Jussi Ekholm

Thank you for the pictures it does seem to be a very nice sword. To me judging the polish is extremely difficult. Final result by Moses looks stunning in pictures. I think the old polish seemed good to my eye too. Of course the higher up you go in item quality I believe the higher your standards will get.

Just to be noted those are my personal take on things and the correctness of it is up to debate. Just that lot of sources have slightly varying information. I have been wondering about the Mihara smiths too, as it is very rare to encounter one that would have been attributed to late Kamakura by authorities. Of course dealers will tout Ko-Mihara attributed blades as late Kamakura items, and I admit for many mumei swords I have personally late Kamakura - Nanbokuchō as the range. The different generations might be bit varying from book to book. For example for Ko-Mihara Masaie there are 7 different one in Nihontō Meikan and 5 in Sesko Index. For Ko-Mihara Masahiro there are 3 different ones in Nihontō Meikan and 2 in Seskos. Here the notable difference is that Meikan has 1st Masahiro working roughly 1320s to 1330s while in Seskos the first gen is listed c 1360's. There are actually few items that are attributed to late Kamakura Mihara Masahiro by authorities. However all dated items I have found by Ko-Mihara smiths so far are from Nanbokuchō to Ōei. Range is 1353 to 1415 among 15 dated blades. Then you have Kokubunji Sukekuni at late Kamakura, for him there are few dated blades ranging 1323 to 1329. Then for Hokke Chikatsugu has 1352 dated blade Kaneyasu has several blades 1369 and 1370 There are 5 other dated Hokke blades by various smiths ranging 1367 to 1390 For Ichijō I have only found 1411 dated blade And one 1459 dated ōdachi by 2 Hokke smiths Then there is Tatsubō school in Bingo province And for them I have 4 dated blades ranging 1365 to 1373 Here is one problem that I am not sure about, I am not sure if the attribution Hokke Ichijō (法華一乗) is referring to one smith/lineage or a larger group among Hokke smiths. And of course attributions are attributions they need to throw out some fitting classification bracket.

Here you can see them side by side so it is the same sword. Attributions can change when NBTHK evaluates the item again. There has been actually quite large shifts in attributions few times when the item has been sent in for re-evaluation. I feel in general mumei attribution Hokke Ichijō by NBTHK would usually indicate the sword is late Nanbokuchō to early Muromachi. That is how I see things personally. As a general rule NBTHK does not award Tokubetsu Hozon to mumei swords made after early Muromachi (yes I have seen few exceptions but I believe that is their norm). There might be different views on Ichijō generations I checked Meikan and there 1st Ichijō is listed around Ōan (1368-1375). However so far I have only managed to find 3 signed Ichijō short swords and so far I haven't been able to find a single signed tachi remaining by specifically attributed to Ichijō as the Ichi signed tachi and katana have general Hokke attributions.

The blade at Aoi used to have just Hokke attribution at Hozon, so they specified it a bit more at Tokubetsu Hozon shinsa. I admit if I would look at that blade from pictures without attributions I would not pin that to Nanbokuchō nor early Muromachi.

Thank you from the pictures Mark. I always get quite comfy vibe about the US shows, they would seem like cool places to hang out even without intending to get anything.

Thank you for the pictures and report Gerry.

Unfortunately I have never seen the Ayanokōji ōdachi in person, and I know that Tanobe sensei wrote the sayagaki for it, and his expertise in undeniable. However as an ōdachi researcher I cannot understand that particular sword at all. It is just too different to all other historical ōdachi I have seen, and I have seen fairly large number of them in various shrines in Japan. The huge number of holes makes 0 sense to me. I know that Tanobe sensei wrote that it is slightly shortened, that further makes it more puzzling why it would have 8 holes (yes I count the partial hole at bottom too).

Someone got a very nice item

This is from my file that I did about year ago

Oof, seems like Lanes Armory won the Knutsen auction for this item. Well it is good to know for the future that the item resides with them. However unfortunately I don't think I can ever afford to buy it from them. It seems it was 3,400 GBP at auction, don't even want to ask what the price is now...

I admit I am completely clueless about guntō, it is always fun to visit the military sword section as guys in here have so much knowledge on them.

Your sword is signed - 伯耆守平朝臣正幸 / 文化年寅八月日 - Hōki no Kami Taira Ason Masayuki / 1806 8th month (I think he might be also read Masayoshi but I usually read Masayuki)

NCJSC always pulls off amazing display, thank you from the pics Thomas. It is wonderful people can enjoy such a high quality event.

