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Bugyotsuji

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Everything posted by Bugyotsuji

  1. Kunitaro San, two of my Chinese exchange students have confirmed your reading as being correct. Many thanks again.
  2. Perhaps the "lucky treasure" carried by such ships could include products of the Nabeshima Pottery?
  3. Mmm... I like that Kunitaro San. Many thanks! Black ship? Yes, those masts and rigging certainly do not suggest a Chinese junk.
  4. Could 去 来 mean 'coming and going' ? and the rest 福建 province in China? 慶 Kei, 'congratulations' ...or Amoy アモイ シアメン a town in Fukien, Fujian Province from whence many people set sail to other countries? and 清 Qing of the Qing Dynasty 清朝...??? or are all these lucky words 福 縁 慶 晴?
  5. I know it is better not to post until you are 100% sure, but even so, here is a 75% version based on the upside-down signature! 関住 川崎 兼泉作 (?)
  6. This little guinomi has 長春 written on the base, indicating it is by Ogasawara ? Choshun of the Imari, Nabeshima pottery. The writing on the side has me puzzled. The title Tailwind Voyage 順風相送 in Japanese "Junpu So-so" seems to be a sea chart or description of voyages kept by China Sea Chinese sailors in the 14th and 15th C, in the Ming Dynasty. (Lately it is being quoted to support China's claims on those islands half-way between Taiwan and Okinawa, but that is not the purpose of this request.) Can anyone tell me what the rest of the writing says? I can see 去 福縁X晴 来 ? but what does it mean? Whoops, pics 2 & 3 are the wrong way round!
  7. Or even an art name, suggesting that the artist lived/worked in a group called the "Literature State Castle" deliberately substituting 文 for 武? Ah, so you think that the name starts earlier and the last two characters mean a "true likeness" or "faithful copy'?
  8. Just trying to think why such a thing might not be welcome and one possibility which comes to mind among others is that the sword would have to be registered here. This is not an easy thing to do for the average person, so just imagining the task alone might put them off. Many sword owners here keep their ownership completely secret. They may not wish others to know of the existence of the family treasure. They may be afraid of the wrong sort finding out and burgling the place, with the resultant responsibility afterwards for "negligence". Would they need to install a safe in the house? The husband might be agreeable, but once his wife finds out then the whole deal could get thrown out. Nowadays people live in much smaller houses, not the large Kominka of old. Does the sword have a bloody history? Even such a possibility alone could be enough to freak anyone out; Japanese tend to be quite superstitious. Even so, rather than doing nothing, contacting one person in the family and popping the question does seem like a good idea.
  9. Eric, yes it has been a really interesting discovery for me, but to most people this is probably the most mind-crackingly boring thing in the world! Glad to know that some people are pulling them out in wonder and seeing things anew! Season's greetings.
  10. My computer does not express some of the Kanji there, but the lower half seems to be The third character may be an old form of Toride/Sai 塞, possibly meaning the Fortress of Bushu, wherever that is? Then the family name Motoshige, and the first name (101 ways to read those two together), followed by 'copy of' or 'reproduction of'...? If anyone can adjust this in anyway I would be glad to learn. The above is just a guess based on some old reference books here.
  11. The first half is easy 豊臣秀吉公小具足 
  12. This time I made sure to get some shots of the Karuka from the Lord's butterfly Mon pistol which I mentioned above (Pistol itself not shown). The ramrod looks to have been covered in lacquer which has mostly rubbed off, leaving only the exposed part. The slimmer end is decorated with a silver cap.
  13. That sounds pretty impressive. Congratulations, Paul!
  14. OK, I'll go with that. I was looking at pic 3 only!
  15. Thanks for the close-ups, Jan. I see what you mean about a screw. The red one may have had a square hole which became mis-shapen from use of string or some kind of jag or worm fitment. (Which way is the end? Is that a spiral on the left?)
