Cola

Modern fittings, vague description; samurai shokai?

Does anyone know what happened to the blade used to assassinate Inejiro Asanuma? A replica Rai Kunitoshi wakizashi, according to wikipedia. Or is that too soon?

Well yes, that's our eternal conundrum; an old, signed, flawless, papered, original length sword in great polish is going to cost more than a car. So you have to make concessions somewhere. Personally I find myself looking more at wakizashi, since there I can tick most boxes within my budget, and the craftmanship is just as impressive. But I can imagine size is more important for other collectors.

From my very limited experience there's a few common problems if you are browsing as a hobby collector; and simply walking away from them is safest. - Green or white papers; these are from an old system that was fraudulated with a lot, so essentially the same as no papers at all. If you can, get something with NBTHK hozon or tokubetsu hozon. - Flaws; look up the fatal flaws like chips, blisters, delaminations etc. in the sword. - Overpolished swords, especially older ones can be polished a lot trough their lifetime, and they lose a bit of surface every time. At some point the course core steel comes through, or the hamon can even be lost, especially in the kissaki. A telltale sign is the hamachi, which becomes smaller with every polishing. It's acceptable among collectors, but you have to decide if it's also acceptable for you. -Koshirae can sometimes be cobbled together, and may not belong to the sword at all. So a sword might be sold with koshirae, but that doesn't mean they properly fit together. -Rust on the blade (especially if it's red); you can't just wipe it off and the sword would need a fresh polishing which is expensive and difficult.

It's fine if you are clear about where your answers come from. If you don't it's fraudlent: you are passing yourself as an expert while you are in fact just echoing the output of a language model. Then people can choose for themselves if they want to give this AI generated drivel any of their time. Also you should know that the content is just not very good. Statements like: "The long signature on the tang matches that date exactly." are just plain stupid, the date on the papers is copied from the tang, so yes obviously they match exactly.

Thanks chatGPT!

The pictures aren't very clear, is there really a hi? Or did someone draw a hi on with a sharpie only for the next DIY enthousiast to try and grind it off? Or did someone mark a hi with a sharpie to indicate where to apply the dremel, only to give up after 5 minutes....?

Someone attemted to polish or grind out some flaw next to the habaki.

I wouldn't want to wreck the family heriloom sword, but if my life depended on it, I would take the risk over using a cheap alternative. In any case I personally feel more concerned with WWII blades having been used in war crimes, just because of the scale and the fact that soldiers were probably less afraid of wrecking an arsenal sword.

Maybe broken in a fight, or maybe because a noble samurai guy tried to whack a dog with the backside of the sword, or perhaps because a young samurai thought it a good idea to test his sword out on a stone garden ornament.

I noticed this in the accounts of Suishinshi Masahide as well, many of the breaking swords were because of hits with the mune. https://www.nihontocraft.com/Suishinshi_Masahide.html#:~:text=1.,7. ie. : 1. Suishinshi was at the house of an Akimoto retainer. There was a thief that night. The retainer used the mune of a blade to strike the thief. The blade broke in the middle and the kissaki was knocked off. As a result, it landed on the rooftop of a neighbor’s house. This was a katana by Mizuta Kunishige with an o-midare ba hamon. 2. A younger friend of the Akimoto retainer used the mune of a wakizashi to hit a dog. The blade broke in the middle and the dog escaped. Of course this can mean a number of things: -Swords are weaker when whacking things with the backside (possibly the stress is higher when whacking rather than cutting?). -People hit a lot harder and/or less carefully when hitting with the mune -People used the blunt side a lot more than the sharp side to hit things, making it more likely for weak swords to break when hitting with the mune. Also curious to see him alluding to the hamon when a sword breaks from hitting with the mune, rather than discussing the type of mune.

Not currently in Japan, and no papers I suppose? If it is koto and looking like this, it should easily be able to get papers, so why would the seller not do that? The third picture looks possibly acid treated to enhance the hada. As a starting collector, I would be very cautious.

I recently noticed a Ichiryushi Nagamitsu for sale on aoi, with hozon token: https://www.aoijapan.com/katana：nagamitsuorigami-estimation-paper/ I thought it was interesting, with the smith working in a WW2 prison, and of course very curious how the conversation went: Let's think of an activity for prisoners.. Maybe they would like to step up their shank making game? Then I found this topic: Which talks about the mei, with three strokes in the naga character, which the above mentioned blade does not have. So maybe another nagamitsu? Then to my surprise aoi added another nagamitsu: https://www.aoijapan.com/katananagamitsu/ this one does have the two stroke naga character. The descriptions allude to the same smith though. How does one make sense of this? Do you trust the papers in this case?

How do you see the difference between hamon and hadori in pictures like these?

What does it look like when a sword is crying out for a hi (other than the absence of a hi)? Not meaning to criticize of course, it's your sword you can do whatever you want with it. But what makes you reconsider the choice of the smith not to cut a hi in the blade?

Yes, so far so good (knocking on wood). They can insure the shipment, and I don't mind waiting a few months. The most annoying thing is our local customs office, which asks import tax and VAT; which should be 9% antique objects, but sometimes they ask 21% for regular goods, and then you have to protest and prove that a sword is antique.

https://www.aoijapan.com/ is nice, if only to just gape at all different types of swords that you or I can't afford. https://www.samuraishokai.jp/sword/index.html also has interesting swords in your price range. They are both Japanese, so if you order from them you are at least sure it's not a chinese fake; you do have to send them by international parcel, which can be scary. Ideally you also buy something with NBTHK papers, then you are as sure as you can be that it is what they say it is. Without papers it could be gimei, ie. a faked signature, or if there is no signature it could be from an entirely different period or smith.

Which religions encourage one to have a "zombie knife" or a machete?

Which is still outrageous. Perhaps they meant in Iranian Rial?

Well it's as I said: there are no legal rules. Whoever owns the blade can do whatever they want with it.

This all sounds very confusing to me. There is no "protection system" for swords, aside from registration and export laws. If you want to wrap your sword in an old newspaper oiled with old frying pan grease as a way of preservation, there is no law against it. So for that matter, you can make a shirasaya or a paper mache sheathe, but what do you hope to learn from it? Who will judge whether it was done correctly? I can guarantee that whatever you make, people on the internet will tell you you did it wrong. If you want to look at best practices for conservation, or common practices for that matter, of course you can find a lot, but as it's not laws as much as many different opinions (people fight wars over the correct oil or uchiko). From an academic perspective, I would recommend to define a research hypothesis that can be tested to some extent, and to define a scope that fits within the timelines of your project (comparing European versus Japanese "sword conservation practices" in general is way to broad).

Purple guy could have put in a little more effort to be honest.

But then there's the question whether we're talking about: -a long and short sword made by the same smith, collected at a later time. -a long and short sword made as a pair by a smith to be worn together. -a long and a short sword used by a samurai for which he had matching koshirae made. -a long and a short sword for which some collector at some point made matching koshirae.

Be honest now: how many of you are dreaming of the day an unsuspecting burglar breaks into your home?

If I do the translation to euros (1M yen = 6200 euros), then plenty of local dealers ask more than that for hozon or unpapered blades. But perhaps they don't count for your question because they cannot easily be submitted for shinsa here? https://kyodaiorigin...shi-in-the-year1973/ https://kyodaiorigin...74-with-nbthk-hozen/ https://www.samurai-...hi-nbthk-hozon-token