Jussi Ekholm

I think Ray's Ko-Uda guess would be the same one I would go for. In general when dealing with Uda school Ko-Uda usually refers to Nanbokuchō and Uda refers to Muromachi work. My guess might be that the second hole is the original one and sword would have been bit over 80 cm tachi originally. Of course the other possibility is that all of the original nakago is lost and this would be an odachi of over 90 cm. I feel that 3,3 cm motohaba to 2,2 cm sakihaba falls nicely within the common range for shortened Nanbokuchō swords being on the wider side on bottom and lower mid tier on the top. I have been often puzzled how many of the mumei swords still above 73 cm are (at least appear to be) greatly shortened, as there seem to be a lot of them, and surviving very long tachi are extremely rare. Due to that I personally feel that 80-90 cm potential original length might have been much more common than 90 cm+. And while there are even Nanbokuchō odachi out there with small kissaki, personally I'd expect sword to be wider at sakihaba and kissaki longer in overall if this was a really large sword originally. Similarily like Ray I would turn my attention to combination of hada and hamon together. Hada shows to me as hada-tachi (standing out), and like Ray explained earlier there seems to be large patterns mixed in with flowing pattern. I think Jean guided in another thread that this would point towards Northern provinces. There are also some schools down in Kyūshū that made standing out hada with similarish pattern, but when you combine the hamon in the mix that would make me go towards Uda specifically. There are other Hokkoku-mono that have similarish hada and jigane but they generally applied bit different style of hamon in my opinion. Also way up north there is Hōju which I personally like a lot. They share many features that are common in Uda work but they are quite rare and I would often lean towards Uda. Here are few examples of descriptions of Uda workmanship by NBTHK

I hope more experienced members will provide you information soon. Interesting piece, I am really puzzled by it, to me it does not seem like Nanbokuchō period Kanemitsu. The features I see on the blade by looking at the pictures do not resemble those I would expect from Kanemitsu. The sword you linked is another Jūyō Bunkazai by Kanemitsu, here is a link to the Fukushima Kanemitsu: http://www.emuseum.jp/detail/100501/000/000?mode=simple&d_lang=en&s_lang=en&word=kanemitsu&class=&title=&c_e=&region=&era=&century=&cptype=&owner=&pos=1&num=3 You can see some of the high classed works of Kanemitsu here online: http://www.sho-shin.com/kanemit.htm(Just note that Sho-Shin website has still the old designations, in the current classification there are 0 Kokuhō by Kanemitsu, the ones at Sho-Shin site lists as Kokuhō were deranked to Bunkazai) I am also very surprised this was written as a katana in the NBTHK paper while it is supposed to be a tachi from 1335. I believe this mei type 備州長船住兼光 is a prestigeous form by Kanemitsu, so far I have 17 signed tachi by Kanemitsu listed and only 4 of them have this style of mei and all are Jūyō Bunkazai. In total I have 47 signed works by Kanemitsu listed so far. This particular style appears on few tanto too but it is very rare in general.

I am not a fittings guy but it immidiately brought Chinese Dao sword guards to my mind. I'd think it might be Chinese instead of Japanese. See few links for reference of Chinese guards. You can see 3 out of these 4 have the same theme with twin dragons. https://www.ashokaarts.com/img/product_images/image/detail/chinese-dao-sword-with-pierced-brass-dragon-designs-9-5184.jpg http://www.mandarinmansion.com/images/chinese/qing-southern-saber/qing-saber19.jpg http://www.mandarinmansion.com/images/chinese/qing-chinese-officer-saber/qing-chinese-officer-saber15.jpg http://www.mandarinmansion.com/images/chinese/horse-tooth-saber/chinese-horse-tooth-patterned-saber9.jpg

