Jussi Ekholm

Here are some bit lesser known and smaller groups that could maybe added, although some might be too insignificant, and some of these might already featured under some other classification. For me it is bit difficult to draw lines, and lineages can vary. File was view only for me. School - Province Daruma - Yamashiro Heianjō - Yamashiro Kanabō - Yamato Shiga-Seki - Owari Inuyama - Owari Odawara-Sōshū - Sagami Fuyuhiro - Wakasa Asago-Taima - Echizen Yamamura - Echigo Iruka - Kii Kaifu - Awa Tosa Yoshimitsu - Tosa Wake - Bizen Ishidō - Ōmi (later spread) Zenjō - Mino San'ami - Mino Mizuta - Bitchū Tatsubō - Bingo Kai-Mihara - Bingo Goami - Bingo Dōtanuki - Higo

Well I am tad early with the answer but as I am not sure about my day tomorrow, I think I will post it today. Thanks for everyone participating and I hope it was fun. The sword is indeed now mine and I knew the attribution when getting the sword. I did not care about the attribution at all, I just wanted the sword because of size & shape. NBTHK attributed the sword to 伯耆守信高 Hōki no Kami Nobutaka. I would assume that they see this as 1st gen Nobutaka and possibly a Keichō-Shintō sword from very end of Muromachi to early Edo period. Nobutaka is seen as one of Owari sansaku, one of three Owari masters, so he is well regarded smith. However when such a mumei sword gets attributed to Edo smith it kinda demolishes the value. I have seen few nice mumei swords that I thought were Nanbokuchō swords that got NBTHK papers to Hizen Tadayoshi. I happened to see Owari special exhibition at Nagoya Tōken World last summer, back then I didn't know much about Owari smiths, and to be honest I don't know too much now either. I have found few Edo period wakizashi by Nobutaka smiths that have very wide sugata but so far I have not been able to find a reference long sword with very wide sugata. Most of the katana by Nobutaka smiths I have been able to find are just normal early Edo sugata. This was the sword at Nagoya exhibition, by 3rd Nobutaka: https://www.touken-world.jp/search/13753/ I do admit the hada and bit "featureless" hamon might be actually quite close to work on some of Nobutaka line items I found online and in books. However I think 1st Nobutaka work would be better than on this mumei sword. I personally would think like many did in this thread that this would be late Nanbokuchō to Early Muromachi sword. Naoe Shizu would of course be maybe the most optimistic outcome that I can think of and something like Mino Senjuin I could easily see, however it seems I am way off in time. This sword was sent to NBTHK by a small sword dealer at the end of 2024, and I would believe they were not too happy with the attribution that was given out. You get attribution like Naoe Shizu you are very happy and it is a valuable sword, you get Edo smith attribution and the value sinks really hard. I know this was bit of a curveball as it has been for me too. I think all discussion is welcomed and would be also fun to have some discussion, as unfortunately we cannot view and discuss the items in person.

That is correct or how I think currently. I feel the Kongōbyōe school is bit problematic as there are extremely few signed old items and dated old items are like unicorns. There are the Moritaka tantō that is Jūyō 23 and it is In my opinion most likely dated either 1359 or 1369 but one crucial character is missing, and there is the 1370 dated Reisen Sadamori tantō that is Jūyō Bijutsuhin. I know there can be different opinions about the origins and timelines etc. However for me Ko-Kongōbyōe = Nanbokuchō as that is where I see the school starting, and Kongōbyōe = Muromachi. So far in my search I have not been able to find a signed tachi by Kongōbyōe smith that would be Nanbokuchō period. NBTHK does not often specify the generations of Moritaka smiths in the appraisal paper, to me that is huge bummer... I do feel this particular Moritaka could be an Early Muromachi one possibly from Ōei. I might have been too critical for many of the signed Moritaka katana I have seen online as to me they have seemed like later Muromachi work, so I haven't included them. Of course I am no authority at all but I needed to draw a line somewhere when I gather items, as there are lots of lineages that continue during Muromachi period. I would have to include so many more items by those smiths. And as NBTHK or other organizations might not identify the generations on appraisals it does not make it any easier. Sometimes it is problematic for schools or lineages that used same signatures over a long period of time. One of my personal favorites 宝寿 (Hōju) gets very often described as late Heian period by sword dealers. However in my opinion there are only very few Early Kamakura period items by the school and majority of old works are from late Kamakura - Nanbokuchō periods. Now as the school continued into Muromachi period using the same 2 characters it can be tricky to identify the age. So I mostly just refer to expert opinions.