Wonderful displays

If you are in Tokyo, definately hit this up. Ake is great teacher

Thanks for posting this Bryce, it would seem to align with yellow number 6 13.3. in my list as far as running numbering goes. I have absolutely no clue why there are inconsistensies in early numbering in Tokyo but it seems to have been fixed roughly after the first year. There might be some Japanese sources around this time period that will explain how the process was intended to go. I haven't really dug into that nor do I have the energy for it, this was just few evenings of checking through some thousands of NBTHK papers on the other side of globe to get the info. Even though I absolutely love books and have been collecting sword books for 20+ years, I do think regular books might be bit outdated source of information in modern society. However I do think Japanese organizations and museums will not be going digital for a long long time. I just feel in modern world every museum should be able to have their items online quite easily. This is why I absolutely love Nagoya Tōken World, you can find all of their 500+ swords here: https://www.touken-world.jp/search/ now try searching what NBTHK has in their collection, or any museum in Japan that has lot of swords. I do have my own always ongoing project with old swords: https://www.militaria.co.za/nmb/topic/53018-Japanese-old-sword-database/ there have been awesome takes on it with modern knowledge to make virtual form out of it, so information is in better form. I am just very old school and as I been on the excel file for probably 10 years it is just so logical to me. I do plan to update it to 2026 version after I come back home from Japan this summer vacation. The 2025 version had about 15,000 entries, for the current version I have matched some items to avoid duplicate entries and added many new ones, I looked my file and the current number of items is about 16,400.

I was looking at that Unji naginata yesterday, spectacular item. It is extremely rare to find such an old naginata in such healthy state as you said.

The date seems to be 延宝八年二月吉日. I don't have much knowledge on Shintō swords and I don't study this lineage. However from the few verified signed and Enpō dated swords by the smith I would be skeptical (granted all my references found fast are katana). To me it seems in his work the kikumon is on the signature side, not on the date side. He also signed 宝 in different way in these two examples dated to that year that I found quickly.

The beginnings for the licensing system were bit funky. I believe the registering started at bit different dates in some provinces, some started earlier and some later. I did quite a bit of research about this in 2025 when I was calculating the total number of licenses issued. Now I can't even understand why I got so invested in quite useless information like that. The license in Gerrys OP is amongst the first issued in Shizuoka. The license in Johns post is from Tochigi. Here are some numbers from Tokyo that I have found, items highlighted in yellow are ones in which the numbering does not fit the running numbering. As you can see pretty much after S26 the running numbering starts to flow in Tokyo area. I think currently Tokyo must be passed 330,000 licenses issued, for comparison I think Tochigi is somewhere above 55,000 licenses and Shizuoka might be around 75,000 licenses (unfortunately the last certificate I found for each early last year when I searched were 2024, 2023 and 2018).

That Mōgusa tachi at Eirakudo is indeed interesting item. I am not sure if it is indeed from Heian period, I would personally be more comfortable with more conservative Kamakura period estimate. This does indeed show the bit "rough" northern style quite well. However I think I am seeing hamon dropping off from the blade at several places, or at least getting extremely on the edge. Even though I am big fan of the school I am not digging the price. I think this has been my all time favorite of Eirakudo Mōgusa swords (funny enough I have seen 3 tachi and 1 katana sold by them that were attributed to this rare school) https://web.archive.org/web/20240624062731/https://eirakudo.shop/token/tachikatana/detail/644744 As for the big Hōju blade, I am not sure if I understand it well enough. It is either ō-suriage ōdachi as the description says or it could be later very large katana close to original size. It is unfortunate to admit that just by looking at the pictures I cannot say if it is indeed ō-suriage ōdachi or an ubu katana. Maybe I could give better opinion if I saw the sword in hand, maybe I wouldn't still be any wiser. From the pictures I cannot say if the hamon continues onto nakago or if it terminates around the machi. NBTHK has attributed this to kōdai Hōju and by that they mean later Muromachi Hōju. This type of sugata occasionally appeared during late Muromachi to Keichō. You can see signed sword that is shorter but has quite similarish sugata by the same seller here: https://www.samurai-nippon.net/SHOP/P-993.html It is an interesting item for sure. With large items like this one I think seeing them live even behind museum glass is important to get the real perspective about the size, as it is indeed a big sword. There are some ōdachi by Hōju school, I have seen the Hōju ōdachi at Musashi Mitake jinja few times, it is a marvellous sword.

As a historic enthusiast I might say who cares about the condition as it is such a rare signed tachi Well that is of course slight exaggeration but I do think to me this is far more interesting than lot of the fine mumei Jūyō blades. I have so far found 11 other signed Yoshimochi swords, and here are few of them Jūyō Bunkazai owned by temple Tokubetsu Jūyō owned by Tōken Nagoya Museum Tokugawa donated tachi owned by Ise Jingū Jūyō Bijutsuhin in private collection Jūyō Bijutsuhin in Sano Art Museum Jūyō Bijutsuhin in Tokugawa Art Museum I have only seen 1 signed Yoshimochi tachi with Tokubetsu Hozon sold online. It was very short blade but in better condition. Still I think I might prefer this longer tachi in weaker condition over it. I must say I am totally out of clue when it comes to valuing items like these, as I could see this selling way more than it is currently listed.

