Bugyotsuji

Morita San, that sounds like an awful lot of work to ask you to do. :|

The Fujiwara Effect. http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E8%97%A4% ... 9%E6%9E%9C Watch out this weekend for two typhoons (#27 & #28) interacting with each other, called the Fujiwara Effect, like two tops hitting and spinning off unpredictably. Sunday could get bad in Tokyo...

Thanks Alan. Yes I mentioned Clive Sinclair too.

This summer I was at a conference in London where Ian Bottomley spoke so eloquently. During one of the breaks I bumped into a good lady 'Objects Conservator' from the Fitzwilliam in Cambridge. During the course of our chat we touched on Tsuba and her eyes lit up. "Do you know anything about them?" she asked. "We have drawers full of them and no-one to advise us." "Well, I have about 50..." I was saying when she broke in, "You sound like just the person to come and sort them out!" "No", I protested, "Most are rubbish, and I know very little about them. You need someone like Ford Hallam to look at them." I suggested she Google him first to understnd the breadth and depth of his knowledge. If she has contacted you, Ford, my apologies first and foremost, but I was hoping that you might be able to give them a pointer in the right direction.

Fantastic link, Ken. Thanks.

The 'new' one with the iron tsuba looks like a chokuto with a Chu-kissaki, missing the habaki. The other two have roughly the same sori and kissaki, the tanto missing a tsuba.

Eric, the top illustration is posted earlier in this thread, but Holy Maloney, look at that rack below! Chris, thanks for the link. On their travels through Japan this month, Anthony and Jan from Sweden did some of that in Kagoshima last week.

Thank you kindly, Morita San. It's full of honorifics! Sadly, I am getting less meaning from that than I had imagined. Is it referring to a blade that has been polished, or reset in new koshirae for an occasion?

Mmmm... nice!

Today I bought an old somewhat worm-eaten bokuto with a large rusty iron tsuba. Iori mune. Saved from the tip? This can go on the stand with the old tanto bokuto so now the display feels a bit more 'authentic'.

Inside this empty box was a small sheath of paper, possibly originally around the saya of a presentation tanto.(?) Someone has transcribed the description to a larger sheet fixed inside the lid. Can anyone read the brushwork? (Standard modern Japanese writing is fine.) Many thanks in advance.

A Showa smith named Imaizumi Toshimitsu, see in list under west of Japan: http://japaneseswordindex.com/rank.htm wished to pass on his craft to his son after WWII. The son managed to chop off several fingers, so sadly had to give up sword smithing. He chose to run a restaurant nearby in Bizen Osafune which he calls Meito 名刀 Udon. Five of us (four are members of NBTHK) had lunch there yesterday and one of the ladies ordered the Meito Udon Special, which came with a battered blade in it. We asked the waitress what it was, and she said Anago. Thanks and well done to those who ventured replies!

Both partly right. Much more to it. A close shave though... ...but no bananas.

What is this mystery object? There are degrees of truth in the answer, (only the guilty parties will be able to tell the whole story), but in the meantime, ladies and gentlemen, the floor is open. (Oh, and yes, it is related to the nature of the forum in general.)

John, very interesting to hear your experience. Step by step we approach the heart of things. :

Eric, is that some degree of spiral, or straight grooves, would you know? I believe there were forms of rifling in Europe even before that.

Many thanks for the vote of confidence, Ron. On another note, I thought this might be a good illustration of why a smoothbore musketball was never as accurate as a rifled gun with a shaped bullet. Rifling the inside wall of the barrel will impart spin and a more accurate trajectory. A ball from a musket will head towards the general target area and maybe hit something, but not exactly the same spot each time. Warning, do not watch this more than once in succession, or you will be sucked in forever and ever and ever...! http://sports.cbsimg.net/images//visual ... nuckle.gif

'Kawamoto', yes, but many families with these same Kanji choose to read their name 'Ko-moto'.

If you need any shots of a similar butt-plate, my Tazuke gun's butt protector looks similar.

