Soshin

This artist and his school made many tsuba in the Yagyu style. Yours looks to be a great example and comparable to the example provided by Curran.

Hi Sam, Happy New Year! I now have links to presentation on my homepage of my website. Here is the direct link: Tsuba Otaku | Reflections of a Not So Empty Mind. You should be able to click the link on the homepage and the presentation as a PDF should download and viewed using Adobe Acrobat or Adobe Acrobat Reader. Please share it with members of the PNW Token Kai. Let me know if you have any questions or concerns. Thank you.

@Scogg Nice looking first club meeting with a great collection of Japanese swords. The iron Higo tsuba on the table reminds me of one I once owned that I purchased from one of @Curran friends in the UK (sorry I have forgotten his name, but he is a big time Higo fitting collector).

Rest in peace, my old friend. Earlier this year, I wrote to Richard after my older brother Michael passed away from an aggressive form of liver cancer. They were close in age, and Richard’s kindness during that time meant a great deal to me. I first came to know him through his photography FAQ for the KTK, which I stumbled upon online. He generously helped me refine my photography skills, and thanks to his guidance I became a far better fine‑art photographer. I still use the techniques he taught me on my website today. Although I never had the chance to meet him in person, I did acquire several fine iron tsuba from him over the years. On the few occasions I attended the San Francisco show, he happened not to be there that year—something I regret even more now. Richard’s influence on my hobby work and his kindness in our conversations will stay with me. He will be missed.

Hi Sam, Will do. I will keep you and everyone else posted on NMB about the availability of the PowerPoint slides for my upcoming in person presentation.

Just a quick public notice. I will be giving a PowerPoint presentation at this coming club meeting of the New York Token Kai on Sunday, December 7, 2025, from 12:00 PM to 3:00 PM, titled: "Reflections on 25 Years of Collecting Japanese Art". Check out more information about the club here on their website: https://www.ny-tokenkai.org/. After the presentation I will try to covert my presentation into a noneditable file format that will allow me to share it on my website here: Tsuba Otaku | Reflections of a Not So Empty Mind. Thank you.

I am not Robert Hughes, but I would say yes. This is from my own personal experience of having visited many museums in Japan.

Hi Robert, Thank you kindly for your thoughtful tribute to Guido. I never met him in person, but I remember him from the Nihontō Message Board website. My deepest condolences to his family.

Hi Richard, There is the New York Token Kai that meets in NYC. Here is the link to their website for more information:https://www.ny-tokenkai.org/.

I cannot make it this year due to unemployment. Once I get that next job, I hope to go to this show next year and say hello to some of my old friends.

Here is my one hundred yen on this topic. I completely agree with @Ray Singer on this. The tsbua is nice and it reminds me of an early Edo Period Owari tsuba I once had with hakogaki by Sasano with a similar sukashi design that later traded away to the tsuba expert of Baltimore. The tsuba is fine and should be left as is. The NBTHK papers are not irrelevant, but that comment is more than a bit off topic and therefore not worth discussing in my opinion and hints at other members' ulterior motives.

I stand corrected. Thank you for the clarification. Regress I am still incredibly happy with the tsuba you made me. I still use it on my training sword, and it does a wonderful job.

He replied to me when he had his annual Easter sale last month. I Contacted him via his personal website: Markus Sesko | Japanese Arms and Armor. I picked up a nice low-priced eBook about Akasaka tsuba. I really need to get to reading this eBook once I add a nice Akasaka tsuba to my collection.

I currently only have one tsuba made Manuel Coden @C0D a student of the late Ford Hallam. When I had my Japanese art business, I sold one tsuba made by Kevin Adams another student of Ford Hallam.

Hi Bobby B., Looks great @Mushin thank you for sharing information about this upcoming show. Unfortunately, I cannot attend the Orlando Area Japanese Sword this year due to unemployment. I hope I can make it to the upcoming San Francisco show later this Summer. Take care and have a great show!

