Bugyotsuji

Yes, Netsuke are a minefield, and many auction houses have not a clue. :lol: Can you get a shot of the first half of signature? The one above is partly in shadow.

Apologies. This went up as I fell asleep last night and today I have been out all day. I had a quick look and did a quick link from here to the Netsuke site, without having to go through the usual hassle of logging in here again. As you will see the venerable Vlad thinks they are 'genuine' and he prefers the coins. As you will also see, I have avoided coming down either way on these. It pays to remain suspicious, which the auction house probably was. They do not look like modern tourist pieces to me though.

Thanks for the follow-up. It sounds as though they are happy for it to be something from the remote past which has no relevance today.

A small pic, but a very interesting comparison Malcolm. Many thanks.

The English title on Wiki for this work: "A Pirate Steers his Boat" must be wrong. "A Pirate keeps an Eye on the Compass and Night Sky" might be better. NB Comparison of this Ukiyo-e with a photo of my compass above shows that the woodblock artist Kuniyoshi had his compass points back-to-front, or inside-out. Atmosphere 100%, Accuracy of detail 75%...

You are surely not the same Malcolm... The Tanegashima Mae-kanagu is very nice but sadly not for sale. It seems to be an illustration in the Nakamura Kiyoshi collection catalogue. (This word Mae-kanagu has now cropped up on three sites, Bonhams, M Fairley and Nakamura so I am ready to adopt it.)

Yes, I have several of those sets, but wow, that is way too expensive! (The site gave me the word "Mae-kanagu" for the clasp, however, for which I will be eternally grateful if it is definitive. We discussed here on NMB what word might be suitable but after several attempts drew a blank if anyone remembers.)

Eric's first print has been posted before in the discussion on putting Tangashima on wheeled carriages. The second one with the compass is great for me, both for the compass and for the clearly-shown Netsuke and anchor pouch clasp. I would like to create a link to the Netsuke site if I may. Many thanks. Henk-Jan... epic fail, and ouch! Malcolm's background information is so good that I am tempted to post some other prints to see what comes up.

Another good read, Malcolm. Thank you. And now we know that NE and NW were dangerous directions. When travelling, use your compass to make sure you scrupulously avoid either! (Enryakuji was one of my favorite places when I lived in Kyoto.)

Eric, Rashinban is correct, although my dictionary also mentions a word Rashingi. Sadly I know little about their history except that some late Edo Period castaways were astonished when rescued to see the quality and detail on Western sailing-ship compass dials. (eg Nakahama Manjiro and Hamada Hikozo, = Joseph Heco.) Somewhere, perhaps in this thread, I recall passing on a snippet of folklore I heard here that the primary function of an oriental compass was to tell accurately which way was unlucky and which way to go in order to avoid that direction, yet still end up in the same place, by a slightly more circuitous route. Fusui (Ch. Feng Shui) first, then practicalities! It seems that 子 Ne = Nezumi (mouse) was for North, and 午 Uma (go) meant South, and the line between them pointed to the North Star, Polaris, the Pole Star. A good friend lives in a place called 辰巳 Tatsumi (literally "Dragonsnake", or "Southeast"). This name is actually a compass direction measured from a famous tomb on the top of a prominent and meaningful mountain not too far away.

Agreed, and a magnificent hit on that Kendo breatplate at 50 meters!

Jumping a bit here, but I went round the house looking for compasses. Found these. The Kanji directions and the 12 zodiac points somehow attract me. The round wooden one is the oldest and the Kanji points simplest. They come up in antique markets quite often but it is hard to find one that does not have something wrong with it. The ship's compass with handle is broken and probably beyond fixing. A pity. The other brass ones do what it says on the box. One small and very portable, the other large and heavy, in custom box.

After all the excitement about finding a gun and a sword by the same smith Sukenobu, it embarrasses me to announce that as of today I have now sold this sword. The Mei showed they were different people, there being several Sukenobu in mid to late Edo, and it turns out that even the Meikan was wrong on this. Took a bit of a hit on it, but that cannot be helped. I have found leads to two further swords reputedly by this smith, however, which I intend to track down in the coming weeks. One is a Wakizashi and the other is a Hono-to 奉納刀 at a Jinja in SW Japan.

Many thanks for an interesting read.

Illustration of the above for positioning of cord tip. A) No B) Yes If you have problems with position A), then try cord angle and pinch permutations round to position B).