I was browsing some European sword sellers aside from my regular Japanese site check. Egbert Mezingas site https://www.japanswordart.com/ had a link to upcoming auction of Japanese items. Yes there are some swords & accessories but they didn't really interest me but there was a great collection of books up for sale. For a moment I thought about trying to bid on lots but as I already have most of the interesting books in there and I've spent more than I should afford on books lately I should pass on this one as if won I'd end up just having multiple copies of very expensive books. But as I know many of these items well I thought I could give tips to members on these books. https://zeeuwsveilinghuis.cloudcatalogus.nl/Home/Cataloghere is the link to the auction and swords start on page 5, item number 301. The book lots are on page 6, 341,342,343, unfortunately some translations for Japanese source books are in different lots than the original books and some sets are mixed. If someone would be able to land all of the lots that would make a great library. Lot 341 - Zusetsu Nihonto Yogo Jiten by Kotoken Kajihara (the english partial translation is in lot 343) Meihin Katanaezu Shusei by Tanobe Michihiro (the huge book at the bottom limited edition of 600, amazing resource) Nihonto Zuikan Koto volume (Shinto is in 343) Yumei Koto Taikan by Iimura Shinto Taikan by Iimura (2 volumes) Shinshinto Taikan by Iimura Lot 342 - Afu Translated volumes of Nihonto Koza, 5 sword volumes Lot 343 - Kanzan Token Koza, 5 volumes set (missing the 6th one) Showa Daimeito Zufu, (just got this recently and one of the absolute best books to have partial English translation is in the lot too) Nihon Toko Jiten by Fujishiro (AFU translations are in lot 342) Nihonto Zuikan Shinto volume (Koto is in 341) Selected Fine Japanese Swords NBTHK Europe Osafune Choshi Token Hen (This book of Osafune Smiths would be only one I would be after) Of course there are also lots of books from Markus Sesko and few editions of Hawleys in the lots. The price estimates on the books are funny, I think the auction staff didn't even bother to check out the actual value of these books. I think here is a good chance to get your hands on amazing reference material that usually takes years to collect. And of course if fellow NMB member wins the last lot, I might be tempeted to buy that Osafune book.

I think it is extremely rare feature and I'd try to look into Heian period schools as Ray suggested. The problem is that most swords of that age would have had their kissaki reshaped at some point in time. I tried to look Tokubetsu Jūyō items (from sessions 2-10), and I only found one good example and few others that had been reshaped from their original form. The only one I found is a shortened Mitsuyo blade from early-mid Kamakura (session 3). I think the Miike school profile being wide at sakihaba and kissaki is short it helps to retain this form more easily than more narrower swords. There is still very slight fukura but it was the example I found that is not at Cultural treasure level, as those cannot really be owned outside of Japan.

Just to prove the point that great items even from "weak" sessions will pass on to the top. As I was doing my browsing session at Japanese sites I noticed my all time favorite Kusanagi offering had passed Tokubetsu Jūyō last year in session 25 (I didn't pay too close attention to results when they were released in the magazine). This sword passed Jūyō in session 26 which is in the "weak session" group. Pretty spectacular late Heian period Odachi: https://www.kusanaginosya.com/SHOP/368.html Also it can be observed here that more research has been done on the sword between the Jūyo to Tokujū sessions (and perhaps information on these smiths have increased over the years). You can see that this sword was attributed to Yoshioka Ichimonji Yoshimune (late Kamakura) at Jūyō 26 shinsa, and now at Tokubetsu Jūyō 25 the sword got attributed to Ko-Bizen Yoshimune (late Heian). So the sword "aged" few hundred years between the shinsa sessions. For those interested, you can see the Jūyō paper in the ad when it was for sale before being upgraded to higher papers https://web.archive.org/web/20161107181756/https://www.kusanaginosya.com/SHOP/368.html

This seemed to be mostly for US sword shows so I cannot comment on them as I've never been to one. I can agree with the view that going to Japan is a priority over other travels to me. And living with limited budget going to Japan hands down beats going to USA for me. As an European I was really happy that we finally got a big show in Europe (possibly comparable to US regional shows) at Utrecht. An it was amazing experience meeting old friends and new ones too. To be honest not once did I even think about buying anything during the entire event. Social aspect and seeing some items were the things that took my time. And I got the feeling during the event it was probably lot less buying & selling going on than in the US shows. Only thing about the show that left me puzzled was the lack of people attending... I was really surprised how small the number of people was. I was thinking it would tick all the right boxes. First major show in Europe in a long time X - central location in Europe with easy access from around Europe X - Museum style display with amazing items on display X - Great and informative lectures X - Lots of dealers from Europe, Japan and America attending X - Some great items for sale X - Great time slot during the summer X - I think it is really important for us as a small community to show our support for the shows. Well swords are pretty outdated in the modern world. Most young people will find this hobby incredibly boring. And I agree you'll get lot faster enjoyment at fragging on Apex Legends / Fortnite, swiping through Youtube/other similar stuff etc. It is common problem that children and youth get addicted to fast and ever changing satisfaction on things. The attention span gets shorter as they are used to so fast pleasure on things that give way too much pleasure to brains at once all the time. And I doubt that anyone will be able to make Japanese swords a hit among people. The person(s) posessing skills like that would most likely have already succeeded in something else they are doing.

