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From Paul Martin's July newsletter Prince Takamatsu Award: Kitakawa Tesshi Kunzan Award: Kimura Mitsuhiro Kanzan Award: Fujita Munehisa NBTHK Chairman’s Award: Morikuni Toshifumi Award for Excellence First Place: Ando Yusuke Award for Excellence Second Place: Miyagi Tomoyuki Award for Excellence Third Place: Kudo Yoshihiro Award for Excellence Fourth Place: Komiya Kokuten Award for Excellence Fifth Place: Kanada Tatsuyoshi Award for Effort First Place: Miyashita Hikaru/Teru Award for Effort Second Place: Kato Masaya Award for Effort Third Place: Haoka Shinji Award for Effort Fourth Place: Takahashi Yuya Award for Effort Fifth Place: Tomioka Keiichiro Nyusen: Tanaka Satoshi, Manzoku Hirotsugu, Matsukawa Takashi, Yoshida Masaya, Sasaki Naohiko, Koyama Naoki Tanto and Ken Section: Kunzan Award: Yamanoshita Hiro Kanzan Award: Kato Masaya Award for Excellence First Place: Ando Yusuke Award for Excellence Second Place: Kimura Mitsuhiro Award for Effort First Place: Kudo Yoshihiro Award for Effort Second Place: Shinbo Motoharu Award for Effort Third Place: Takaba Hiromune Award for Effort Fourth Place: Mori Mitsuhide Award for Effort Fifth Place (and Rookie Award): Yamano Tatsuhito Nyusen: Ono Kiyoshi, Ito Shigemitsu, Watanabe Tetsu, Komiya Kunimitsu II, Miyagi Masatoshi, Yukawa Yasha, Okamoto Katsuhiro

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Contemporary swordsmith Taro Asano (Fusataro) recreates an Edo period torture test on his sword. He has his apprentice cut various objects including tatami mats, stainless steel bowls, deer antler, a piece of iron, hitting the mune with a heavy wooden sword, among others. My book about modern swordsmiths says that a common criticism of shinsakuto is that they concentrate too much on the art aspect. In this video he pushes his sword to the limit and beyond until it breaks, bends, and chips. I found it fascinating as I've never seen a test like this done with shinsakuto. People often tout the superiority of koto swords but it's only being evaluated on its appearance and not durability, edge retention, and such. I know nobody would do this with an antique but I wonder how swords of the various periods would stack up against each other.

Interesting, I would think that getting utsuri with hadaka yaki would be considered a higher achievement due to its uncontrolled nature vs using clay. The implication that hadaka yaki is somehow inferior sounds elitist to me imo. Isn't it theorized that Ichimonji swords have a flamboyant hamon by way of hadaka yaki and utsuri is commonly seen?By that togishi's interpretation, Ichimonji swords are inferior and their utsuri is somehow "not as real." I don't buy it. A beautiful utsuri is beautiful utsuri, clay or not.

I don't remember where exactly but In another thread someone said that modern smiths have yet to rediscover "true" utsuri. Does anyone know what this means?

He's famous for his nie looking like stars in the night sky but all the pictures I've seen are extremely dark photo copies or too far away to see the ji-nie and hataraki.

The link is dead and I only found pictures of the award ceremony but not of the entries. Did they get taken down?

How do they differ?

I've been looking at HD pics of Ichimonji swords mostly from Yuhindo and Unique Japan and what I see is that there are few hataraki, if any in the hamon. From what I understand Ichimonji swords were made in nioi deki so would that mean the temperature is too low to form hataraki that are made of nie like kinsuji, sunagashi, inazuma, etc.?

In "New Generation of Japanese Swordsmiths" Nagayama Kokan says that modern smiths "have been led into practicing too minute and complicated forging methods that have been passed down since Shinshinto times." Does anyone know what methods he's referring to? Not sure if he's referring to maru vs kobuse vs san mai, etc. or something else entirely. The current sword making process seems to be pretty universal to me (stack chips of steel into a block, use rice straw ash and clay, fold, etc.). Every video I've seen of modern tosho looks like they follow the same basic steps.

