Jussi Ekholm

While it is way over my league to comment on differences on Aoe smiths I have enjoyed greatly about reading the discussions. However I will have to point out that Aoi has again done the wrong unit conversion. My first thought was that the sori looks about 3 cm. Their Japanese site has measurement of 1 sun 5 rin which is c. 3,18 cm and not the stated 4,54 cm.

Well I'm not generally much of a topic starter especially about tsuba but I thought this one would be nice to share so that many might see this for the first time. I've never really been a big fan of Nanban items and never even gave them too much thought before attending to one Scandinavian NBTHK meeting some years ago which had Nanban fittings as one of the meeting themes and it opened my eyes for these. I am still not a fan of these but now I look these with bit different eye. I've seen and handled some small swords and one interesting thing is the small sword guard - tsuba relation and small sword guards influencing some Nanban tsuba. And on my weekendly browsing I stumbled upon this: http://nihontocraft.com/Namban_Tsuba_.htm It has been featured in the KTK article by Fred Geyer and might be well known for tsuba guys but I thought it is very interesting for many of us.

It is really nice to read the explanations and what more experienced eyes are seeing. I think the difficult part for many of us beginners would be first figuring out that the 2nd one is a Kanayama tsuba. I understand the situation Ben is decribing in the opening post. It is sometimes for a beginner really hard to tell the origin of the item especially in a situation like this when the design is common. Out of curiosity again what attribution the first one has, or is it just a mumei tsuba without papers/identification?

Can't get the both sides file downloaded. This is too difficult one for me to guess but here goes. Late Nanbokuchō to Early Muromachi - Hokkoku-mono - Uda school - Kunimune

So a Kanayama attribution. (not that it tells me much about pricing) It is important to carefully check eBay sellers and do the research. As Pete pointed out the original listing there is huge difference in price between that and the eBay sale.

I think we here might be able to give some assistance on database if needed. If you are thinking about starting small, maybe you could try to focus at first to some smaller time period & maybe few schools? For example Shinshintō and larger schools during that? I was just looking at Connoisseurs and it has 14 different Major topics for that period that you could start building on using as your base guide. I think more narrower field would be a lot easier to try on your test run. The reason why I am recommending a much smaller field at first is the fact that there are so many different swordmaking schools during the history of Japan, it is a monumental task trying to handle all at the beginning.

I'm no tsuba guy but out of those two I would pick number 1, to my untrained eye it just looks better aesthetically. Unfortunately I don't like Tokei tsuba at all, it is just not a style I like. Out of curiosity what attibution the number 2 has?

飛騨守藤原氏房 - Hida no Kami Fujiwara Ujifusa, seller has it correct in my opinion.

Chris I think there is already tons of written data about characteristics of swords and what you should expect about various schools and smiths. I admit being sometimes quilty of "using easy search" on some of my great references when a great hint is being given and I focus on that single bit weeding out the crop (and I think your program would work in similarish fashion). Because I have great reference library and not too good eye (at least not yet) for me often text based kantei can be even easier than by picture or eye. Because usually text based kantei hints are made by very experienced person and he/she can give just the right hints to make it fun. You will need a lot more reference blades than 500 Kotō blades for example. It will be a good start but there is so much fine details that are seen even among the same school, some times even among the works of the same smith. I can see text based kantei program being fairly possible to make up, and it seems as Carlo wrote it is already done and tested by the INTK member. It is a massive project but if you use something like 5+ "nihonto bibles" as your database you'll get a huge amount of raw data which your program would then use. I am not a computer guy so I don't know how you set search parameters etc. but it will be a huge project of data gathering and then lots and lots of tuning.

Ōdachi have always been something I like very much. Heck there is something about large two handers be it European, Japanese etc. that just hits me really hard. However when you think about the large tachi, not all of them are really huge. I think you could throw 4 shaku as a divider, ōdachi between 3 to 4 shaku is perfectly usable for trained warriors and those over 4 shaku get increasingly more difficult to use as the length increases. I have been trying to gather a small database for myself of various surviving ōdachi, the unfortunate thing I found out that there are lots and lots of great tachi around 85 cm in length still surviving but actually only quite few when you go over 90,9 cm in length. I will hopefully eventually share that database when I get enough swords added to it. Unfortunately I am so slow in everything. About the use, I have lots of good information in my reference library but unfortunately pretty much all of it is in Japanese. And my own translation from Japanese is extremely slow process filled with errors... (might have to get Markus translate few of these articles for me some day). I wish that I could already share some more definite info but on my research it seems ōdachi were used by foot as well as on horseback. On horseback the momentum would have had aided in use, and on foot the size will give reach. I have started translating a short article from NBTHK magazine - On the use of ōdachi as seen in Bukō Yawa. However my process is full of errors and I probably can never finish it because it is way over my league. Here are some small tidbits that I hope I have translated somewhat properly. There is lots and lots of interesting things in this one article alone. It pains me I have so much amazing information that I can't read yet... I just looked at the Futarasan-jinja catalog and ōdachi number 8 attributed to Shizu 141,9 cm blade and 184,4 cm in total seems to have several large nicks on the blade which might indicate them being battle wounds. Same with ōdachi number 12 attributed as Kozori 98,2 cm blade and 129,2 cm in total has several large nicks on the ha and 1 one the mune (at least those nicks it is difficult to look such large swords sized to fit 1 page). There are also few other blades in the catalog that show damage that I would probably think came from battle use. I could spend the whole night writing something about this subject as it is one I like really much. I just tend to start reading more info while writing, or picking up a replica sword and feeling that. So I have to end here or I'll end up putting whole night into this post.