Hi Thomas, glad to see that you are active, but sorry to hear about the painful procedure. When I first joined the matchlock group I was always happy to be taken for a slap-up Yaki-niku meal afterwards. What slightly bemused me was the conversation. How many misfires had there been? Who was fool enough to admit they had a misfire and get hit by the resulting hoots of scornful laughter? It dawned on me that it was shameful to get it wrong, and shame can be a powerful tool towards getting it right next time. Off-hand I can think off these words with Hatsu in them. Happou 発砲 fire, Fuhatsu 不発 misfire, Guuhatsu 偶発 accidental fire, and Chihatsu 遅発　hangfire. Apart from guuhatsu, where your cord for some reason touches the priming powder before you are ready to fire, the rest are all either problems of how you loaded and primed the gun, or in the positioning of the match in the serpentine. How many times have I heard the members talking about this latter? Position of cord. Angle of pinch and length of tip protruding below the serpentine. Timing. Each gun is different, so using a borrowed gun means you may not get it right first, second or even third time. (BTW Do you always use exactly the same matchcord?) Having your own gun makes things much easier as you get used to its habits and the relative distance between the bottom of the serpentine and the center/centre of the pan & powder. I fire three guns at every display, and each one has a different peculiarity. Unless I concentrate hard I can get it wrong. When the leader shouts (Hinawa tsuke! = set your matches) you bring up the cord to your lips and give one blow on it (not two) to knock off the ash and see exactly how long the burning tip is for accurate placement into the serpentine. You now have a window of several seconds to fire. You may find that pushing the cord into the serpentine not straight, but diagonally back across/into the bottom edge corner of the serpentine wings (with a slight backwards angle) may be best. As it burns, it shortens across the mouth of the serpentine and continues to stay within the target burn area. I often burn my finger at this point. To do a complete display of perhaps seven shots without one misfire (a short hangfire is OK) is cause for self-congratulations. If the crowd laughs at us, the commentator sometimes announces over the speaker system that these are genuine old matchlocks and things can go wrong, ie humid weather affects the powder, the wind can blow some of the primer out of the pan, etc. Practice, quality of cord and correct placement are key to getting off good clean shots. There are other tips, like first pouring some priming powder into both a) the touch hole and b) down the muzzle, before loading the barrel with coarse powder, thus preventing coarse powder from getting to the touch hole channel with maybe gaps between the coarse powder chunks.

This looks like a good example of a percussion cap update to an older Ogino-Ryu matchlock. The lock looks completely replaced, and the breech end of the barrel looks as if it has had a wedge section ground away and a new nipple section inserted somehow.

Notice there is a previous page to those, Ian. I find all of them fascinating. The Vietnam/Annan ones seem to be of rather poor quality. I certainly wouldn't pay 3,000 (USD?) without a shot of the muzzle inside and out. (That first one's muzzle seems to have been cut out of the picture.) Apart from the decoration, very similar to Japanese matchlock design, as you say. The pan and lid strikingly so. The too-tight trigger guard and the slot for the trigger to pull back into are unusual for me.

Malcolm, I like that idea. There was always (as in Kabuki) an attempt to portray a different time other than the one people were actually in, to avoid offending anyone, especially the authorities. Many of the locks seem to be later percussion caps, even when portraying a much earlier historical incident. Certainly before Japan was urged to rearm against the barbarians in the late 1830s (?) I think that most Ukiyo-e Shi had never seen a real teppo, or the ones they saw on stage when portraying actors were clumsy wooden replicas. Renditions of guns in Ukiyo-e Hanga are in fact quite rare. I have a few original prints and, like the one above, a few downloaded off the internet.

The English description is wrong there. It's not rifling. One makibari is one complete diagonal winding around the full length of the barrel, Justin. (It was also called Kazura-bari at one time, or 'vine'-bound.) Han makibari is only half, and I guess nothing to be proud of, unless it's an early gun when makibari had only just been invented and was in its infancy. It could mean that the lower end of the barrel including the chamber is bound to provide extra prevention against the gun blowing up. There is a possibility that it means Ichi-makibari (which I cannot recall ever seeing written), in other words half of Niju, but I will have to check on this. It goes without saying that guns are safer from 二重　(double or two layer) Niju-makibari to So-makibari.

Malcolm, I think you are right on the button, as usual! :D This gun has no lock to it, but often in Ukiyo-e they have the wrong lock anyway!

Malcolm, again thanks for the background. The name seems to be a mixture of two famous founders of gunnery schools, Inatomi ("Inadome") Ichimusai, and Inoue Daikuro Nagayoshi. The gun's butt shape is closer to the Inoue School of gunnery though. A lovely composition.

From what I have been told, and from the way we are taught to absorb recoil with a spin of the body, up to 30 Monme were hand-held and fired in the field even standing up. The very weight of these things is astonishing, as you know Ron, so they must have had massive arm muscles. Naturally the butt is not placed against the shoulder, but the right hand grips the wasp-waisted tapered place behind the trigger and both arms absorb the recoil. In the event that proved impossible, they probably made sure no-one was standing right behind a Shashu. 100 Monme were laid upon a rice bale, for example, and behind the 射手 Shashu shooter a muddy bog ditch or a pile of futon was prepared for the gun's landing. Even though they are equivalent to cannons, they were dubbed 'hand cannons' by Westerners who observed them. PS As with many Ukiyo-e, Eric's print is rather inaccurate. That gun would rip out the man's armpit!

Apparently with 100 Monme ball the recoil is equivalent to two tons. In battle the gun was allowed to fly backwards onto a prepared landing area. We use 100 grams of blackpowder to blow the wad out of there. Notice his left foot, dancing to maintain his balance. I have seen our troop leader injure his hand, get knocked over backwards etc, but he always manages to catch the baby and hug it without damaging it. Less impressive, but here's me firing the black lacquer 20 Monme there on Sunday. Frame taken from an m-peg.

Our matchlock company leader has been ill, so on Sunday at Maizuru his 100 Monme was fired instead by Mr Y, Director of the Sword Museum. http://youtu.be/4QIKrwdkms4 (Notice his left hand is bound to the stock.)