Curran

My first thought was Choshu over Bushu. Lead fills in the nakago ana? That is a bit unusual for a Choshu or Bushu. That threw me a little bit, but I would chalk that up to having been added much later. Given my hard lean towards flower and tree designs, I remember having seen this design before. Not common. Memory keeps saying Choshu, though I doubt any one school owned this design. The inlay has a bit more of the Bushu flair to it. Ultimately, I'd let the iron tip my opinion between Choshu vs Bushu.

I am late to this thread and will have to read it in more depth to see if I can add any value. For now, here is one I have owned for a while. Thought it has gotten some surprising interactions out of tsuba scholars smarter than me, I have never inquired too much.

Not Ko-Nara. While there was a range on Ko-Nara designs, this is fairly far from from the Ko-Nara examples that I know.

Wow. That is a lot of work. Thank you @MauroP Two or three old friends are listed in there. Good to see them again.

Well, you know, a monster blade with a horimono to Hachiman comes out of the saya.... that band on the koshirae starts up the music Popeye style, and the lion shows it has some serious claws still sharp...

I know that I'm venting. I've got the mindspace and philosophical bend to try to Amor Fati this into a pleasant trip to Japan. I've never seen the sakura in spring. My tsuba live in Japan now. It might be nice to visit them there.

Don't. Give up on papering. It is over. Seriously. No, -really-, don't second guess this. DOA. So many headwinds for USA collectors, unless the Supreme Court actually rules against the current Tariff regime. I sent stuff before the Tariff shenanigans began. At present, it looks like I actually have to go to Japan to retrieve them.

Once more unto the breach. Otherwise, we shall flick your ear in this life.

That beautiful Higo copper patina. It always makes me jump mentally to Bizen ware and tea ceremony. Sometimes the Higo metal has that same micro texturing as Bizen ware. Probably was intentional, at least in the Hirata and Jingo (Shimizu) kinko works like this one. Nice tsuba.

Quite the rig all the way around. Right down to the sageo AND the shirasaya. I was going to praise the shirasaya before I even before I saw the stamp. Maybe the horn has been restored, but the same is exceptional quality. That is all around a 'flex' piece, quietly very strong all around. Beautiful looking blade too. It was made for quiet lion "umph" musculature when original, and looks so well maintained that it now has an old old lion beauty to it. I don't even know what material was used for under the saya lacquer. Interesting. @Okan Please take careful care of that one. Exceptional condition from head to toe. Wow. Definitely deserves to be on display with the right curator.

I wish I could unsee that one. wow. I do like the one that @When Necessary posted.

For starter's you can get Ito-san's books and the translations available. At times, groups have hired translators to do various Japanese texts. I have some of those translations, but not the rights to publicly share them. And I am in no rush to give up competitive advantage to AI. A simple example that many people know is the koban shape of the Hayashi tsuba seppa dai, especially nidai and sandai. Some like the Nishigaki and Hayashi had no problem intruding the design onto the seppa dai (hidden by seppa or tsuka). Pics attached. These are some of the largest seppa dai you will see in Higo, and the Kamiyoshi followed their Hayashi forebearers with some large seppa dai in late edo. Saya had gotten thicker n thicker by then. A Kamiyoshi pic attached, though it seems to have been spun 90 degrees. Kamiyoshi mostly lost the koban shape of the Hayashi, though sometimes did a darn good utsushi. Others like shodai Akasaka Tadamasa had rather pointy egg shaped seppa dai. I don't own or have an example of that.

Okay- teasing you a bit: you want a simple grand formula, then go with E=mc^2 More serious: with each school and each maker, there are _SOFT_ rules about size, shape, finish, and %_percentage of seppa dai vs total volume displacement of the tsuba. The seppa dai size is partially constrained by the surface area displacement of the saya and the tsuka. A tsuba with a seppa dai so much larger than the saya and tsuka face displacement = looks weird and unaesthetic. At least amongst the Higo schools, certain schools and certain generation had specific rules. Thus the seppa dai is a very important kantei point amongst Higo schools. This is also true of Akasaka tsuba. This tsuba has a seppa dai and hitsu ana % that is greater than almost anything seen from 1500 to 1910. It has ratios only seen in tanto tsuba, but it is definitely not a tanto tsuba. The far most likely reason you might end at this sort of ratio is if you are creating a tsuba for display that is not meant to be mounted, free of mounted aesthetics, .....----or is for a massively thick non-Momoyama/Edo saya and tsuka. Therefore: either it is a very eccentric late Edo or Meiji era tsuba, or it is a 20th century work. Those are my thoughts.

Yes. I thought that likely too. Other than some of the ratios being very Un-Edo, it is a very well made tsuba. Someone had skills.

Oooff. I had similar thoughts, but the geometry seems younger. Beginning to think it is Meiji or newer. Very well made, so I hesitate at saying post WWII. Size ratio of the seppa dai and the hitsu-ana do open up to me the idea of whether it possible it was made by a talented Japanese artists somewhere in the 1960s or so? But there is a lot of good workmanship in there. I find this one challenging.