francois2605

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

Very nice, thanks for the info Greg

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.

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 😍

Thanks Thomas, this could be it. From Sesko's: Will try to find pictures to confirm. Edit: Found a similar koshirae here 👍

Interesting, thanks Bruce. The koshirae contains a sword by Ishido Teruhide, I guess this could explain the higher quality seppa ?

I have some questions regarding this shin-gunto koshirae. How do you name this type of koshirae ? I'm referring to the one with the brown granular surface under the leather. I thought that this was some sort of unfinished saya but recently stumbled upon a similar one on the net and realised this was probably a "regular" finish. The surface of the leather cover also indicates that there is a semegane (you can see the bump on the 3rd sword in the picture). This makes me wonder about the overall state of the saya under the leather. I don't intend to remove the leather but I was wondering if you knew of people who removed the leather and what they found. Thanks,

I frequently receive packages from abroad and am still learning about the things which have to be explicitly added to the item descriptions. The process at customs will depend on who handles your package. Among the things I've recently learnt: - Explicitly mention that the item being imported is not considered "war material" - Break down the structure of the address for the sender (especially if from Japan because our and their addresses are so different) so that the sender doesn't have to guess how to fill each address field. That sounds silly but I ended up with a package where the address field CITY was left blank and the sword got a round-trip between France and Japan ! I guess this experience goes into the "things you learn the hard way" category.

Gorgeous fittings ! This hada is quite something 😍

Nice fittings, Dave. Thanks for sharing and keeping this thread alive

An auction website similar to eBay: https://www.catawiki.com/

Thanks that makes sense. I naively thought the item descriptions on Catawiki were trustworthy.

Hello, I just noticed this auction on Catawiki where the nakago of this gunto is suspiciously shiny, as if the blade had been forged yesterday. Also the pictures with the blue background have a Komonjo feel. What do you think ?

It is a service for buying from Yahoo auctions, not an auction website. This allows foreigners to buy Japanese items without the administrative hassle.

At this stage, you have to wonder if keeping "un-shippable" items and reselling them isn't a business model...

I found the post: here. The 7000 px are apparently made possible by the use of a very high resolution camera (Hasselblad). Is this really a problem ? Lightroom knows the distortion for most of the lenses and can fix it in post-production. Your photo setup looks amazing BTW

I also struggle to shoot swords but one thing I've noticed is that to "see through the hadori", you need to shoot the sword sideways. The hamon is the whitest when shot this way. While shooting sideways will show more details of the hamon. Pictures from https://www.aoijapan.com/wakizashisunnobi-tantoise-tamaru-junin-fujiwara-nagatoshi-saku/ Edit: I'm thinking that maybe the first picture is not a photography but a scan of the blade. I know Aoi's photo setup has been discussed before but I forgot what was said.

Next monday in Grenoble.

2 months to get from Japan to Australia ?!? This is crazy slow 😱