Awesome video Richard.

My condolences to his family and friends.

Here is a try at translation, more skilled folks will help on correcting it. 縁頭薄秋虫図銘寸竜子古川（花押）Fuchi - (describes the theme insects [mushi]?) Mei Sun Ryuu Shi Furukawa (Kao) 目貫雉子図 - Menuki - pheasant? 鐔 張飛図無銘 - Tsuba - Zhang Fei figure - Mumei 小柄 蘇東玻図 銘直悦（花押）- Kozuka - ??? Mei: Naoyoshi (Kao) さぐり花桐図 - ??? - 柄 白鮫着納戸色糸片捻撮巻 - Tsuka - white same kata-hinerimaki with x-color ito

It is always a great pleasure to read meeting reports by you Uwe. As I can't attend the meetings in Germany I really appreciate your pictures and write up about the meeting.

Looks very nice Antti. Like Stephen I'm hoping to see this in polish and at one of our meetings in the future.

I have to say the same thing as Brian said, those whiskers... I can't wrap my head around how good they look, of course the whole tsuba is very nice but that detail just gets my attention every time I look it.

That post on Hasebe was very eye opening, thanks for that Darcy. It is always very nice to read about high-top end collecting even though it is so far away from my own world.

Hello Yu! I refrained from writing a reply earlier to few of your topics but I followed them. As you have acquired some very good quality swords to your collection and by reading the few threads I got the impression you are bit puzzled about some of them. Have you tried contacting/visiting a local/localish (don't know your location) sword club. I am sure the members in there would welcome you with open arms and could offer some hands on assistance with your swords.

Also for everyone, read the description about database that Markus is planning and check out the preview. Markus is once again providing an awesome resource for the international sword community.

I think the wakizashi sized ana makes sense for it to be used as tameshi-tsuba for a small blade. On Markus' Tameshigiri book it says on tameshi-tsuba that for ko-wakizashi tameshi-tsuba should weigh about 560 - 750 grams and for wakizashi c. 200 - 450 grams. Of course it could have been made for totally different purpose too.

I am sure you will be happy with your purchase Rob. As for Mihara classification I think common age groupings are similarish to this. Ko-Mihara c. 1310 - 1390 (earliest dated Bingo sword is 1324 according to Nihontō Kōza) Chū-Mihara c. 1390 - 1450 Sue- Mihara c. 1450 onwards I think you could say Ko-Mihara is generally to the end of Nanbokuchō. Chū-Mihara is to the beginning of Sengoku and Sue-Mihara is Sengoku period swords. For Mihara you can see that in many sources they are being listed being very close to Aoe. Sharing many similar characteristics with Aoe etc. Now some newbie dewbie thoughts. I've been reading some good stuff about mumei swords from many sources and my own understanding about mumei attributions is getting more "open". I used to think them as too set in stone. You can sometimes hear seller/owner saying/writing that this Mihara sword looks like Aoe and could very well get attribution to that school. Which could very well be true but the opposite is something you don't hear too often. I believe Aoe classification on mumei sword indicates higher overall level than Mihara classification in general so you don't see dealers & owners wanting to make their swords "lesser". Like Paul said above about the Enju / Rai, you sometimes hear speculation about mumei Enju getting a pass for Rai but you don't often hear sellers/owners of mumei Rai blade saying it could very well be "only" Enju. That being said all that speculation above is way over my actual knowledge level. I haven't seen & handled enough Rai / Enju blades in person to know the subtle differences etc. same goes for Mihara / Aoe. But I keep following the sword market which is fun even though I don't buy anything.

Well I don't think it can be too bad buy for 39,99$'s. You can't really get even a decent Chinese made replica tsuba for that price.

As I do not have too experienced eye for details (or even too good eye sight) the written description is many times more helpful for me than pictures. However I think the hints Aoi had for this one might be bit too helpful as you could make a guess for Naotane without even seeing the blade just based on the hints. I must admit that without written hints and by looking at the blade only that would be a hard one for me and I am not sure if I would be able to arrive to same solution as with written hints available.

Good job guys. That is a beefy blade.

This should be a great event. I am really bummed I cannot attend this one. Hopefully I can get to UK another time.