Bugyotsuji

John, without going into detail, I have heard that the koza-ne were alternately leather and iron, leather, iron, certainly the ones in the Nodo-wa throat piece, to combine strength with lightness.

Oliver Cromwell?

I wish!

Happy Christmas, Carlo. Well, it's gone beyond that time of the week, but things have been fairly quiet down this end of Honshu. Wish I could get up to Edo more often and perhaps one day meet the boating fraternity on the Edo-gawa. Since we got rained on and my armour/armor got soaked, I have been looking at completing a replacement set for wet days. Most of the stuff I already have, but I had sold my helmet to help pay for the black outfit. Yesterday I spotted a rather unusual helmet, a 'Toppai', which is said to have European influence in it. (Think Spanish conquistadors?) Part swap and part cash sealed the deal. Got a Mae-date thrown in, and bought another as a spare. (Goodbye to my good old Netsuke flintlock lighter, though. ) It is adorning the helmet post on the armour/armour hanger in the hall. Just a question of when the wife spots it... hehehe gulp :|

I've heard of Santa Ana, but she did not suffer from wind this year, I believe. Just heard through the grapevine that most of the dealers wound up with hefty losses after they counted their hotel bills, stall fees and travel expenses.

We know that the Mongols wore silk shirts. Silk was light and strong, and could take an arrowhead into the body without allowing it to pierce the skin and cause infection. So we should not forget use of silk in Japanese armor/armour. I am thinking of Ko-te in particular which often had silk backing to the chain mail.

The Korakuen Gardens were built ostensibly as pleasure gardens in order to keep the Tokugawa central authorities smiling, but many of the garden's features had a secret secondary defensive function. One such feature is a small zigzag bridge over one of the streams, made of 砂岩 sandstone which was particularly suited to mass sword sharpening. Photo borrowed from here: http://www.geocities.jp/onyadosuzume/ne ... ruki3.html

See this parallel thread, Jason. viewtopic.php?f=15&t=4319

Hi Grey. How many to go now? If your fonts are limited, you could try posting here with an explanation of the bits you want to put together, and perhaps one of the two experts Messers Moriyama/Morita can help you by posting some cut-and-pastable examples for you here. I usually keep a Kanji Gen to hand as it shows the old forms of the characters, and a similar function Chinese dictionery. Doesn't help if the computer won't produce it though..

Hmmm... I am seeing something like...

xxToadxx Open the Swordsmith Database top right of this page, and write Kanetsugu in the little box for Mei, and press search, and he may the very bottom one on the resulting page.

This looks really good, but it doesn't work for me. Perhaps I need to download Chinese fonts.

Is this the one you were looking for. Nice and easy to use for general stuff, but not really very comprehensive. http://www013.upp.so-net.ne.jp/santai/santai.htm (Do you need the links for downloading the software for the heavy duty stuff?)

Well, it seems a few people have looked at it, but no definitive answers yet, so let me offer a quick stab. Be prepared for corrections! PS The second character of the smith's name is hard to read like that, sideways and in that light.

Two funny things happened today. Needing some material for a class this afternoon, I pulled out a series of prints called Kanadehon Chushingura by, I thought, Utagawa Kunisada III. I mentioned in this thread somewhere that I bought these some years ago and had cleaned them up a bit. Well, as I was preparing the class, I stumbled across an Italian auction house on the internet which had sold Scene 8 in the series of these Ukiyo-e hanga, and the identical picture was listed as printed by Utagawa Kunisada I. Either the auction house is fibbing, or my set of prints is a lot older than I had thought. Not only that, but some time ago I had also by coincidence bought a single print from another series of the Chushingura, of scene 6. The signature says Ichiyosai Toyokuni. Now I could be wrong, but the more I read, the more convinced I am that this is actually the same person, Utagawa Kunisada I, using the later Toyokuni name. (Toyokuni III?) Are my prints possibly all done by the same artist? A third funny thing is some old wrapping paper that a dealer had used to wrap up an antique I had bought. It turned out to be two cover scenes for two different sets of woodblock prints by Hiroshige, stuck together. Originals, but in poor condition and black with dirt. Using a method that I saw on TV I cleaned them up until hidden scenes appeared out of the grime. Hiroshige, who the Japanese like to call Ando Hiroshige, and who was also called Utagawa Hiroshige, cooperated on some series with Toyokuni, with Hiroshige doing the backgrounds, and Toyokuni/Kunisada doing the figures. These two cover scenes for two of the woodblock series are signed by both artists. I could pull the backing sheets off and maybe separate them like Siamese twins, but I don't dare.

As I put in my first post above, "aya?/michi/yuki/yori?, " the zui can be read in various ways in names, if you have a name dictionary.

Looks like Kanekiyo to me. 兼清

Hamano ("Shozui") Masa-... aya?/michi/yuki/yori?, = zui

Thank you for offering your input, Moriyama san. Much appreciated.

This one has also got me puzzled. Can anyone read it, if it will just upload for me? PS My Chinese exchange students tell me they see 逸　or 迭　(Itsu, or Tetsu) for the first Kanji, and 派 (-ha) for the second. My feeling is that the second might rather be 成　(-sei), giving 逸成　'Issei'??? There was an artist called 逸民 Itsumin but the known and listed signatures do not coincide.

When did that second photograph appear?

All I can see there are the first two characters saying 'Two' and 'Thousand', then something (six?) 'Hundred'?

You bastard, Brian. I know you found it, but I was hoping you would lose interest and I would then sneak around later and procure it ... grrrr ....... PS Congratulations. I have to agree. The stepped off-sets (?) are quite unusual.

You're absolutely right, Moriyama san, I am going blind in my old age... The rest of the information stands, though!!! I actually looked up Masaharu, but for some reason wrote Masakiyo... erk.... too eager to please and I trip over myself in my hurry.

Hi Brian, good to see you've pulled out of the double whammy of bronchitis and jet lag! Your tsuba says Masakiyo 政清 with Kao, and I have five Masakiyo on my list, two from Tokyo, one Bushu, one Nagaoka, and one Satsuma. (NIce tsuba!) Warning: Above reading is incorrect. Please see following post. Apologies!