francois2605

I just bought a wakizashi from Luis and he's a very nice person to deal with, always responsive to requests and messages. As often, the sword was better in hands than in pictures.

I counted 144 tsuba (which is 12 x 12), I think you reached perfection. One more would break the symmetry. Joke aside, that's a nice collection you have here, thanks for sharing. About your question, I would say it depends on multiple factors: - Your financial means - Whether you're still having fun adding new pieces - Whether you have the room to store them - Your wife's tolerance

Did you buy it from Hitendo ? They seem to have nice swords but I never took a chance because I think they're not good enough at shooting swords: The details of the hada and hamon are usually not visible in their pictures.

Could you please provide pictures of the nakago (both sides), a full picture of the bare blade and measurements (nagasa, sori, motohaba, etc). Those pieces of information will help selling your sword.

@1kinko: Open Robert's profile page here and click the button "Message" to send him a Personal Message (PM):

I don't know the history of those 2 prints and I could be completely wrong but my impression was that the second print was issued because it was not possible to source the book because of the limited number of books available on the market (owners would not sell their copy).

Those diamonds are wonderful, really high class, superb job !

That's an interesting topic with interesting answers. 1. The hada. I used to look the hamon first because that's the most visible feature of a sword and one day I purchased a gendaito (via NMB) with a vivid masame and this made me realize the swords I had bought until then were missing this critical feature. The hamon has to be there but I put more emphasis on the hada now. 2. Utsuri like others. I read about it, didn't understand what that meant. Then I attended my first (and only) token in France in October 2019 where a sword with utsuri was displayed. I had the sword in hand and was unable to see the utsuri until someone mentioned it. That's my only experience with utsuri: one of those where you realise that you can't understand until you see it by yourself. 3. Can you explain the secrets of quenching a sword ? How do you predict the final curvature ?

Since noone said it... About the stamp on the "other side", you can find more information in Bruce's great reference doc here ( More specifically: It would be great if you could show close-up pictures of the hamon, kissaki and hada. Edit: You can read more about that famous company on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Manchuria_Railway

In case you don't have the book George mentioned.

Oh Neil, this is gorgeous 😍 Can you share the translation of the kinpun-mei (if you have it) ?

There is a Yoshikuni in "An Oshigata Book of Modern Japanese Swordsmiths 1868-1945", just adding the info about him here.

I second JP's advice about Akamatsu Taro. You can often find them online on Japanese sites. There's one currently for sale in Europe here: https://www.japanszwaard.nl/z21.html (JP pointed me to this page earlier) The blade is absolutely massive, you will be shocked just by the size of the shirasaya.

Aoi Arts just added a Mantetsu to their inventory: here. Attaching the picture here for posterity.

Thanks all for your answers, this is very informative. Neil, I'm stunned by the koshirae on your 2nd picture: what a beauty 😍