I have posted some of them but credit of this file goes to @Wim V as he posted this amazing file few years ago

As others said above it would seem to be very promising sword for possible restoration. I like the shape of your sword and I believe it has potential to be very good sword after proper restoration.

I am appreciating even the older papers for regular items. If you have extremely high level mumei sword or signed item by famous smith it is of course advisable to upgrade them. I do think most of the shinsa attributions have always been made with good intentions. However the knowledge has evolved with time and some things are maybe seen differently in current study. I do love my sword books and magazines, however as was said that in 50 years knowledge advances. I have some 50 year old books that have some errors, I think I have some about c.100 year old books that might have even more incorrect information but that information was of course thought to be correct at that time it was written. I think sword in the first post could likely be a katana by Muromachi Kongōbyōe Moritaka. I could very easily see the modern NBTHK papering it with just the signature mentioned in the paper. To me personally this would not add too much value. However if NBTHK would specify the period in paper in brackets, that would be a huge plus. Unfortunately it is not guaranteed that they will specify anything in the paper. As I believe Kongōbyōe Moritaka lineage goes from Nanbokuchō up to early Edo, having some specification in paper would be preferable, instead of them just awarding the paper and stating there is a signature Minamoto Moritaka. Just a personal feeling that NBTHK papers have become hugely impactful to the market, their opinion is pretty much the only organization that carries weight and there can be huge spikes in prices for attributions that market wants. I don't think it was like that back in the day. I cannot really read all the articles at Tōken Bijutsu magazines with my language level but I have used translators for some to get decent results. I have heard the Hozon & Tokubetsu Hozon shinsa are fully booked now that they put on limits for items accepted and there is nothing written out on the results. Some of the early magazines feature full lists of items that passed the early Kicho shinsa, like you see modern Jūyō results featured in the magazine. And on some occasions in some articles even some of the items were mentioned what had possibly been the interesting items of the session. I just wish there would be few more swords featured in the monthly magazine, of course they do probably run a very strict standard and rules for their articles etc.

I think the kissaki must have been worked to it's current form long time ago, and the polisher now probably just maintained it's form. Identifying the small details is always difficult to me but I think the two red arrows in your second post could be uchinoke (https://markussesko.com/2015/05/29/kantei-3-hamon-boshi-1/) I am liking Rohans and Kirills opinion about Yamato vibe.

First of all, this is purely for fun, as the sword is mumei and ō-suriage (at least in my opinion) there is not really a single correct answer. I just thought it would be fun to do stuff like this to get forum members having fun and participating. Nagasa: 72,0 cm Sori: 1,2 cm Motohaba: 3,6 cm Sakihaba: 3,1 cm Motokasane: 6 mm Sakikasane: 5 mm Kissaki: 11,5 cm Nakago: 17,7 cm Weight: 956 grams Shinogi-zukuri, mitsu-mune Ji: Itame mixed with nagare, lot of nagare on shinogi-ji Hamon: Midare with gunome and togari elements, sunagashi and some nie Bōshi: Midare komi with fairly long kaeri because of kissaki length. This is an ō-suriage mumei sword with extremely wide width and no noticeable taper. Sori is very shallow and the sword has very large ō-kissaki. I tried to take photographs of the hataraki but unfortunately my pictures are not that great. They pop out so much more when viewed with naked eye towards the light source. The current polish is actually dulling the features a bit, and unfortunately the sword is not of super high quality. And I am not really the correct person to identify small details as they are not my forte. I will post the NBTHK judgement in one week 6.1. I hope everyone interested will have fun time guessing.