Mike, if you do get the pan and lid restored, look at Ron's example above this post for what to aim for. Notice the ama-ooi between the pan and the barrel, and the hollow hinge pin. Your gun still has many good things going for it and on top of some thorough TLC as Ron suggests, could be restored by someone with the right understanding and equipment, depending on where you are based, of course. Either way, it will look great on the wall. Ron, I am tempted to re-post my Kozuka Kwan-yu as he looks similar. Well, they all do... hahaha. viewtopic.php?f=2&t=16473&hilit=nagatsune

As Ron says, Tazuke School tended to have round-headed breech screws, but there were exceptions, especially as times changed and more variety became accepted. The larger guns on the other hand tended to preserve conventional features more, apparently. George, a sobering story of carelessness. One of the tubes of my Ch/K three-barelled Sanganju was blocked and some gentle twizzling removed what looked like fine black powder. This I kept in a container, hoping one day to have it analysed. It fizzes and pops when a flame is introduced to a little pile. Unblocking the Lantaka yesterday I scratched out a very little and found it was hard packed sand, so no problem there. One of our troop members bought a blocked cavalry matchlock early this year and they had great fun when they heated it with a blowtorch, they were saying. There must be so many blocked barrels out there, possibly in battle ... but no, I do not want to go there.

Thanks Mike. Well, there are still signs that it might be Tazuke Ryu school of gunnery, despite the 'reconstruction' that has taken place with the pan and lid. One quick question. When you removed the barrel looking for the signature, did you notice if the head of the large Bisen breech screw is round or square in shape? Just curious.

Not much to add to Ron's detailed post above, but I would second his request for additional photos, especially of the pan area with the lid open. The barrel may have been very rusty and cleaned with something quite abrasive. One thing about flat butts. Agreed that there were many that do not seem to come with any further attributes of any particular school, but a perfectly flat butt in combination with some other factors would immediately point towards the Tazuke Ryu school. Apart from the diagonal butt cut, they were often internal spring locks as Ron says, and had a distinctive sealed pan cover, for example, not the usual open-sided type. Tazuke were favoured by the Tokugawas and many were made in Kunitomo. The elaborate mekugi hole surrounds on your gun are reminiscent of Kunitomo or Hino in Nagahama, east of Lake Biwa but the gun is more a generic example of a Tanegashima matchlock without any real strong association with either geopgraphic area or school of gunnery. It looks as though it has had quite a lot of use. The pan will tell more.

Ron, many thanks for the background information. I bow before your superior knowledge as usual. Yes, I had read about the gift aspect of these guns, and that there are many fakes around. Luckily I did not pay an extortionate amount for this example. I have examined it all over, incidentally clearing the blocked barrel, and it still gives a feeling of genuine, not faked, age. The diameter of the touch hole is almost equal to the bore of the barrel, so it would not propel a ball with any great pressure. The lack of elaborate decoration somehow adds to my initial inclination, so I am still generally pleased with this acquisition. Although my interest lies primarily with Japanese Tanegashima guns, I have one 16th c three-barrelled iron pole gun from China (Korea?), and now this bronze baby Lantaka, meaning that both can represent for me the conscious or unconscious nearby horizons of that time and place in the world.

Yes, I noticed those blurred wheels too, Malcolm, and it set off a train of thoughts about how fast a bullock cart could be made to go, etc., and whether they had races. As to their portrayal in early art I have no idea. I wonder if Roman wall paintings ever showed wheels whizzing round like that? In the eclectic nature of this thread here is a little cannon I picked up recently, 1.1 cm bore, 7 inches (18 cm) overall, from out of a well-known Japanese collection. Presumably Japanese traders picked these up on their merchant voyages to SE Asia? Maybe even the Wako pirates used them on their ships? This one is quite a small example. The enlarged touch-hole suggests some use. The Japanese name ランタカ砲 seems to be a direct import of the Tagalog Lantaka, with 'ho' added to mean cannon. An early Christmas present to myself, methinks. http://bunka.nii.ac.jp/SearchDetail.do? ... eId=136811