I think the easiest way is to search items by the smith from online dealers and see what the asking prices are/have been. If the smith is not totally unknown there should have been some of his work been sold by some of the dealers in Japan. It is quite difficult to find well made well preserved long sword for 2000 - 3000$'s. You don't find too many long swords for sale at c. 2000$ range.

Darcy has been on the roll lately, so much good data for everyone to use. I can only nod my head in agreement of this data. Now as I'll be soon entering the early 20's "weak" Jūyō sessions I already noticed the increase of items after the 13th session. 23 and 24 will be the top dogs in item numbers and both feature 3 books and close to 500 items each session. Now Darcy did write a notice that you should approach carefully for the swords passing from 20 to 28, I'll include 29 to that list and provide the number from 20 to 29 there were c. 3300 items passing and that is about c. 25% of the total Jūyō items. And while the 20's sessions had some weaker passes too (like some other higher total item sessions) the number of items passed in 2X sessions is so great it affects it affects the overall volume of Jūyō. But also read what Darcy wrote about top items passing onto Tokujū regardless of the session. For example Jūyō 19 was a big session with 399 passes, but there were some real gems among the items and many went on and passed Tokubetsu Jūyō in various sessions (will know a lot more when I get up to more recent books). Good thing about numerical and statistical data like this is that it is factual. The amount of items passed is what it is and items that made the cut made the cut at that moment. We can of course afterwards debate on lot of things but the factual data cannot be changed. As an odachi fan I am ashamed that I forgot the third Kokuhō on my earlier list (Nagayoshi)... :D

It is classified as a kodachi instead of wakizashi that they have in title, also Ōei 10 = 1403 and not 1344. I think the description is funny and different.

Should have guessed Darcy has already done the thing I am doing with much wider period scope and bigger databank... Well as I've been doing similar research I can share few observations. Surviving ōdachi are very rare, as you can see in Darcy data there are not too many squares above 91 cm mark. There are few more as Darcy set a limit at 150 cm + for example Tomomitsu and Tomoyuki ones are Kokuhō and there are bunch of Bunkazai too. And of course there are swords that do not bear these designations but have other provenance. Also you can see that the upper end of 80's is quite few in number too, not too many marks above 84 cm in general. I don't want to copy Darcy's image and draw with Gimp over it but for me personally the most interesting part is the following (you can draw a square or something in your head). Horizontal line from 900 to 1450 and vertical line upwards from 80 cm. You'll see that only small bunch of tachi fall within this group. I know I've talked many times how much historical importance and swords being close to original shape means to me. Even though you add Kokuhō, Bunkazai, lower tier papers, all swords without papers, you cannot change the fact that pre 1450's tachi above 80 cm in length are very rare swords that in my mind should be paid special attention due to their survived length & shape. I think we should be able to get interesting discussions on this subject in general.

Encountered this one on my weekly sword shop browsing, I remembered there was alraedy a thread about the last one, so I thought I'd resurrect this. Not nearly as curved as the first example but still pretty extreme. http://www.nipponto.co.jp/swords5/TT327973.htm

I think it was an average length tachi as Darcy suggests it was c. 72-74 cm originally. That is very common length in Awataguchi tachi. I have measurements for the signed Kokuhō and both Bunkazai tachi by Norikuni. One of the Bunkazai is 72,8 cm and has not been shortened. The shortened Kokuhō and other ubu Bunkazai are/were longer originally. There are multiple remaining signed Awataguchi tachi that are over or very close to 80 cm, however there are still surviving tachi in original length that are around 70 cm and even few below that. I think Darcy has made excellent write ups lately on this Norikuni and Nagamitsu. The only downside about them for me is that they are too comprehensive, they have pretty much all the needed info so I don't have to dig any info by myself which I love to do. I think this is perfect example of rarity that I tried to bring up on the unpopular schools thread. As there are only 8 known signed works by Norikuni.