I just realized I had taken that picture over 5 years ago. Honestly I don't know what the lines are, I have just thought it is more visible portion of hada for some reason. I took few pictures just now, in this sword you can see the squiggly line is at the end of bit openish nagare hada portion. I remember in the first picture I posted I wanted to try to take picture of the good hada and not this lower portion. Metallurigical things are way out of my league but I do think it is possible that the rougher nagare parts that show up on few portions of this worn down sword are core steel, and the fine hada that is on the majority of the sword is the surface steel. I also took a picture now that shows few more squiggly lines closer to the tip. It may not show up in the pictures but the sword is extremely wide. I personally believe it is ō-suriage ōdachi and the hi is added on later. Unfortunately the bōshi is missing as the hamon runs off, so the kissaki has been much bigger in it's original form.

That is very interesting. I don't know that much about details of Hokke and don't know the kantei features of the school so well. But it was nice I got close with Ko-Mihara guess. I actually have blade that has old papers to Hokke Ichijō and it has portions that have nice fine looking hada. Unfortunately my photography is awful...

Thank you Roger for sharing your knowledge, that is very interesting information.

Here is for sale something you don’t encounter every day, Nanbokuchō period naginata. As many might know ōdachi and naginata are my main thing in collecting and research. I am not too happy to sell this one as finding Nanbokuchō naginata is very difficult. However, I will try to save up towards something better so I need to let this one go. This is in no means a perfect piece and it has been shortened but it still remains as a naginata. It has few flaws which can be seen in pictures but also parts of this have quite nice workmanship and interesting activity in hamon. NBTHK has attributed this to Ko-Uda, and I would think this would be Nanbokuchō work. I believe this naginata has been shortened around 25 cm from its original blade length that would have been around 75 cm. As can be seen in the pictures the original naginata-hi is only on the nakago with soe-bi continuing small portion into current blade. I have really enjoyed owning a shortened naginata like this that is not a naoshi, these are quite rare to come by at this length of shortening. It is far more common to find slightly shortened ones. The NBTHK Hozon papers show the item as naginata and attribution to Ko-Uda. I am not that good in kantei as I don't focus on the smaller details that much, I prefer the bigger picture. However, I can understand how NBTHK went with this attribution. There is lots of interesting activity in the blade but I think the Ko-Uda attribution is fitting as this item might be lower quality in overall. There is also a piece of the item missing on the mune. It is about 2cm in size. I tend to think it could be battle damage but it is impossible to tell for sure. It could be someone dropped it to stone by accident in 1980's Japan etc. I know many dealers would tout battle damage view and I understand it in business field. I feel the picture with flaw shows also some blade details quite nicely, I am not really good photographer and only have my phone to take pictures. I would believe this one has lost the original shaft it has had and someone made this shirasaya style shaft for this. The saya is what I believe is called Raden, it has some pieces that have flaked off and it is in worn condition with small split near the tip area. Unfortunately, I don't think in this price range professional restoration would be feasible. It has two piece copper habaki, it is plated to make it golden color. Nagasa: 49,4 cm Sori: 2,2 cm Motohaba: 3,1 cm Motokasane: 5mm Nakago: 42,5 cm Weight: 865 grams (blade) Tsuka: 87 cm Total: 127,5 cm In saya: 130 cm In overall I think this is interesting item. Definitely this is not the best item out there but I think it is a cool very old naginata, and they are hard to find. I've been tracking them down when they appear for 10+ years now. I tried to put some interesting images in the sales ad. I do have lots of more on my computer and I can take any pictures that are wanted. I needed to reduce the size of pictures a lot to forum, here is a link to a dropbox with full sized pictures. https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/uoojaq9z0u2sukoingnky/AFdEMoQUVW2_45g-rHbXdws?rlkey=1fmzk5iuusccggb3rb2w1h2ha&dl=0 I would prefer bank transfer as the method but can also accept PayPal. Message me and I will check the postage costs to you. One thing that is needed that I can send 150 cm package to your country by Finnish Post. Price: 3000€

