ShuShinKan

Great blade, hope you enjoy it!

Hi everybody! Thank you for your comments and advices! I will not go and get the tadamitsu in question. If somebody is interested I can provide contact information to the owner. I have learned a lot and mostly I learn, as cool as I seem to be, I am still more guided on the wish than on the wisdom. So I take this as an educational step and look for an affordable shinto blade. Are there some secret web-places where I can take a look around? I'll chek out the links above but would like to get something european...

Hi Brian, a curator from liverpool wrote me that it might be falsified. That is why i am interested in gimei and all the other questions that I posed recently. I'd like to buy the tadamitsu blade in question but would like to exclude as much as possible that it is made later on but signed gimei. Is there a lower price limit for koto blades in good polish? the price idea of the seller is about $1300 and depending on who I am asking it seems ridiculus low (so i am careful) but it might also be too expensive without papers. So I am caught in the middle and it will surely be the last sword I will buy during the next 2 years.

would that mean that the mei in koto is not as deep as in shinto? Sorry, but I have difficulties to understand the differences. Could you paint a picture(metapher)? :-) John, the right picture, that is unsharp, seems to come quite close the "handwriting of my mei. Would it be possible to get a more sharp picture of that one? That would be great and help me a lot :-)

Dear all, thank you for following all my Tadamitsu enquiries on this forum. To sum up everything thas has come up during discussion with you and others, the blade seems to be connected to the following facts: Date: EiSho first year (1504) 8th Month on a lucky day. Mei: Bizen No Kuni Ju Osafune Tadamitsu. Two independent specialists point out Heiuemonnojo Fujiwara Tadmitsu (son to Hikobei Tadamitsu (1469) as a potential creator. It has a bo-hi on both sides and 2 Fukure + one that not yet has opened up. The following litterature I do not own personally nor do I have them available in another way. Heiuemonnojo is rated with 10 of 100 points by "Hawleys in TA70a" More information seems to be in Fujishiro Koto Volume page 193/194. An opinion that I want to reflect at this time is the way the kanji is made. Are they typical for koto? Are they too deep, to wide, to strong, to weak? Would it be possible to send me some oshigata from Heiuemonnojo Tadamitsu when you have them available in a book or digtal, so I have something to compare, alt. give me hints on litterature where the pictures are present? Someone described the mei on the photo as "Tagane Makura". So what is different between koto mei, edo mei, shinto mei? I am happy for all suggestions! Here a link to a collection of pictures with the ?Tadamitsu blade? (>3MB) http://www.kvarnberg.se/ShuShinKan/KMKa ... amitsu.jpg

I like the bizen shape of the blades! Actually I express still quite faulty and unsharp. Try to get it better with my correctness each day. I should say I am looking for a bizen blade, especially katana. But it feels I have not found the places where to look for them. Here it is the same, I would like to buy my first blade from a trusted source, as I still know too little about nihonto. I have fairly seen a nihonto "live". I am still not done with "my" tadamitsu topic, so I will start a new thread right away. I feel there is a lot more to find out.

Hi, ok to clearify my idea (that came actually up very fast and unreflected) was initiated by the following situation. I have found an announcement for 2 katana and asked for photos. So I tried to read the mei myself and came quite close, but the forum here helped me a lot with the query. I soon learned that I need litterature because the vast web is not having too detailed information. So I bought a book Connosseurs Book of Japanese swords and started reading, mostly zooming on the details of the sword I wanted to buy. I found all the features matching but of course, investigating is raising more questions than I found answers, and that were questions I did not know that they can be asked. These I posed in the forum, with my own approach on explaining them. Of course, the mayor thing I know is that I do not know, but I felt that the attempt was good and lucky. So I try to break away my "romantic" idea of having a sword and see that a sword not is a sword and that there are buying opportunities that actually not are opportunities. It feels like I get shaped in a manner and I want to shape more regarding my knowledge on swords. So, in a silly moment, I thought, I could go on with shaping my mind the same way I started and could get artificially into the same situation. But now I see that the thrill was that there was/is a real purchase-situation connected to the blade in question. I am actually longing for having a real blade in my hands to be able to get it out and studying it whenever I feel for it but I feel (and read in this forum, too) that my financial limit is still far from a blade that I liked to have. So hope you forgive my unreflected posting, I'd actually like to see it erased but that is beyond my rights on the forum. I am interested in an affordable ($1300) koto blade, but I actually know I wont get one for the money. Hope you can take a "sorry for the posting" from me.

Dear all! I ask you a big favour, I know! I would like to buy a "real" nihonto, but my budget is very, very limited. So I am recomended to save my money for something big.... (When you have read that far I am sure you read further on....) My most exciting experience in the last 6 weeks has ben that I found a Tadamitsu blade where i did not know anything about it from the beginning. With help of Inernet and nice people from this forum I found out a lot about it. Could somebody send me some pictures of affordable swords (preferably Koto) with mei and date and pretend it is for sale and you do not know anything about it? I could go on and searching for information and bother this forum into hells kichen with my questions and learn a lot about nihonto. Of course I'd like to use my favorite weapons first, Internet and the connosseurs book. So within short range I might have learned a lot! So please please, do me the favor! Thanks for your postings, preferably by e-mail to save some server space for the forum. Gunther

What do you think, now that the brains have had their warming up gimei or not? ?????