I agree that Taima work is generally very good and that is the reason why they achieve the high tier papers. Wouldn't mind having one in my collection. I think in general for mumei swords you can go "quality first" if you can word it like that. The quality of the sword needs to be very high for Jūyō and extremely high for Tokubetsu Jūyō. Where as due to historical & rarity factor signed swords can be allowed more leeway in their condition and quality. Even though it might have sounded funny I didn't mean average Takada swords with the comparison to Nagamitsu, as the signed & dated Tomoyuki tachi is to my understanding Jūyō Bijutsuhin. There are tons of signed Muromachi Takada swords that are historically quite insignificant and there are even multiple signed and dated short swords by Tomoyuki so they are not as rare in comparison. Same logic could be used for other smiths/schools where signed tachi are rare. Like signed Enju tachi in general are really important, as are signed Yamato tachi (pre-Muromachi). But as you said Paul we should try to appreciate swords as whole and try to enjoy the good things on them, be it extremely beautiful jihada or shape that has been preserved nearly original for really long time. Some swords just have more good things than others which elevates them above the rest (talking about high quality items here).

I think I am in same boat as Michael that I see your options 2 and 3 being the most important ones in that list. Lots of signed swords have gone through some form of shortening and alteration but I still think they are very important reference pieces. Sometimes I find it funny how the remaining few last cm's of nakago that bear the two character signature mean the world to me. Rarity depends so much about the smith/school. Like above Kunitoshi, smiths like Nagamitsu, Nobukuni etc. have still lots of signed works as references where as some schools/smiths have only few remaining signed pieces. On that occasion even though for example by artistic merits a signed Nagamitsu tachi would be more valued than signed tachi by Bungo Tomoyuki, I think due to rarity factor I'd value the Tomoyuki over just another Jūyō Nagamitsu. I just picked Nagamitsu as the example as so far I have listed 63 signed tachi by him and I know the number will still go up a lot. And for comparison I yet know only 1 signed & dated tachi by Bungo Tomoyuki. For Norishige I would value signed tachi a lot as they are rare by him but he has many signed tanto so the rarity factor on those goes down. And I agree that Norishige style work is easier to identify compared to Yamato differences and mumei swords that have strong characteristics of that (Norishige) style have lot smaller "bin" of possible schools & smiths. As we are talking about Yamato, one thing I've noticed as I'm going through Nado Zufus is that NBTHK loves Taima. The amount of mumei Taima passing Jūyō and Tokubetsu Jūyō is big considering how rare Taima swords are in general. I think for suriage mumei swords Taima and Hoshō (Just a personal observation) are considered as the top tier Yamato attributions and both are rare. My own general favorite in Yamato is Senjuin, and their signed swords have great value by Japanese authorities but when it comes to suriage mumei their range is broad. Yes there are many mumei Senjuin that are Jūyō but there are also lot below that. A favorable attribution for mumei sword is Ryūmon Nobuyoshi as that attribution for mumei sword points it towards Jūyō. For Tegai there is Kanenaga, and for Shikkake there is Norinaga but in general I think Tegai & Shikkake are being the "weaker" Yamato attributions. Of course swords should be judged as one of a kind items but the above is just general trend that seems to be (or at least it was as I've been focusing on older attributions) popular by NBTHK. We should also be aware that NBTHK is also changing all the time, and as with mumei swords they are just opinions (although perhaps the best one). What they thought in the 1960's-70's-80's might be different as we are approaching 2020. Another mumei bunch that grinds my gears is Yamato Shizu - Shizu - Naoe Shizu... I'll need to learn to really understand mumei swords but it is a slow process.

Hard to say from pictures how sloped the shinogi-ji is. If the sword has high shinogi then it could easily be just 5 mm at mune and still be very healthy. Of course it can also just be a typo too.