Well I admit years ago I used to think that in order for one of the great sword teachers to write a sayagaki the sword would have to be absolutely spectacular. Now with more years under my belt I've understood that is not the correct view as there are blades of varying quality that have their sayagaki. Well of course the top and higher class swords are better represented as they are the swords people most likely would want to show to the teachers. Few years ago I started putting a note if the sword has a sayagaki for my data. However that is just for swords until roughly to mid-Muromachi. So everything that is Middle Muromachi period or later I have skipped, which means a lot of sayagaki that I have seen for example in very good late Muromachi and Edo period swords. Still I am bit surprised the numbers I have even gotten so far, as I think I have just small amount of their sayagaki and they have written so many more (I am just scratching the surface of Kunzans Kantō Hibishō series and I do think the series has 2,500+ swords in total). Tanobe - 481 sayagaki Kunzan - 439 sayagaki Kanzan - 167 sayagaki While there was really not a specific point for the thread I am just curious if for example someone would have asked from Tanobe or if he even knows how many sayagaki he has written, as it must be quite large number. I do think having sayagaki from them would be extremely valuable addon to the sword. Of course that value aspect can also introduce some shenanigans like Rohan said fitting a different sword to the shirasaya, or then faking the sayagaki, and other stuff too like alterations. In Kantō Hibishō Kunzan writes in 1969 for a Tegai Kanenaga tachi that last year he wrote a sayagaki for it and in it mentioned it was saiha but seeing it again someone had erased those letters from sayagaki.

I think one bit difficult thing to grasp is that Japanese experts often identify unsigned work towards a specific maker. I am not a huge fan of that but after being in the hobby for so long I have learned to live with it. It gets often very difficult when the smiths are rare to find. Sometimes it is relatively easy to find say 25+ signed items by the smith and do some comparisons etc. I do have massive reference library at home (Although I do focus on old swords) and of course Internet in use too. However in my books I can only find that 1 Jūyō example in few books and then this from online as verified item with quick search: https://ginza.choshuya.co.jp/sale/gj/r6/012/14_yoshikuni.php When it is difficult to find reference items it always makes me wonder how the experts can arrive to the attributions they give. Of course they have seen and handled thousands and thousands of swords and have the expertise. To me it would look attribution to Horikawa school in general would be totally plausible one. Well I think the Japanese experts don't give out such a broad and general attribution, and it will always be much more specific. In this case towards Horikawa Yoshikuni. However I think you got nice and big hirazukuri wakizashi. Please post more pictures when you have time, of the blade and sayagaki too (would be nice to see the date of it).

Welcome to the forum Richard. I think your photography looks very good, however I think for identification purposes I think you would need to post several of your pictures in higher resolution pictures so details can be seen. Many members of forum are very good at identifying fine details in blades and can offer assistance on that. I am not that good at that but my focus is on blade size and shape. Your sword is extremely shallow in curvature, it being 0,8 cm. To me in overall I might go more towards possibly Muromachi period just looking at the shape of the sword. There are few late Kamakura shortened blades that have under 1 cm of curvature remaining but they are very few in number. Posting lot more pictures would be very important for identification and guess the possible origin. There seems to be good looking hada on the middle blade picture for example, and seeing better pictures like that would be great.

Here is what I would see in two kissaki pictures, I tried to put in a red line to highlight what I am seeing. Not sure that is what actually is happening on the sword but I would see kissaki been repaired and there is a portion where hamon gets very close to edge. Have you measured the sori, motohaba, sakihaba and nakago length? I am not that good on identifying the fine details in blades but I think I can do decently with numerical measurements. It looks to me there are good looking portions of the blade and some portions are looking bit weaker but in overall there seems to be lot of interesting activity on the blade.

