Jussi Ekholm

I should be able to catch the final days of the exhibition. I think I am getting way too specialized as I prioritized some rural museums over this one and I am most excited about number 94 the naginata and the 93 Ō-Denta. I am lucky this year to get the later rotation as I have already seen all the blades of Tokyo National Museum 1-4 rotation so it will be nice too see others. I do remember seeing Kotegiri Masamune years ago, will be nice to see it again and see if I think differently about it.

I am a budget traveller with very basic needs. So my standards are most likely way below average forum member. There are lots and lots of very affordable and good hotels in Tokyo. I personally see APA Hotels as very good quality for the money. People do have different standards. There are huge amounts of APA chain hotels in Tokyo, you can just pick a city region where you want to stay. There are lots of even more affordable hotels than APA, that are good enough for me. I would recommend the Keikyu Line train from Haneda Airport, it is very easy to use and Tokyo train system is amazing. Depending on the location of your hotel it will be quite easy to navigate to a nearby station. Even though the train system map can be intimidating because of huge size and number of different lines, it is excellent system.

It is National Treasure and supposedly is among the best works of Sadamune as judged by the experts. I think these might be the best images I was able to find of the sword online by quick search, they are from here: https://colbase.nich.go.jp/collection_items/tnm/F-20107?locale=ja You can also view the sword at closeup in e-Museum: https://emuseum.nich.go.jp/detail?langId=en&webView=0&content_base_id=100193&content_part_id=0&content_pict_id=0 Just checked Branos big resolution pics in his link and they do show incredible details

I would think they are from Hanwei https://www.samurai-katana-shop.nl/en/katana-samurai-sword/buying-sword-paul-chen/forged-katana-sword/yasukuni-colonels-gunto https://www.samurai-katana-shop.nl/en/katana-samurai-sword/buying-sword-paul-chen/forged-katana-sword/yasukuni-captain-s-gunto

My first guess would be 国助 Kunisuke.

As a disclaimer I must say I am not a martial artist even though I dabbled few years in Japanese sword arts when I was teenager. As a ōdachi fan I will vouch many of them were indeed used in battles. So far I have seen 30 historical ōdachi in various places in Japan and I am hoping to still see many more in the future. There are however some limitations by size and by age that are my own personal feelings, I will expand more on them later on the post. Most of the ōdachi I have seen are preserved in various shrines in Japan and photography in shrine treasure rooms is forbidden. So I don't have pictures taken at the shrines apart from few where the museum staff wanted me to take a picture of the item. However in books I do have lots and lots of pictures and information. I don't know my martial arts history that well but I know in Japan there are some arts that are seen as koryū (古流) and they have strong historical standing. I believe the martial art shown in above video is Enshin-ryū (円心流), which is to my understanding classified as koryū, old historical martial art. To my limited understanding the meaning and specifics of kata in koryū is not really given outside the school. So even if you see that ōdachi is drawn from the hip in videos it could possibly be just a form of training. I believe I have seen other videos of this same person using the same sword over the years. I believe it is ōdachi with a blade length of 三尺六寸 3 shaku 6 sun which in centimeters is 109 cm. He does have impressive drawing and sheating technique and I believe he would be very seasoned martial artist. This brings me to the koshirae and how they were worn. I have recorded currently 151 ōdachi in Japan. Extremely few of them are in katana koshirae, as wearing them thrusted through the belt was not really that good option in my personal opinion, and as they were intended for battlefield use I don't see wearing them thrusted through the belt, they were already out when going to live battle or in many cases high ranking samurai had sword bearers who carried the ōdachi and allowed their master to draw it. There are however few very large Edo period swords that I classify as an ōdachi that are in katana koshirae, I can remember few from memory. - Itsukushima Jinja has 99,8 cm blade dated 1867, it was commissioned by a sumo wrestler at that time. (I have seen this sword at the shrine) - Matsubara Hachimangu had 101,3 cm blade (if I understand correctly it is dated 1644 and dedicated to the shrine when made). - Unfortunately there is only small picture but I believe the Takaoka Jinja sword 106,1 cm and 1641 dated blade that was in previous Okayama Branch restoration project might have katana koshirae, the pic I have seen is very small. However mostly the old historical ōdachi had various types of ōdachi koshirae. Many of the Edo period ōdachi that still have koshirae have an ōdachi koshirae too. Also the dating on the blades for Edo period can show how it will fit historically into timeline of Japan, as battles ceased after the early 1600's. I watched some Japanese youtube videos and in one of them it was mentioned that actually commissioning an ōdachi cost several times the normal amount of money, which is easy to understand, as the project of making a giant sword is lot more complicated than a normal sized one. This usually would mean that the person commissioning the sword must be wealthy and/or possibly a high ranking samurai. Finally comes the size of the ōdachi. These are just my personal opinions after seeing many of them live at shrines and lots and lots in books. Of course unfortunately currently handling experience is limited to modern swords. I am talking about blade lengths here, I see the length range of 3 to 4 shaku (90-120 cm) as perfectly reasonable range, there shouldn't be any issues with these. blade lengths of 4 to 5 shaku (120-150 cm) is where I see the upper end of actually usable ōdachi. When you go to blade lengths of over 5 shaku (150+ cm) I just don't see them all that reasonable for usability. As you have to calculate the tsuka in, these weapons are over 200 cm in total length and the majority of it is in blade. For usability I would rather exchange some of that blade length to handle/shaft length, arriving towards large bladed nagamaki and naginata. I think the longest ōdachi that I know has historical record of it being used in battle is the gigantic Tarōtachi (太郎太刀) of Atsuta Jingū it has blade length of 221,5 cm. There is a historical legend and provenance to back that up and there is a story for it. In my understanding the short version would be that two relatives wielding two giant ōdachi Tarōtachi and Jirōtachi, were stalling the enemy troops while wielding these on horseback. The enemy finally killed both of them but they gave time for others to get to safety. I believe they were dedicated to Atsuta Jingū in 1576. Atsuta Jingū has three ōdachi in similar koshirae Tarōtachi, Jirōtachi and Kanetake ōdachi made in 1620. As there is historical story and provenance I cannot discard the fact that the giant sword could indeed have been used in battle. In my brain I just can't figure out what would be the benefit in having these extremely long blades compared to very long blade with slightly longer handle. The post came quite a bit longer than I originally intended and had to do some fact checking as I hate making errors.