It has been really nice to read differing opinions. As we are discussing the artistic side of things the can be a lot of difference in opinions yet nobody will be totally wrong. I can just present a numerical fact about preserved blades in my current data amount, still have mountain of stuff to go through before I'll be satisfied. The fact that this data is extremely skewed towards top end should not be a problem considering it is Awataguchi vs. Kunitoshi Awataguchi - 94 swords - 69 signed Kunitoshi (Niji & Rai) - 106 swords - 67 signed My own unpopular opinion is not towards specific school but high/very high class mumei blades in general. Yes I know that lot of them are simply amazing but I still don't totally get it even though I somewhat understand basics behind attributions and valuations. In my own personal opinion signed swords in worse condition should be appreciated more than mumei swords in better condition, yes there is a cut off point where mumei sword is simply just very important piece of history and reference of worksmanship and in such state it will override poor quality swords with mei. I think in general one thing that makes me like Bizen so much is because they have so many signed & dated swords remaining, and same thing is making my head blow as in Sōshū after Shintogo finding a signed sword from Yukimitsu, Masamune, Sadamune is a rare occurance. Then you get to Hiromitsu and Akihiro from whom lots of signed and dated swords are still remaining. So you can get quite accurate information from signed and dated Shintogo swords as well as from Hiromitsu and Akihiro but there is just a huge gap when allegedly "the best" swordsmith in history of Japan worked. So far only signed above tanto length sword from this trio I've found is the Meitō wakizashi Torii Masamune. I'd be more than happy to find signed tachi by any of this trio so please point me towards one if you happen to know one.

I think mei is 同田貫小山上野介作 Dōtanuki Koyama Kōzuke no Suke saku. I've seen references of Dōtanuki smiths use all of those partially but never in that full form.

I've been enjoying the more theoretical topics a lot too. I agree that lot of new topics seem to be about military swords or random average items. Now don't get me wrong there is nothing wrong about that and that is the level for many of us (me included). However I feel that some theoretical debates might be lot more beneficial in advancing our "common" knowledge. Not sure if we need a new section though. I think I'd have more than few topics that I could start with a question that really puzzles me about high end collecting. I have few on my mind that I've wondered lately but I'd need to figure them out as understandable topic openings. They make sense to me in my own head but would not make a good forum post opening in the current form.

I am not familiar with university levels etc. so I'll try to give a common advice. It is tough one but try to study 1,000 hours per year. That is about 3 hours daily, when you do that year after year you will achieve great results. I would also add Japanese language to the mix. In optimal settings I'd try to learn at least 2-4 hours of Japanese per week. I would also recommend adding general Japanese art history and folklore, this is unfortunately part I seriously lack in. The study of fittings and koshirae would be so much more pleasurable if I'd even have the basics down in this. It is always so enjoyable as experienced members explain the details and "hidden" meanings in the design (which are often common knowledge for those interested in the field). Chris is correct that the playing field is not equal but you can try your best regardless. We have amazing online resources available to almost all who have access to the Internet. You can start lightly and read 15 minutes of Nihonto Message Board, browse different online dealers for another 15 minutes, when you encounter something interesting you can flip open some books and other sources for more intense study. Soon you'll notice an hour has easily passed by. Not a structured way of study but easily doable and enjoyable way of studying.

http://nihontocraft.com/2015_NBTHK_Nionto_Tosogu_Shinsa_Standards.html

I am happy that it can be useful. It is basic .docx format so I don't know what Apple products usually use for Microsoft Word files. Links are mostly working but as has been noted there are few issues with it. One major one was the fact that Richard noted that commercial sites tend to delete unused pages. Here are few that I've found bit problematic. As it's been few years of documenting for these, some of the websites have been upgraded etc. Ginza Choshuya upgraded their website last year I believe and unfortunately lots of info was lost and is not accessible anymore as it was on their old site. Aoi Art sells an incredible amount of items, and they often use the same page names they've used before. So the link might take you to example other mumei Enju sword that is different the one I listed there 2 years ago for example. Touken Matsumoto seems to now have deleted most of the info on their sold swords. I figured the format they used for page numbering and was able to see lots of their old sales as pages of the items were still up. I used the same trick on few other sites as well, not exactly rocket science. As for putting the data in excel, well I've kinda mined the relevant info I want from those links into my bigger and better database. So even if they vanish from online I still have some of the info of those swords stored up (no prices on that one). Every one can use the data in this one as they like, I mainly just wanted to have price & paper listed in this one, and I figured Word document would be a fast one to use and easy to have direct links (just noticed I could have had the fast links just as easily clickable in Excel... ). I just added the length as factor to make some sense and organization in this as there are so many mumei swords in here. Even though there seems to be lot of swords in here, the from Heian to early Muromachi span actually makes out a small share of dealed swords. I don't even want to think how many swords there would be if I'd try to add every sword sold by all of those websites over the years. Just wanted to bring this out to newer people who might have not yet watched the sword market a lot. Just to show you as most of us like to browse few popular sites, here are some numbers I counted just now from them (yes some dealers have very large inventories) Aoi Art has about 270 swords up for sale, out of those about 23 would make this list. Nipponto has about 400 swords up for sale, out of those about 40 would make this list. E-Sword has about 110 swords up for sale, out of those about 2 would make this list. Shokai has about 90 swords up for sale, out of those about 4 would make this list. About 870 swords out of which about 70 would make this list. Now I did browse through the websites pretty fast but it should give some idea how rare the early swords are.