Sometimes I find the more poetic descriptions of an item features difficult to understand. There are times when for example the item is described more with feeling rather than actual numerical measurements. I can understand that and sometimes even I do the same thing but at the same time it is sometimes difficult to grasp. As I am focused on size and shape, I often get puzzled when sword is described having wide mihaba but the actual numerical measurements show perfectly average sized blade. For me that is difficult to get but there are indeed swords that you can look at and think the sword has wide mihaba even though the numerical measurements would be perfectly average. To me it seems like an optical illusion that makes you observe the sword larger than it is in reality. Even someone as fixated with size and numbers as myself can fall for it.

Congratulations Manuel

Congratulations Francesco, that is awesome. I feel this wonderful execution also shows your good eye for fine details

I do think the price estimations seem quite low to me, only a good thing though. Lot 4025 - For me the most special item is definately the one Brian linked above. This will start to be very fickle stuff with the designations as there are lots of categories which you could call that one but in my own personal opinion it is of very rare form 長刀 (Nagatō). I have briefly mentioned these on the few naginata presentations I have held. This form usually has swordlike blade and shorter handle length. I do think late Muromachi to early Edo would be my age guess for this one. If anyone from the forum ends up getting this one I would love to chat more about this (or if someone you know gets the item). Maybe some day I might even offer to purchase it if stars align. Unfortunately at the moment I cannot make a bid on any of the items. https://www.the-saleroom.com/en-gb/auction-catalogues/tooveys/catalogue-id-srtoo10562/lot-1c8ac754-b1a3-4f3f-9b1e-b42000e12482 Lot 4026 - I was surprised of the price this. I guess I shouldn't comment this too much without seeing this in person but just for the price I would skip this one. https://www.the-saleroom.com/en-gb/auction-catalogues/tooveys/catalogue-id-srtoo10562/lot-150b7b97-1509-401c-aa97-b42000e124d9 Lot 4039 - Interesting naginata package with very low estimate, unfortunately limited pics https://www.the-saleroom.com/en-gb/auction-catalogues/tooveys/catalogue-id-srtoo10562/lot-9101f1fb-683d-4bfd-8998-b42000e1299b Lot 4040 - Same as above. I like the koshirae of this more than the above item but blade less... https://www.the-saleroom.com/en-gb/auction-catalogues/tooveys/catalogue-id-srtoo10562/lot-32105988-f154-40f7-b52f-b42000e129f5 Lot 4041 - Pretty wild horimono, not my style but I think some will like this. In my opinion possibly a later Edo piece. I see the signature potentially as 国義 Kuniyoshi. https://www.the-saleroom.com/en-gb/auction-catalogues/tooveys/catalogue-id-srtoo10562/lot-f61afeae-a250-4d9c-8934-b42000e12a51 Lot 4042 - There is a signature 丹波守吉道 Tanba no Kami Yoshimichi. Unfortunately I am not well versed in the smith lineage as there are lots of generations. https://www.the-saleroom.com/en-gb/auction-catalogues/tooveys/catalogue-id-srtoo10562/lot-1666d620-198d-499a-a16a-b42000e12aa5 Lot 4043 - This is in my opinion very interesting one, unfortunately they cannot remove the blade from the shaft. It is supposedly signed too, however it cannot be confirmed right now. Unfortunately the condition of the blades is what it is but this might be my number 2 as far as interesting items go. https://www.the-saleroom.com/en-gb/auction-catalogues/tooveys/catalogue-id-srtoo10562/lot-1649c8f7-4508-4af1-a7e3-b42000e12afd Lot 4044 - This might be number 3 in my list. Unfortunately no pictures of the tang, as this too seems to be signed. In general I am not fan of such a strong sweep in the upper portion. https://www.the-saleroom.com/en-gb/auction-catalogues/tooveys/catalogue-id-srtoo10562/lot-b078239b-726a-43cb-921f-b42000e12b59 Lot 4059 - This seems way too cheap and would feel like a killer deal. I like the size and shape of this a lot. I almost missed this one. By shape alone I would think it could be tad older but when looking it as a whole I think Knutsen had it pinned as Edo period item and that would be fitting. There is a signature 正吉 Masayoshi. https://www.the-saleroom.com/en-gb/auction-catalogues/tooveys/catalogue-id-srtoo10562/lot-ac53fcea-86cc-4e0c-89ac-b42000e130aa These are the naginata in the sales lot. In overall I think the estimates are very reasonable. Of course the condition of the items needs to be taken into consideration but apart from that 1 item that I think they see as the prized one, everything seems to have surprisingly low estimates. If it would be possible for me, I would definately bid on few of them but this time I cannot.