I think my first guess would be Yoshifusa (能房) from Kongōbyōe (金剛兵) school. Could you perhaps take clearer picture of the signature? Of course it might be very difficult as it is bit worn down.

Does someone have pictures of the sword in its current state? It looks absolutely spectacular. I saw this one at Tokyo National Museum in 2024, can't deny it is splendid sword just in overall not to my liking. I can understand why it is highly praised even though it doesn't click for me.

Hopefully it gets solved and the item gets back to you. It is such an extremely rare item it will be easy to spot if it pops up for public sale somewhere.

I was on the highway bus on my way home when reading this and has to wait until I get home to really reply. It is so rare we get discussion about the more rare schools such as Mōgusa. I have felt liking to northern swords for a long time maybe just the reason for it is that I live up north, that might have been the initial connection that clicked for me. I originally planned to see Hōju and Mōgusa swords this year in Japan but as my love for ōdachi is even greater I needed to adjust places I will visit so I can hopefully see several ōdachi I have not seen before during my month in Japan (currently I have seen 30 ōdachi). So perhaps I will try to do northern swords in 2027. Unfortunately there is not a lot of information about Mōgusa or Hōju schools in English. Many years ago, probably over 10 years ago when Paul Martins thejapanesesword site had a forum there was an amazing thread about Mōgusa, I still remember that dearly to this day. Unfortunately I believe all of that info is now gone for good... back then I didn't understand the need to save information as much as I do today. However I do have few Japanese books on Mōgusa, that have information that might be difficult to find. This might be bit controversial opinion but I don't think NBTHK might be the best authority on Mōgusa and Hōju swords... I am very long time NBTHK member but I think there are groups in Japan that know more about these specific swords than NBTHK. There is actually Mōgusa sword research group that publishes their magazine/publication. At one point I intended to start getting them but I am so backlogged with books and magazines I have more than enough to last for my lifetime. I know NBTHK is regarded as "the" high authority and with well earned reputation, there are still other groups with narrow focus that in my mind surpass the NBTHK knowledge in that particular field. Even though it does nothing to sword financially I would rather have the opinion of these people focusing on the specific field. Currently I think I have 11 signed Mōgusa swords in my references. Sometimes it might be difficult to judge if the smith was actually a Mōgusa smith but these are all northern smiths. I will put the swords out in my own order starting from what I presume to be the oldest (of course I might be wrong on some of these). Fusachika (閼寂) tachi - early Kamakura Tomoyasu (友安) tachi - early Kamakura Kunihira (国平) kodachi - early-middle Kamakura Mōgusa (舞草) tachi - middle Kamakura Toshiyasu (世安) tachi - late Kamakura Shigenaga (重長) ken - Nanbokuchō Mitsunaga (光長) tantō - Muromachi Mōgusa (舞草) katana - Muromachi Yukishige (行重) wakizashi - middle Muromachi Tomonaga (友長) katana - late Muromachi Tomonaga (友長) wakizashi - late Muromachi

