Jussi Ekholm

Mariuszk I know that comment was bit hairsplitting and it was kinda made tongue in cheeck. But then again experts have sometimes drawn pretty accurate lines on what is what, of course there are varying opinions on things. Like I said I would think end of Nanbokucho as the divider here, as for me it sounds logical. Yet I could not most likely differentiate for example Oei period work from late Nanbokucho work but I know experts can do it, or at least they'll make better guess than I do. 1293-1392 would be a c. 100 year span for the early school and as most of my sources say most Kongobyoe swords are from Muromachi era. NBTHK for example seems to use the end of Nanbokucho for divider for example for ko-Mihara. The duration would be somewhat similar to my idea of ko-Kongobyoe. Chu-Mihara is only c. 55 years according to Nihonto Koza and after that it's sue-Mihara. I'm just gathering the data from the books and repeating it as I don't yet have my own knowledge built up.

Hey Jeffrey I was wondering where you got the dates near mid 1200's for Kongobyoe? Pretty much all resource books I have list Morikuni & Moritaka at around Einin (1293-1299). I'm aware that one source lists at c.1260 but the 1290's fit a lot better when taken into consideration who are said to be relatives. I know that Fred Fimio has written a book about Kongobyoe recently, and that is on my to be bought list. However the dates I've seen him use at his website do not go along with my sourcebooks. Will be nice to see his sources once I get the book one day, as his book description says "This book contains some never before seen information, compiled and researched from every known reference on the subject." In my own novice mind I tend to think ko-Kongobyoe spanning from the late Kamakura until the end of Nanbokucho. As that would be what I would consider to be the early school, maybe that is too long period and it ko-prefix ends somewhere mid-Nanbokucho? My line of thought might be totally wrong though so better wait for better opinions.

Christian, pictures please. Will be very nice to hear the whole story once you've got the research done.

I am a sucker for deep sori, and I like that blade in overall too. There seems to be lots of interesting activity going on there too, nice.

Welcome Daniel. The previous owner of the sword is a fellow NMB member and I can PM his info to you so you can talk with him in your native language and he can tell you more about the blade. I also think that paper says blade is signed Osafune and is attributed to Yoshii. However I am not sure if this is attributed to Naganori 永則, I would be leaning on Yoshii in general. I'm just a novice when it comes to swords and reading Japanese. But in the JTK paper it reads Eikyo as the period and you can see it reads Bizen Osafune next to it. The left most bracket with lots of text is way above my skills to translate properly, but I can easily see parts of it. In brackets it starts with [bishu Yoshii Naganori] then I see Einin era (1293-1299) mentioned, first Naganori who moved to Yoshii is said to be active during that time. In third line there reads, tachi mei Osafune and I believe it's followed by と切うりる... Unfortunately I cannot read the following part properly, I think I know the characters but I don't know what it translates to as I don't know enough words yet. I can also send you some info about the Yoshii school from couple books. You are lucky that there are many collectors in Sweden and NMB has many members from Sweden too, so you can learn a lot in Swedish too.

Even though it may sound stupid but I have always just assumed that swords are aligned hilt to the left as they will be displayed omote side showing. Katana koshirae edge upwards, tachi koshirae edge downwards in horizontal stand.

Received my copy today, and it's a great book. Thanks for your efforts getting these books to us Markus.

I think you have very nice sword there Jirka. I was drooling over this when it was still for sale. I really like the shape of this blade and the strong sori. It's nice to hear your thoughts on this Darcy, and I must say it's an interesting view that I didn't think before. Now I've been looking for the early uchigatana in my books, and I'll have to look more into them.

Thanks for everyone reporting, it's always great to read these stories. Hopefully I will be able to visit the DTI soon.

That looks amazing. I really like the custom stands you have made too.

You can also see that nakago looks to be long and there is no (or very little) sori. Like others I would like to see more pictures of the sword before saying anything (and even then my guess won't matter much...).

Welcome Matt, nice to see a familiar face from couple other forums. I'm sure you will enjoy this forum too.

Some info in English can be found In Afu translation of Nihonto Koza: Koto part 1 and Art and the Sword Issue 8. I can really recommend Art and the Sword issue 8 as there is lots of interesting information in there.

Morita-san pointed you to an awesome source. I just browsed through these two numbers of TB and there is lots and lots of information. Unfortunately with my own very limited Japanese I cannot yet read these amazing articles. However, I'm sure you will find the information you are looking for in this article. This much I could read, this is to my reading enlargened side by side comparison of nidai and sandai mei. There are 33 pictures in these two issues. But unfortunately I cannot read Japanese well enough to provide you the 4 indisputable oshigata that Morita-san mentioned.