It is very difficult to say as I am often struggling to understand the fine differences. I would think these both are Yamato style swords and would be from late Kamakura - Nanbokuchō period. For the first sword I would guess Tegai. My reasoning for that is that the 5 mainline Yamato seem to have their own small differences. To me Tegai would seem logical as for Taima I would expect tighter and "finer" jigane. Shikkake I would expect to see bit different hamon activity. Senjuin would have more "rougher" feeling to me personally and for Hoshō there would be so strong masame. For the second sword I would guess Ko-Mihara. This one maybe does have bit tighter hada to my eye, however it does not seem like Taima level quality in overall as it seems bit weaker in presence than the first sword. My explanation of my thoughts might be difficult to grasp as it is difficult to put it in words. So I will go for Ko-Mihara on this. Honestly I could throw the same Tegai guess for this one too. I would not have guessed that either of these swords are Jūyō but if one is then I think it is the 1st sword.

Congratulations of the purchase. As I wrote in the other thread I think the Kanzan sayagaki can very well be plausible. As a reference here is a sword from Jūyō 21 by this smith. Of course with searching you can find other examples as well. And then see how and why the attribution to this smith might have been made. Or just end up scratching your head like happens to me often

I think there are few very skilled artisans in Japan that can fit very high quality blades & koshirae together and it would be very difficult to understand that they were not originally paired. Then there is the second class of joining old koshirae with an old sword and then it is pretty obvious. I think this is done by many dealers in Japan, and I am bit neutral on it. I can well understand this matching as the dealers and some people probably have lots of lower end antique koshirae laying around, and fitting them to blades makes them a package. I recently got a sword that has this kind of refitment done, you can see filled up old hole in tsuka, and feel the tsuka being bit "loose", however as I was only after this bit unique blade size it did not matter to me at all. With these lower end antique koshirae their parts wouldn't really make money selling them off in piece by piece. Sometimes there is a good sword with good koshirae, however they might get split as someone wants just the blade and someone just wants the high quality koshirae I can of course understand that too but it is sad when it happens.

As Jean mentioned above, I think the hamon execution is deliberate. As you can see the hamon stays low on the first part with horimono, then the second part is the wild one and it remains to more calm impression on the top portion. My first impression for the signature would be gimei. However to me the sword in overall is an interesting one The Tsunahiro lineage continues to this day in Kamakura, few years ago I briefly visited their shop in Kamakura with fellow NMB member. Here is a wonderful article of the smiths from Sōshū den Museum: https://nihonto-museum.com/blog/soshu-tsunahiro

Well I got an idea for this from another thread that I replied recently. I was mostly wondering if there has ever been mention about how many sayagaki some of the great Japanese sword persons have written, mostly I have Kanzan,Kunzan and Tanobe (maybe Honami in general) in mind. I know many members of this forum have talked lots of things with Tanobe and have sayagaki written by him. I was wondering if someone has ever asked how many sayagaki he has written? I have been trying to keep track of the old swords that have their sayagaki and I have found great numbers of them. However they have of course written sayagaki to swords of all ages and so I have skipped a lot of their sayagaki.

I could very well see it as a genuine one. The style, formatting etc. seem to fit, well of course I am totally clueless about calligraphy in general. However in my own research, Kanzan, Kunzan and Tanobe all have written probably thousands of sayagaki so encountering them is somewhat common, especially the higher up you go in quality.

Congratulations, that seems like a nice addition to the collection.

Thank you, in session 35 I am not sure what item I was missing back then, as I got the book it has bit different numbering that I have adjusted for the current version. It is so much easier with the books as I can always look at the item. For session 61 I had actually skipped a den Unjū blade by accident later on, so big thanks for noticing this. Going just through hundreds of lines of text without any pictures is where I had made most of mistakes. I just have some Jūyō books that are very delayed because of Finnish post waiting inline for customs for 2 weeks now. I think I can do a full updated version of this early next year where I have corrected most of my mistakes.

That is very nice comparison. As I am quite clueless when it comes to photography it feels like very large difference by just different type of light. To me both pictures look really good even though the result is different.