Wakizashi by Suketaka was the kantei item of Tōken Bijutsu 825 in October 2025. Scroll down the page to read the kantei explanation, includes bit of historical information on the smith and his workmanship. https://www.touken.or.jp/english/nbthk/swordjournal_December.html I think as you have done the research Jared you have noticed that only very small portion of Japanese smiths are often considered as the important ones in traditional Japanese sword appreciation. That is bit unfortunate but you usually always just find the works and information of these top tier smiths featured in every publication. Finding information on lesser known smiths is a lot more problematic and requires lot of digging.

There were actually a lot more smiths with titles during that time period. As I said it is outside of my interest so I cannot dig up the date when each got the title as some are very minor smiths with very little info on them. Now out of these I would see Masayuki, Motohira, Tadayoshi, Suketaka and Masashige as the famous ones. Toshinori - 1785 Yoshimori - 1786 Masayuki - 1789 Motohira - 1789 Tadayoshi - 1790 Hirotaka - 1796 Suketaka - 1798 Kinmichi - 1800 Yoshimichi - 1802 Masashige - 1803 Kiyohiro - ? Kunifusa - ? Kunihide - ? Kunishige - ? Kunitora - ? Masahisa - ? Masanori - ? Munemichi - ? Nagayoshi - ? Shigehide - ? Sukekane - ? Tadakuni - ? Tsuguhira - ?

Chris wrote excellent post and information like that will take some time to process. It is actually quite complicated stuff. I was giving an introductory into Japanese swords during the weekend, and I briefly mentioned about the difficulties in looking at prices as there can be so much variation that is very hard to understand. This does happen at all levels, not just at high end. Sometimes it can be really difficult to say why one sword is listed at 500,000 yen and another one for 700,000 yen. I was about to dig up some reference example where the same seller has listed blades from the same school at various price points. As a fun fact I have recorded Aoi Art selling 46 different mumei Ko-Mihara blades. Here are 3 blades from my cherished northern Hōju school that all have been listed at Eirakudo and all papered as Tokubetsu Hozon by NBTHK, and all are in shirasaya so koshirae does not complicate things. As a fun fact N. 1 & 3 have also been at other dealers at different price point. 1: Tachi 78,1 cm : 2,000,000 yen : https://eirakudo.shop/token/wakizashi/detail/368087 2: Katana 79,1 cm : 2,600,000 yen : https://eirakudo.shop/806442 3: Katana 72,8 cm : 1,300,000 yen : https://eirakudo.shop/099872 If all items were equally priced I would pick them in order 3,2,1. I do like the number 3 most because of the strong shape. It has the strong Nanbokuchō profile that I like. I think the description for this one is good and there are of course some rougher areas on the blade that don't look that nice. There is one bit nasty delamination in kissaki that pop ups a bit, I could live with stuff like that but for many it might be annoying. Number 3 has also appeared on Samurai Museum for roughly 1,800,000 yen https://www.samuraimuseum.jp/shop/product/antique-Japanese-sword-katana-unsigned-hojyu-nbthk-tokubetsu-hozon-certificate-2/ and at Winners for price unknown to me https://www.winners-auction.jp/productDetail/99960 2 is the most expensive one and one that I have not yet seen anywhere else, it is recent 2025 Tokubetsu Hozon. This one has long length of 79,1 cm and in the sales ad it is mentioned this is ō-suriage. Long supposedly ō-suriage blades like this are always making my brain hurt. As then this would be an ōdachi originally and to me this does not really have the general vibe that ōdachi have. This is quite narrow sword in profile with little curvature. I know there is a hole at the bottom of the nakago but in my mind I see the middle most likely area for the original hole, so I would just see this as suriage sword and not ō-suriage. I would see this being bit similar to sword number one and both being late Kamakura period tachi originally. I am just comparing because I do have plenty of reference Hōju tachi that are in 80 to 88 cm range. I could very well see this being bit over 80 cm originally but struggle to see something like 95 cm. This does seem to have best polish of the bunch and most details are visible compared to other 2. To my eye sword also seems to be of the best quality out of all 3, the forging seems much finer than on other two. Even though you can see the pattern well it is still well made. I know Hōju often gets touted off as rough looking but Tokyo National Museum has Hōju tachi that has very fine forging. Number 1 is a decent tachi. I just can't personally see it desirable at this price point. Of course I have looked at Hōju tachi for probably over 10 years now and seen many nice ones pop up to market and going usually rather fast. I don't agree with the age estimate that is written on shirasaya and what sword shop also states 元暦 (Genryaku was 1184-85). I don't think this is late Heian - early Kamakura sword. In my opinion this is rather late Kamakura - early Nanbokuchō sword. I know that Hōju swords get often touted as really early ones, however as I have done research on them I believe there are only extremely few of the that actually date to early Kamakura. The one that I believe would be the perhaps the oldest one is the Jūyō Bunkazai tachi of Seikadō Bunko Art Museum (unfortunately haven't seen that one in person yet). The majority of Hōju school works are from late Kamakura period to early Muromachi period. I do think in the pictures this looks "hazy" and bit difficult to see the details. This tachi was later at Aoi Art and was listed for 1,200,000 yen https://www.aoijapan.com/tachi-mumei-attributed-to-hoju-nbthk-tokubetsu-hozon-token/ unfortunately Aoi now removes their listings (I can totally understand why they do it but it is too bad for saving information). Even though this is ubu tachi and in general I cherish original size, I just can't see myself liking this sword a lot. Now this is just a one opinion and other people might feel totally different and that is the fun part of the hobby. We don't need to like the same stuff. I think number 2 is the best item out of the bunch, number 1 closest to original, number 3 is the lowest in quality but to me best in form.