Well as I've mentioned few times that I have a "sword database" that I am building and I've also mentioned that I have some online prices stored up. As I am not a commercial guy I thought I'd share the price list to NMB. Sharing is caring right? The idea for this came to me some years ago as I was constantly listing the few favorites for potential purchase, and that list was evolving all the time. As I removed sold ones off and saw that I started to get more expensive swords to the list that I could not even dream of getting. So I thought I should just let the swords stay in list even if they were sold. Here are few words about the price list, there are about 1750 swords listed, I have direct links to about 1600 swords that you can just click and they should take you to the sword. About 1250 swords have their prices listed. The really high end swords usually don't feature the asking price. And I have taken out some prices that I've got to know privately, as I wanted to keep this so that all info in this is/has been open to public. And private information that has been said in private should not be in my opinion distributed on open forum. The cut off point in the list is approximately around 1450's (I know I still have few dated ones in the 50's). There might be some errors that I've put a smith under wrong school or tradition (or even have the wrong smith) but I've tried to minimize them and tried to correct most to my actual database. Sometimes it is quite difficult to pinpoint the origin of some smiths. This is kinda barebones version as for example I've put mei and measurements to my real database. I just wanted to have this document as easily viewed and quick as possible. The document has headlines, so when you open it it should be 1.tier Province 2.tier School 3.tier Smith etc. Granted I didn't make headlines for all the smiths. For example there are 2 Sōshū Masamune in the list, so I thought it wouldn't be necessary to make a headline for him as he can be easily found through search or just going to the Province. Once you start using it for the first few times it should be quite easy to navigate. Especially when you use ctrl+f to get the headlines tab open. Then you can just move fast by clicking various schools. The format on the document is like this Smith or School - Type of sword (mei or mumei) - [koshirae] if there is one featured Length in cm - price of the sword - authentication paper - seller of the sword Direct link to the sword I might have messed it up in some place but in general the classification arrangement I used would be odachi -> tachi -> katana -> naginata -> naoshi -> wakizashi -> tanto -> others I hope members will find this useful Miekkojen hintaseuranta NMB version 1.docx

I think it has been in the talks for a long while. I remember that some years ago already it was thrown as an idea in Sweden aften in one European gathering, and after that I've touched the subject on few occasions with more senior/influential collectors in Europe. If my memory does not fail me some years ago there was a thread about shinsa in Europe and even discussion about how many swords members would surely bring in? I remember even writing in a thread like that but now I cannot find that thread when I search my old posts. I'm remembering Chris Bowen even adding insight about number of swords required to break even? All of this can't be a false memory, right, right? My suggestion would be (if there will be another) Samurai Art Expo as the venue, and the Netherlands is easily accessible from all over Europe. Eddy Wertheim (and others involved) did spectacular job organizing the event. I remember many of us talked about perhaps the possibility that event could be biennial (had to look that up but it means happening in every two years) in the future. Of course the optimal would be if the attendance and interest are there to support it that it could be a yearly event. However the financial risk in organizing an event + bringing in NTHK shinsa is not a small one. I think we should offer our support as collecting community if someone decides to make it happen. I know I'd try to visit that event and most likely would get another set of papers for both of my swords just for fun and to see how similar or different the different organization attributions are.

Unfortunately I don't have that book but I have bit over 300 Jūyō Bunkazai spread across my books. If the ones you are looking for are made pre 1450, I can easily check if I have them and what books of mine feature them.