestrated on a large scale with production methods which were very advanced for the time. They made cheap, it looked good, it carried the brand. Let's not even talk about Niji Kunitoshi and his change of name to the more brandable Rai. It means 'to come' as in the newest thing in town. Kunitoshi himself produced more preserved blades to his name than the whole of Awataguchi. That's an astounding output. He must have been running a sweatshop in Kyoto. There is no experimentation in Rai which is not about cost reduction. Zero. Soshu experimented with radically new materials and forging technics. Bizen experimented with wild hamons. Rai just took the bling from the awataguchi style, made it worst, and cut down on production costs. Even today, the fact that Rai Hada is considered aesthetically okay is the ultimate Kamakura hustle. "oh that Shigane? that's called Rai Hada. It's something special and a kantei point for Rai school, you uneducated Jabroni. A true connoisseur appreciates Rai hada" I hate Rai school. Change my mind or post your own unpopular opinion.

This is a huge topic which needs to be broken down. But basically it boils down to this: 1. There is a common component of build quality. Let's call this the core. It's the stuff like good suguha, shaping, etc and this breaks down into two archetypes (Graceful vs Powerful). That's a topic in itself but we can basically say it's common. 2. On top of the core, build quality of each tradition is then evaluated separately. This means that quality=f(core_quality, tradition_component_quality). Few examples: Bizen_component_quality = core_quality+f(Noie-Guchi (e.g.thickness, regularity and brilliance of the Noie-guchi)) Soshu_component_quality = core_quality+f(Flamboyance (e.g. harataki in the hamon)) Yamashiro_component_quality = core_quality+f(finesse and brilliance of the jihada (e.g. Uroie)) So if you want to evaluate the quality of Soshu tradition sword you don't use the Bizen criteria. This is all stuff you'll find into the old and more recent books. Based on this stuff you'll then get tiered judgements. e.g. Masamune is T1 Soshu, Yoshimitsu is T1 Yamashiro, Mitsutada is T1 Bizen, etc. It's not very clean because Soshu first gen is evaluated as Yamashiro for instance and sub-soshu groups (e.g. Norishige) are evaluated based on characteristic matsukawa, but that's basically a good rule of thumb. Then we have a few leaks, such as Aoe which takes the Yamashiro algorithm with its own little flavor. But the basic point is this: build quality is not evaluated the same way for all Nihonto. Some traits are weighted more heavily for some schools compared to some other when evaluating build quality. Cheers

Curious choice from Tsuruta to buy that Naotane. It's a beast sword and a great Naotane (1 cm thick kasane, long and wide, late late work in his best style), making it 'too expensive for juyo' I think it's a gambit driven by the recent Tokuju Naotane passage, which must have ruffled some feathers and caused a micro earthquake in the shinshinto world. Naotane is now up there, with Kyomaro. This means we're going to see some efforts to test the new market and this include Naotanes like this which are 'too expensive for juyo but cheap compared to Kyomaro who also has a Tokuju and this Naotane is just like that Tokuju so this is an investment' - that's a long long shot for its market. It's so far outside the Aoi business model (which is buy the cheapest barely juyo possible sub 40k and sell at 40ish K 'cheap juyo' while mixing in a gem or two once in a blue moon). Puzzling but interesting. Let's see what happens.

Hi Paul We're getting there with the photos. I don't think we'll be able to see the tip properly, unfortunately. As for the pattern on the steel, I think we do see some of it in DSC_3934. See if you can make a few more like this. Try and do a few pictures with the directional light bouncing off at an angle from the hamon. Overall it's hard to see because of the abrasive abuse, but I think this blade deserves a good examination since it has potential in my view. I'm reluctant to throw out a period right now, but I'm not ruling out Koto. However 12th century is ruled out. If you're lucky, this blade may be 13th-15th and have some value. It could also be some few hundred years later and near worthless. Good luck

Hi Paul, We need to see the tip (kissaki) and the hamon. For this you must use a directional light in a dark room and cast it on the blade, take fifteen pictures or so of different segments and different lighting angles. The goal is to : 1. see the hardening line's shape 2. see the tip of the blade and 3. see the grain in the steel Otherwise it's not possible to say more than what has been said already.

The shishi which has his head straight at you does not strike me as classic goto design, but more of a Somin-inspired, late Edo thing which was en vogue. Goto shishi have archetypical postures and composition. as far as I know you had preset 'designs' that were pursued, and it didn't change very fast. Aside from the posture, the precision of the carving, the relief and the 'muscle' of the shishi also don't ring a bell as Goto. Whoever made these Menuki, I do not think they tried to imitate the old Goto shishi, but rather ran their own designs.

Abundance of Jie Nie is what sets them apart. Classic koto trait. I've yet to see a Shinshinto blade with that much Jie Nie. I think this is due to the difference in the iron sands used in the old days, before the tatara process was centralized, or blades started to be made with namban tetsu. Could also be a smith's capabilities, but I haven't seen it so far. Perhaps Kyomaro or Naotane could pull it off, I wouldn't know.