Hello Rixcy. You can try to check Events tab here at NMB. Brett @MassiveMoonHeh has been updating it with ongoing and upcoming events.

I am almost as far away from high end collector as you can be but I have spent lot of time with Jūyō data. First of all as a disclaimer I have to say I don't really like either of the swords. The den Gō should in my mind be a slam dunk for Jūyō - Date family ownership, excellent polish, Kanzan Sayagaki, Tanobe Sayagaki. Still every year I know that items that are in my mind bound to pass fail, and some other items that are unimpressive to me pass. The mumei Shintōgo Kunimitsu katana just passed Tokubetsu Hozon in 2025. Now take the following what I will write with a big grain of salt but I have sometimes really felt that way, just as a disclaimer I am not quality focused collector but historical. If you throw away the NBTHK papers attributing to Shintōgo Kunimitsu, would you pay 7,500,000 yen for that mumei sword? In my own opinion the NBTHK attribution sometimes carry too large value but market works how it works. Of course the fine workmanship of Shintōgo can not really be seen in few pictures. Still if I saw that mumei sword looking like it looks on the pictures I would just skip it without really even second thoughts about it, even if the price would be extremely lower than it currently is. I know it is a controversial take but hopefully it can get the discussion going.

Thank you for the picture of kissaki-moroha Yoshifusa tachi Piers, that got me really puzzled last summer.

I think currently the highest ranked Ozaki Suketaka swords are the 4(5 as one is daishō) that have passed NBTHK Jūyō evaluation. They are dated 1794, 1802, 1802, 1803. Shinshintō in general are outside my knowledge range but I think he was a good smith and produced good quality swords before and after receiving the title.

It is nice looking item, and an interesting one. I am definately not a Sōshū fan, so I cannot identify the small details. However I am shape and size guy and to me the hi at the bottom is throwing me completely off. I do think in my references I should have hundreds of examples of this type of horimono and I cannot remember single one that would have another hi under the main carving, as usually the placement for this type of horimono is pretty standard. The presence of the lower hi would also indicate the sword would have been much longer than it is in it's current form. I am liking the item but I admit the carvings have me completely puzzled out.

I am not a fittings guy but my guess would be it had been fitted for wooden sword, bokutō/bokken.