  16. Justin, it sounds as though what you did was just fine. A wooden ramrod will look roughly the same for any Tanegashima, but the differences will be governed by barrel length, the diameter of the ramrod holder and the caliber/bore. Yours will be quite long and thin I should imagine. Guns look funny with nothing there, so cosmetically almost any material will do; oak has to be good. I was interested to discover what the most highly recommended wood would be and why. Over the years I have had occasion to make several of them, and you can see a collection on page 10 of this thread. You may find that the ideal ramrod slots into its pocket, hits the far end, and given a quarter twist will lock into place, with the flared end coming to rest just about level with the edge of the muzzle. The flare can be gradual the whole length, or it can be more sudden to gain a larger tamping face.
  17. PS Last night I cut a slotted hole in the best ramrod and despite a wobbly start managed to finish up with a passable result. Phew!!! Pics of holes later, maybe.
  18. Thanks for the sensible input, Brian. The funny story is that almost all the ones I saw were rectangular. For this reason all the experimental ones I made were slotted. Round at a friend's house last week (a sword expert, but not yet compeletely up to speed with guns... surely getting there though) and saw that all of his ramrods had round holes. For this reason I made the latest one with a round hole, partly in respect to him and partly because you can later change a round hole to a square one once you have the time and the confidence. On Sunday I was round at the Taicho's house and showed him the red ramrod. "Don't you know that the holes are supposed to be slotted?" he asked me in an accusatory voice. I laughed, as the sword expert who said the only old ones he had ever seen were round, was also sitting there. I then pulled out in proof my long piece-de-resistance, "Ta-taaaa!" and then to my horror saw it was blank, and remembered that I had hesitated to cut any hole in it in case I botched it, and had been waiting for the right moment to take the plunge. Not a leg to stand on therefore, as all my slotted ramrods were at home. At that moment he pulled out the very special beautifully fashioned short one from the Daimyo pistol we discussed above, and to his horror he saw that it has a round hole!!! :lol:
  19. As an adjunct to the ramrod discussion, some of the old ones have a hole near the tip of the reverse (inner/thinner) end. Some are solid. The hole indicates that the ramrod also functioned in reverse as a cleaning or scouring stick, with your cleaning cloth or whatever being fed through the hole. These holes can be round, or in some cases a rectangular slit-like window. Whether they should really be one or the other, ie round or oblong, is an on-going debate and I have had some amusing times trying to find out whether there was ever a standard acceptable shape for it and what the reason for that might be. How are yours, Jan? (Certainly it is easier to make a round hole than cut a well-balanced box window.)
  20. Hi Jan, thanks for showing those! You have restored my sanity a little! :lol: Can you tell if the bottom one is one piece of wood, or is the head joined on? It's a nice example for study. I am guessing it has been added. The join is a problem as it is a potential weak spot when ramming a jammed ball, for example, so it has to be made unbreakable in some way, even under sideways force. On Sunday I showed my 'good' ramrod to our Taicho, who has just got out of hospital. He looked it up and down and seemed surprised. Then he reached over and picked up a pistol that he owns, of such wonderful quality that it must have been owned by the Daimyo here. (Another story in itself) He pulled out the small ramrod and silently handed it over. The wood was of a very dark patina. The gradual taper was achingly consistent throughout, ending in a wide face for tamping. The other end was enclosed for about 4 or 5 cm in a chased silver cap, with a bespoke circular hole in it. Inside the hole you could see the wood, indicating it had been reduced to allow the silver grip to fit flush. He laughed and said he had once had a ramrod made up for another gun by a professional artisan but it had cost him so much that he had vowed to make his own from then on!