I'm in the same boat as many of you said, based on pics I think the koshirae is modern made (I just wanted someone with more knowledge to say it first :D). And to my eye it's of very good quality, however it goes against my personal taste. So in this case I would say that koshirae wouldn't be worth of the investment for me. Someone else may think totally opposite. I like some newly made koshirae very much, it all depends on a piece. I think there are two separate things in this discussion as was brought out, modern made koshirae vs. antique koshirae. I'm a romantic too, so I think old koshirae should go with the sword. In my opinion the "basic" koshirae does not pump up the value by that large margin. Sure it raises the price a bit but it's understandable as they are a package. Like many others I think finding a sword in original (by this I mean koshirae made for that sword) koshirae is optimal. Regardless of the age of the koshirae I would not like to part such thing. Unfortunately I don't think I'm yet at the level where I can always identify original vs. fitted one... So therefore at the moment I would also accept koshirae that has been cobbled together if it fits my taste. Of course there are sometimes very fine antique koshirae as well as modern koshirae with the sword that are raising the price by large margin, which is the reason why I made this thread. Needless to say I'm not in the position to get such a sword so that is not an issue for me at the moment. :D Just discussing that is fun.

Of course this subject is totally subjective and case by case basis but I thought it would be fun to discuss this. I'm personally mostly interested in blades but sometimes the sword has a koshirae which also fits to my taste. While on occasions there are cases where I don't like the koshirae at all but the blade is beautiful. I have been eyeing this blade every once in a while, it's way above my budget but looking is free. It has been priced at 1M yen, here it is for sale in shirasaya: http://web.archive.org/web/201311070605 ... 080313.htm Now I was browsing last night the dealers site as I hadn't checked in few weeks. My jaw dropped when I saw that it now has koshirae and the price is now 3,3M yen. http://www.seiyudo.com/ka-080313.htm Even though the tachi koshirae is very luxurious, it does not fit to my koshirae taste as I prefer more plain tachi koshirae. However I'm shocked about the jump up in price with this koshirae. As my Japanese is still very limited I ran this through translation program but that didn't make me much wiser... 尚、写真の通り大変立派な太刀拵が附しています。飾り栄えがする豪華な拵です。I'm wanting to figure out this koshirae and price jump caused by it.

SOLD.

That will be a nice Christmas gift Antti.

That is fine looking blade Mariusz I like the slender sugata. How long it is? As for what kodachi is for me, I see it as a small tachi. However I think that there is wiggling room in the term at least for me. Kotoken Kajihara states in Nihonto Yogo Jiten that average length of the tachi is around 85 cm and any tachi much shorter or longer are called kodachi or odachi respectively. For kodachi koshirae he writes "Kodachi koshirae means a small tachi koshirae that to put kodachi into it. This koshirae is intermediate between tachi koshirae and katana koshirae." Here is the image of kodachi koshirae from the book: Personally I tend to see tachi that are longer than 3 shaku as odachi and those that are around 2 shaku as kodachi. That's my current understanding which will evolve as I learn more. In Seskos Koto-Kantei book you can see couple kodachi, 2 of them are around 55 cm and 2 are around 60 cm. Generally in books that I have kodachi are around that length. Longest that I can find on quick browse through is Kunihira kodachi from Sano museums "curve book" and it's 63,2 cm. I think that slender sugata is also necessary for kodachi attribution as there are many swords in my books that are only bit over 60 cms but are still classified as regular tachi by the same experts. Hopefully we can gather information to this thread, as I have also often wondered about kodachi.

Here is the pic that Arnold hinted about, I was taking a pic of it as he replied.

I think it's quite common to ask bit higher price out here where we live. Not that many Japanese swords are probably sold in the Norway (I would believe it's the same as in Finland ). I know when I'm selling replica swords I'm asking a small premium as swords are not common sale object here (and I'm trying to earn small profit too ). So even though you might see items cheaper in larger markets you have to take account the prices of importing them, for example we have 24% VAT here, I don't know how it is in Norway. Add to that how the seller might want a profit of varying margin too. Not really helpful as I just rambled some thoughts out. I think you can get help with that wakizashi too if you want. You can for example post a pic of the papers and get an identification to those.

I think it's sometimes hard to use adjectives when describing things as like Jean said people have their own thoughts about such. I have lots and lots of hada terminology in my books and I don't understand even the half of them yet. However I think that rough hada might be translated to jihada tatsu or hadamono. Here is one amazing article by Yoshikawa Kentaro that explains this in great detail (among lots of other things): http://www.nihontocraft.com/Ura_Nihon_no_Toko.html I have previosly falsely thought that hadatachi also implies "rough" hada but now I understand it actually means the visibility and "standing out" pattern. So if hadatatsu means "rough" hada then hadatachi means "standing out" hada. Of course both can to my understanding apply at the same time also.

http://www.militaria.co.za/nmb/viewtopi ... 1&p=174261

That video left me bit speechless, and I'm not even a tsuba guy but that tsuba is just amazing...

I praise the person who donated the sword, as in the museum it can be enjoyed by many. According to Yamanaka the origin of Shimazu name for the sword is not known. Also look at the bottom part of Yamanaka notes. As the Newsletters were published between 1968-1972 so during that time someone was selling A Shimazu Masamune, of course as there are no pictures it's impossible to say if it was the real sword that was for sale. And you can read Yamanakas opinion about the sword he saw.