Is this an insider, Brian? Sorry for not understanding the tanto thing. Of course you can call me G but my real name is Gunther (you are allowed to call me Gunther, too) I assume the right of both pictures to be Gimei, because of the placement of the hole and (i googled for the smith and found pictures of a blde for sale) the pattern going from nakago towards the tip. Gunther

To make it even more complicated, I only have one mei (that is why i actually brought up the topic), on a (from all participants in this discussion well known) tadamitsu sword. And as there seem to be as many Tadamitsu as I have chicken in the shed, how in hell is it possible to find if the mei is a gimei or not? Anyhow, I appreciated the archived discussion where darcy explains her way to identify the gimei. I learned a lot and I can see that the photos I have are not good enough to look at stroke strength. I have 3 different mei from tadadmitsu swords on picture and all of them are in a way different. Big miracle!? I love to see you posting! And I learn a lot. Shall I submit the mei again or do you want to check out in the other thrad?

I have heard a lot about gimei since I started being interested in swords. It would be great to get some points of view about Gimei from all of you who are reading this. Are the gimei swords well done? Is shape, length and hamon, boshi etc alike the copied smith? Or are there mayor differences? Thanks for reflecting your experiences here. Gunther

Thanks Brian, I'll surf there for a while.

Hi all! I am interested in some historical and cultural facts from around 1500 in Bizen province. Mostly my research in internet ended up in swords discussed from this era. As I would like to know more about the history and tradition and social structure of Japan in this time, I hope you can help me with information, links and literature tips. Mainly I am interested in web-links at the moment, because they are fast to access and much more affordable :-) Thank you, once again! All posts are welcome!

Brian..... .... you make my day! :-) Thanks a lot!

Hello all, I would like to discuss one more aspect concerning a blade (tadamitsu) that I'd like to purchase in the near future, the hamon. What about suguh(suguba?)-hamons? The seem to be quite "simple" compared to the artistic hamons with their nice patterns. I also caught up that a pattern in the hamon keeps the blade more flexible. Is a patterned (not suguha/suguba?) hamon thought to be of much higher artistic avalue and "better" craftmanship? Thank you in advance for your points of view.

I could not imagine that there would come that many posts to my shy question. I thank all of you very much for your replies, especially to Jean, because he seems to drive the discussion forward at any state! Great! I have learned a lot. I am still unsure if I should buy and now has popped up this "beginner-wakizashi"... Life is tough!

Hi Tavroch, thanks for the correction. Actually i do not know what this was for a paper. It came out of a sword-maintainance box of the owner..... Anyhow I could feel the spot... Hi Jean, You seem to be always two steps ahead me! Saw you like fishing. Should come to sweden and get some pajk. We have plenty....

Unfortunately not, because the sword is some 100 km aways from me and the magnifier is in my car. I can describe it: Guess holding the sword horizonally in your hands, tip away from you, ha downwards. At mid length of the blade in right hand side bohi it is placed on the lower edge of the bohi making a tiny pocket that you can feel slightly when you clean the blade with bamboo paper. This is in the high-polished part of the blade (shinogi-ji). Hardly to see with naked eye. It looks like the lamiation got loose on this spot. Next time I will make a map of the blade and give the spots numbers. Thank you for your comments. Feel free to shoot on!

Thanks so far! Jean! Just to be clear, the picture from the bohi , i did not mean the spot like thing, i ment the crack like thing that is right at the edge of bohi. http://www.kvarnberg.se/ShuShinKan/KMKa ... _bohi1.jpg

Hi Brian, thanks for the hint, I saw it right away, but it took me two minutes to fix it. You are alert!

Hi everybody, today I had the chance to take a look on the Tadamitsu blade discussed in an earlier thread. The blade is in good polish, it was like a mirror. I wonder some things about. The following pictures are taken with 10 x magnification I have seen a small Flaw on the top of the boshi/mune, maybe 12 mm behind the point: http://www.kvarnberg.se/ShuShinKan/KMKa ... wOnTip.jpg I have seen another flaw in the bohi: When I get it right it is a shinogi ware : http://www.kvarnberg.se/ShuShinKan/KMKa ... w_bohi.jpg Additionally there is a bigger flaw: (big means max 3mm) http://www.kvarnberg.se/ShuShinKan/KMKa ... wBlade.jpg Could you please tell me if one of them counts as a fatal flaw? None of them is in the hamon or borders with it. Anyhow, they are too deep to be erased with a polish. I have read that flaws are quite normal and I am aware that the sword is not a masterpiece, compared with other masters work. Another question I have: Is it normal that the mirror like polish is only in the upper part of the blade (when you imagine the blade held horizontal with ha downwards)? Thanks for indications!

Hello fellows, thanks for all the replies (and for putting me back on reality again...)

Hi all, I plan to buy a chiisa katana. (the one from my first thread (?Tadamitsu)) Comes in shirasaya. I actually wonder if there is a reasonable possibility to find a fitting koshirae for it or should the mounting better be made new? Or is it meaningfull to collect some fittings and put them together or, or, or. The blade is quite cheap so there is no idea to spend $3t. Well I am new and unexperienced, please give feedback and advice.

Hi, as much as I understand: menuki: Ornament item mumei: unsigned (mu=nothing, mei=inscription) The rest might me an era or a style/school/region. Look at Steins page there you can find a lot of hints about different signs....It takes time but it is quite thrilling...