  21. Just reverting for a minute to ramrods, again! A swordsmith gave me a collection of wood cutoffs about a week ago, telling me they were examples of Japanese red oak, the very best kind, called Ichii Akagashi, Ichii-gashi, or Yew Red Oak. One of these was in a rod form, so I cut it to fit the short cavalry pistol, tapered it, polished it, flattened the head, and opened a hole in the other end for the cleaning cloth. As I polished it with finer and finer sandpapers, that familiar deep 3D effect that you saw earlier in the wooden butt of the long target pistol began to appear in the ramrod. Mokume! Toramoku! (This is not apparent in the following photos as final polishing took place later; it was only then that the hidden beauty revealed itself.) Anyway the result for me is that I now recognize why Ichii-gashi oak was so popular for spear handles, gun stocks, ramrods etc. It must have given artisans the most satisfactory all-round results through the centuries. Notice the redness of the wood alongside the Hinoki which I had bought at the Home Center and used for an earlier ramrod. With the hinoki I had attempted to make it look old, but with the akagashi I haven't needed to do anything apart from shaping and polishing. No wax, no oil, no singeing, no charring, nothing. Perfect as is.
  22. Eric, what a beautiful set. Congratulations. You really have found a nice one. One thing I had forgotten is just how small these actually are. This evening I went upstairs and opened mine and was reminded that it is much smaller than it appears in the pictures. You have certainly found some beautiful illustrations. In the written description in Nobody San's link, it mentions a woman to go and fetch the arrows. For archery not to be boring you really do have to have lots of arrows, plus a useful someone to go and bring them all back again! :lol: Oh, and I think Koyumi and Yumi refer to the bow yes, but in a larger sense to archery, to the game itself. Kyu-do is the Way of the Bow, for example, where Kyu 弓 is another reading of the same word 弓 Yumi.
  23. Eric, those two pictures above seem to be the same scene but the wrong way round. Are you able to change them over? I think we found three names, two (Kyoto 'Yo-kyuba' & Edo 'Yaba') for the later outside version, and one earlier name 'Koyumi' for the indoors game. In one of Moriyama San's links (the first) there is a very good explanation of this history and the original name for this game seems to be 小弓 small bows, Koyumi. The lengths of the bow, the arrows and distance to the target were generally fixed. They knelt and rested the left arm on the left knee. Later in Heian times, it came to be called 楊弓 Yo-kyu. Yo-kyu because the material from which the bows and arrows were made was Yo-ryu 楊柳. 矢と言えば相棒は弓、枕草子は百九十九段(文学大系では二百十五段)で「あそびわざは小弓。碁。さまあしけれど、鞠(まり)もおかし。」と遊戯のトップに小弓を挙げている。  この小弓を岩波書店の古語辞典で調べてみると「遊戯用の小弓、またその弓を使ってする遊戯。左膝(ひざ)を立て、その上に左肘(ひじ)を支えて引く。」とある。  ついでに楊弓(ようきゅう)を引いてみると「平安時代の小弓が定式化した弓術。座ったまま、約八十四糎(二尺八寸)の弓で約二十六糎(九寸)の矢を約十三.六米(七間半)先の的に射る。室町時代の公家に行われ、近世、賭物として庶民に流行し、後期には、矢取り女を客寄せに使った楊弓場(ようきゅうば)が多くできた。」とある。 もしかして馬場(うまば)という所はこの楊弓場(ようきゅうば)の走りではあるまいか。  その理由の第一は弓を射るには精神統一をはかるため静粛を必要とするのに何故か②「人おおくさわぐ」とそれを邪魔するような行動をとっていること。  その賑やかな雰囲気を清少納言は「小弓射るに、片方の人、しはふきをし、まぎらはしてさわぐに念じて音高く射て当てたるこそ、したり顔なるけしきなれ」と百八十三段に詳しく書き残している。  第二に本物の弓であるならば座って射ることなど不可能であるが、④「右近中将みな着きたまえる」とみんな着座していること。 なお③の原文は「手つがいにて真弓(まゆみ)射るなり」となっているから二人づつが組み合って成績を競い合うマッチプレイだったようである。  また、真弓(檀)はニシキギ科の落葉樹で小弓を作る材料だから真弓と小弓の間に矛盾はないとみていいだろう。  江戸時代になるとこの楊弓場(ようきゅうば)が色々な書物に登場してくる。
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