I do think it is a tricky item. It supposedly has a Hon'ami Kinpun mei to Horikawa Kunitomo. However I don't think either organization sees that one as legitimate. You have the old NBTHK papers just stating there is a kinpun mei Kunitomo, this often (not always) sees them questioning the authencity of the kinpun mei. Likewise NTHK mentions the kinpun mei in their paper but in their opinion their attribution is to a different smith. Horikawa Kunitomo is very good smith, and unfortunately I wouldn't see this as his work either. I do like the size and shape as I like big hirazukuri blades but the quality and details for what I can see from the pictures would not push me towards good smiths of Horikawa lineage. I am not good at kantei and I think most of my references are for the very good smith 1st Sadakuni but they specify 2nd generation in their attribution.

@Wah Thank you for this information Stephen, I have not heard about these magazines. They seem extremely interesting and it could be a fun project trying to get these magazines from Japan. This thread is wonderful, so much information that is not easily available. I believe this one would be the tachi you posted above. The 99,1 cm length listed in the Japanese site: https://www.bunka.go.jp/seisaku/bunkazai/torimodosou/kunishitei/106.html would actually be the total length of the item and not the blade length as I thought it would be.

Very interesting information Brett I had not heard that before but that is extremely interesting. All of these 5 seem to be privately owned in Fukushima prefecture and they are indeed the last swords designated as Jūyō Bunkazai. I have visited Futarasan Jinja several times and have been lucky to see many of their amazing ōdachi and naginata. I have visited few times since they have made these naginata Jūyō Bunkazai as part of the Mikoshi set. Unfortunately so far both times I have just seen the 2 Hōjōji naginata on display, haven't yet seen the other 3. Hopefully some year I can see them too. Still I must say that individually I wouldn't think these items would be quality or historical importance needed to achieve Jūyō Bunkazai but as a part of the set I understand it. I do think the Jūyō Bunkazai panel could also be extremely biased. Ōyamazumi jinja is one of my favorite places in Japan and they do house the most impressive naginata collection in the world. However all their Jūyō Bunkazai naginata are just all grouped under weapons dedicated to the shrine category in 1966. Yet all viable swords are individually classified as Bunkazai or National Treasures. Of course as a ōdachi and naginata fan my view is biased but I would see their naginata as extremely important historical items, even more so than the swords the shrine has. Yes they do have several ōdachi too, 2 of which are National Treasures. Yes both of them are absolutely wonderful swords, but still there are some amazing unclassified ōdachi in the shrine collection too.

It is actually sometimes very difficult to track down info on some of the old swords that are currently missing or unknown. As I have the 16 book set Kokuhō Tōken Zufu that was complied in I believe 1936 to 1938, for many years I have thought it had all the former Kokuhō from the old designation. However I now understand that it is missing some former National Treasures. For example the above posted Hotarumaru was made National Treasure in 1931 but it is missing from this book. Likewise the Norishige that was found by Ian Brooks is not featured in this book either even though it was made National Treasure in 1918. And there might most likely be other former National Treasures that are not featured in this book set. Here are picture and measurements for the Tadayoshi tachi that Brett posted earlier with the story how it was stolen. Nagasa: 74,5 cm Sori: 2,4 cm Motohaba: 2,8 cm Sakihaba: 1,6 cm Kissaki: 2,5 cm I was trying to read the old entry from 1930's but there might be few kanji that are not commonly used anymore so I hope I got the modern versions correct. There seems to be lot of history for this sword if I understood correctly. It was dedicated to the shrine by Tokugawa Tadateru (忠輝) in 1667, and the sword has/had itomaki tachi koshirae. However during the years it seems to have been mixed as the property of 大祝 (Ōhōri) family. From wikipedia I was able to understand the Ōhōri were lineage of high priests that were connected to Suwa shrine. It is written that in Tenpō (c.1830's/40's) it changed ownership from the family to someone else, then it changed hands many times until it was returned to the shrine in 1906.

Also taken from Aso Jinja after WWII is the famous Rai Kunitoshi ōdachi dated 1297, named sword 蛍丸 (Hotarumaru), it was former National Treasure. You can find info in Japanese for example at these sites https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/蛍丸 https://www.tsuruginoya.net/stories/hotarumaru/ Nagasa: 101,4 cm Sori: 3,4 cm Motohaba: 3,7 cm Sakihaba: 2,1 cm Motokasane: 9 mm Sakikasane: 5,7 mm Nakago: 34,2 cm Unfortunately there are extremely few images of the sword surviving. There has been a replica sword made for the shrine by modern smith. Here it is featured in Youtube video

What an amazing project Piers, I'll send you a PM