I don't see a problem using shinsakuto for martial arts. Interviews and videos of swordsmiths say they regularly have Japanese customers who buy their swords for martial arts. There are smiths today who make swords specifically for martial arts use. The Komiya family today is well known for making swords for battodo. Of course a martial arts swords will be slightly cheaper because of the lower polishing cost. A well made shinsakuto will have the qualities inherent in nihonto since its invention - must not break, must not bend, must cut well. A martial arts blade can be "retired" and have an art polish applied to it later.

Can you see the details of the jigane when looking behind glass at a museum? I wonder how easy or difficult it is to see hataraki, hada, etc. when you can only see the blade head on. I imagine I'd have to do some bobbing up and down to see the subtleties.

This is all I could find: https://www.touken-world.jp/modern-exbition2019/ Doesn't have any pics of the entries, unfortunately.

These pics indicate that mono-steel was around koto times though I heard it's harder to make and more expensive which is why the kobuse method gained prevalence during the Sengoku Jidai when they needed to make swords ASAP. I wonder if mono-steel or kobuse is better at maintaining "must not bend, must not break, must cut well." I know there are more complicated lamination methods like soshu kitae but as far as I'm aware none have been confirmed to be made this way. I just know that kobuse is by far the most common, especially by contemporary smiths, along with some being sanmei.

From Paul Martin's website: "Swordsmiths in Japan are regulated by the government. Smiths have to be licensed and are restricted to making two long swords or three shorts swords per month." I have some books that mention the sword and gun (juh-to-ho) law faces much controversy for making it too hard for them to make a living and the extreme pricing keeps potential customers away.

The law limits a tosho to making 2 katanas or 3 wakizashis per month but do these restrictions apply to tanto, yari, naginata, ken, etc?

It looks like fire, probably some kind of saka choji variant but it doesn't have the usual clove look. Whatever it is, I really like it and haven't seen it before.

Oh wow thank you and your friend for this! Usually there are no pictures at all for the annual competition except for catalogs (which cost a lot to ship). I love that you can even see the hada in the pics. I'm surprised there were a few shinsakuto in the polishing section. Amazing!

Does anyone have the results of the 2020 NBTHK competition results? I saw a post on Facebook by Akamatsu Tarou saying he got an effort award this year for what a appears to be an utsushi of the Sanchomo. Although Paul Martin said the NBSK did not host theirs this year.

I found this on https://www.touken-matsumoto.jp/eng/blog/ though I don't know if this is the results for sword making or polishing.

This is awesome to hear that people still commission swords as I feel that shinsakuto are greatly underappreciated by collectors due to overwhelming bias for koto swords.

There are some I can think of who are as prominent as Yoshindo Yoshihara like Gassan Sadatoshi and Kawachi Kunihira though they may not be as well known outside of Japan, I'm not sure. Also it looks like Takami Kuniichi, the newest mukansa smith, is a prominent young smith with lots of potential. It's unfortunate that the sword and gun law puts such a restrictive production limit on smiths. Instead of making the limit 2 katanas *or* 3 wakizashis per month, I think changing it to 2 katanas *and* 3 wakizashis per month can really help make shinsakuto accessible to more people. Even though there's more interest among young people especially from girls due to Touken Ranbu, few of them would be able to buy nihonto, much less commission a shinsakuto. From what I've read there are 200-300 licensed smiths in Japan but only around 30 are able to make a living doing it full time with the rest either getting a second job or giving it up altogether.

In the book Nagayama Kokan said that contemporary smiths can make swords that are comparable with first class shinto blades but this was written 20 years ago. If he were still alive I wonder what he'd think about current shinsakuto with the progress made by the past 20 years.

I have that book too and most of the smiths seem to believe that koto-like hada comes from material. But in another thread I started, most people felt that It was all about technique. Some smiths and polishers believe that tamahagane from koto times have more impurities which creates more interesting hada and that iron sand sourced from different localities gave them unique characteristics. If this is the case then perhaps the NBTHK should "dirty up" the tamahagane they make. Again, others insist that it is technique only and not material.

I'm not so sure. I read in some books about post WW2 and modern smiths and a good number of them seem to think that material is key to making koto-like swords in addition to techniques lost to time. There was mention both in the books and on NMB about how tamahagane production was centralized and is a reason why the steel in swords looked the same despite being made in different provinces because they're not using local materials so they don't have their unique characteristics like they used to. Maybe the tamahagane smiths use today is too pure. In one of my books togishi Sasaki Takushi remarked that koto steel is less pure than what's being used today so those impurities appear as complex activity in the steel.