Hi @Markus, Thank you for your work, information, and the blog post. I found it interesting to download the NBTHK-Kantei Alphabetical PDF and look up different swordsmiths I have been able to examine work examples in my study over the years.

@GRC I have since cooled down from my above posts and need to address a severe problem in my life that cannot be ignored. I hope to get the problem resolved sooner than later and I can get back get back to this hobby. PS. @Curran Love the great tsuba(s) you are sharing and providing positive posts to this topic.

@GRC nothing you have written proves anything, your classification system is just a subjective and arbitrary system as the current system used by the NBTHK. Why would I be interested in removing some subjective system that is linguistically and culturally appropriate and substituting your system that is equally subjective but lacks any linguist and cultural understanding or context? Let's agree to disagree and leave it at that.

Here is my explanation for my down vote for me, which I don't use often on this website. Tsuba is functional fine art, and I enjoy them as such. In my opinion reclassification of the current system of groups and later organized schools while not perfect is not at all necessary and takes away time for the direct study, appreciation, and enjoyment of the tsuba themselves as a form of fully functional pocket-sized fine art. Some of my favorite tsuba could only be attributed to a province or domain (e.g. Higo, Saga) nothing more. I recently picked up my first large Ko-Tosho tsuba (big pockets only) for my collection. I cannot wait until I get to take nice photographs of it. It was in the previous owners' collection for 20+ years.

This is clearly fake, the reverse side confirms this as the sekigane are not real and functional on the tsuba and part of the cast reproduction. I am happy you didn't spend much money on Jauce. Yahoo!Japan is as bad as eBay now. I avoid both websites. It is a paper weight or a reference example at best of what to avoid and I would not recommend mounting it on any sword or whatever. On my martial arts training sword, I needed to replace a similarly made tsuba that was a cast reproduction with a functional tsuba.

Thank you @Tim Evans. My teacher Dr. David A. Hall learned at the Yagyu-kai in Tokyo in the 1980s under Yagyu Nobuharu the 21st headmaster of the Yagyu Shinkage Ryu. My teacher remembers training with Koichi who later became the 22nd headmaster of the Yagyu Shinkage Ryu and who was adopted into the Yagyu family and formally assumed the leadership of the ryu after Nobuharu passed away in 2007. My goal training in traditional Japanese martial arts is to become the best evil ronin in a jidaigeki film history and have the most spectacular onscreen death seen ever in Japanese cinema.

The funning thing is I read it as "provenance" and not "providence" on your original post. Regardless it is a completely valid point made by @Curran about establishing the provenance of such a Yagyu tsuba apparently being part of such a high-profile exhibit by the NBTHK. I raised this same concern with @Okan when he contacted me about this Yagyu tsuba via private message. Here is a NBTHK Hozon tsuba with a triangle and circle design that was the basis of Manuel Coden's (a.k.a. @C0D) utsushi-mono. I know because I commissioned Manuel Coden to make the tsuba for me in 2020. I use it for my training in Yagyu Seigo Ryu Batto. Legitimate utsushi made by modern sword fittings artists are more common than many people think with Yagyu tsuba with classic designs in my opinion.

Yes, I have all three books of the Tosogu Classroom series translated by Markus Sesko from the writings done by Fukushi Shigeo for the NBTHK. They are a great read with a lot of helpful information to improve your study, appreciation, and collecting of Japanese sword fittings.

I completely agree with this statement. It best to save up and buy at the various Japanese antique art shows (including Chicago show) or in my specific case when I visit Japan. Starting next I will be visiting Japan increasingly often not just like the casual vacation when I was young and single. P.S. I have just marked the dates for the 2026 Chicago show on my calendar. Thank you @Mark S. for posting an information card for next year's show.

I came across this short video on YouTube discussing the basic identification of Satsuma-yaki. I enjoyed watching it and wanted to share it here, enjoy.