Bugyotsuji

越前安継 Echizen Yasutsugu 南蛮鐵? Nanban tetsu?

Thanks for the updates Brian. You are constantly there for us in the cloud, even though you have this personal pain to bear for a little while yet. And the way you describe it, the NMB sounds like a carefully tended and well-oiled machine, when everyone plays whatever part they can.

The Ikeda Daimyō family used a version of this Gion Mamori as one of their Mon; this is still said to be a link to their Sengoku time as Christians. As with many of these things it contains lashings of deniability, though.

So what is the depiction?

As John says above, it’s the Jinshin registration number from the great roundup in early Meiji. 2,979 It says 入間県 Iruma Ken, a prefecture set up in 1871 and dissolved in 1873, corresponding to the west of Saitama today. https://ja.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/入間県 PS The gun is therefore older than that, certainly early to mid 1800s. It is hard to give precise dates for Tanegashima, but little things give us indications.

How long is a piece of string? How much is a car today? How much is a house today? How much is an education today? They are what you can afford, and there should be something for (almost) everyone. One counter for “a suit” of armor is “Ichi Ryō” 一領 It is said that “ryō” means residence or domain, according to one explanation, i.e. it could cost the price of a plot of land and a house.

Bob, try 廣正

Several sets of 47 Ronin woodblock prints were produced in different formats by different artists. Natually you are wanting ones from this same Seichu Gishiden series. Nishiki-e 誠忠義士伝 - 歌川国芳 -『浮世絵・錦絵』などを見る【みんなの知識 ちょっと便利帳】

Sadly my good friend Mr Hashimoto died suddenly this summer, so young. Besides being a general all-round good guy at the Osafune workshops, he was brilliant at tsuka-maki and was in Tokyo at the time for the artisans' awards ceremony. Such a waste of all that training and experience when so few young people are carrying on the tradition.

Had a look, Colin, and made sure there was no extra play. Still no room for tsuba or seppa, so it's back again to the single silver seppa/tsuba thingy. Although the copper top plate of the fuchi is comparatively thick, the fuchi fits perfectly. The worn nanako on the fuchi go nicely with those on the kashira. The koikuchi, however, is of a rather insect-eaten black buffalo horn, so it is possible that this tanto koshirae was originally an aikuchi and the fuchi itself had been badly eaten away. I like your idea of sawing off a section of the end of the tsuka wood, and will float that with the artisans if it does not come up in conversation. Meanwhile, here are some of the tsuba I've been playing with.

I like your thinking. Apart it comes once more, when I get home. Hoping you are right!

I am still trying to imagine what has happened to this blade. Possibly it was in shirasaya, registered, and someone had the bright idea of putting together a koshirae package. The saya and bashin seems to be iron-based.The tsuka however is shakudo with a nice pair of matching menuki, and ... maybe the fuchi and kashira are random, or as you say, perhaps the fuchi has been changed? The blade does kind of fit, but not perfectly; the two mekugi holes are too near the habaki to allow for a fat tsuba, or a even a super thin tsuba and seppa set. It looks like a new hole for either the nakago or the tsuka if a tsuba is to be fitted. Anyway, thanks everyone for the thoughts so far, nudging me in hopefully in the right direction for this blade. I always end up trying to 'improve' what I find out there, in some small way righting the wrongs that others have found too troublesome or too expensive to bother with. :nuts:

Ignore that guy above! Me, me, me, I collect Hosokawa artefacts! Congratulations Okan on a lovely package!

Ah, now I understand where you are coming from. Thank you. Yes, that makes sense. I spent some time just now trying to find some evidence of hamon that could actually be photographed under the kitchen light! Will check the shots and see if anything came up... warts and all. May be beyond redemption.

At the munemachi Lewis, the kasane is roughly 0.6 cm by my non-digital Shinwa. The thickest part of the nakago is just behind that at 0.7 cm, covered by the habaki.

Not sure Lewis. I'll get it out and measure it. (That's the thickness at the habaki, right?) Yes, I love these little bashin, though they do not come up too often.

Re Hidetsugu/Eiji Mei. Visiting the place where my books have been moved to, I found the book I wanted and looked up the Mei on the fuchi. There were three Kinko artisans with the name Eiji 英次. I wonder which one might have signed with just 英次+Kao. This Yokoya school work has similarities: 小柄　貞義（花押）　伊勢海老図　　 | 日本刀・刀剣・名刀・短刀の販売・通販・買取は和敬堂へ Photo of entry follows below... .

Well, I hope so Alex. If/when there is any interesting update, I’ll post here.

Thanks for the feedback, Ray. Food for thought...

Overall

Recently I bought a melange tanto more for the tosogu than for the blade. I was debating whether to put it under Nihonto here or under Tosogu, but since it is a registered blade I have decided to respect that. 1. The blade is slim, but with thick kasane. The condition is not good, to put it politely. One side has the remains of 八万大菩薩 Hachiman Dai Bosatsu. The other has a small pit or hole in it. The hamon is suguha, but does not scream anything special to me. The silver habaki fits very tightly, but there is no tsuba, more like one thick silver seppa. It is unsigned, so cannot be declared gimei! I have a bag of Tantō tsuba, but none fits, like the ugly sisters’ feet and Cinderella’s slipper. 2. The Saya is an interesting lacquer finish, and the saya fittings are iron: there is an iron bashin in the narrow slot. The tsuka menuki are two branches of Japanese apricot (plum) in shakudo and gold. The shakudo fuchi has a wonderful suaka lobster on a fine nanako ground, and is signed Hidetsugu + kao. The work is good but the Mei could have been added later. The kashira is also shakudo with nanako-ji, and the design looks to be noshi (?) jinja hangings. My plan is to show this to some artisans and get feedback on it. Is the package worth saving, or improving? Will I be having the blade polished, for example, or should it be left alone as a kind of tsunagi? Should I let this one slip quietly back into the market? General shots follow...

I can't see that in my mind's eye, Stephen. Why would it need to roll back and forth?

Nice print. Might be worth noting that old kabuto bowls made with joined (riveted) triangular sections generally fell into two types, 'suji kabuto' (as in your print) and 'hoshi kabuto'. Hoshi ('stars) kabuto had spiked rivets protruding from the surface, whereas suji kabuto had a flat/smooth surface and the seams were usually either visible or even accentuated with standing edges.

Michael, sadly/happily, most of what we wear is genuine old armour, generally Momoyama to Edo period. There are some bits (small primer flasks, footwear etc.) that we sometimes make up but in our troop we pride ourselves on trying to keep it all authentic as much as possible. The kabuto that I am wearing recently has special value papers for example, and I regularly wear all of the kabuto you see in the empty room above. This means that we have to learn how to repair sympathetically as there is constant damage and degradation. (Personally speaking I have a 'good' old pair of sune-ate, which I switch around with a pair from Marutake, to slow such degradation, depending on the weather and the venue.) At the moment I am doing an armo(u)r society translation, and once again giving thanks for the years of experience wearing and repairing and the familiarity with this and that word or expression. And yet there is still so much I do not know. (There are re-enactment troops and festivals where everyone wears repros, though, as you know.) As to the swords, they are all genuine koshirae, but owing to the laws here the blades inside are substitute tsunagi/takemitsu. Once after a public display a member of the public tried to draw my sword, without permission! The guns are all real too, repros not being permitted under Japanese law. My oldest one, a Kunitomo pistol that you can see being fired in the first video, is from around 1600 -1610. She played a trick on me though. Oops...

This tsuba was made for 明弘, Akihiro(?) the guy on the right.