Robert S

Pretty significant chips and damage. Restoring this blade would be so major that remaining value might be limited. Unless it's very cheap and you're happy to live with it as is, I'd pass... and I'm someone who will buy pretty tired blades.

Franco: What are you seeing that makes it look tired? The tired blades that I have are a lot more tired than that :-), so my eyes may be jaded.

I wonder why Cornell is hanging on to the "rusty crap" one. It would make sense if they were making a point about cast multiples, and especially if they had good provenance on one or both of them... but no evidence of that, although it might be worth digging into. Other than that, it appears that Cornell has a special focus on scrap metal collecting... but there are much more interesting types of scrap metal out there than that. Personally I go for gears out of 1950's and earlier manual transmissions :-)

Marius: Is your book available anywhere outside of Amazon? I'd love to get it, but an trying to avoid supporting Mr. Bezos as much as possible :-)

Wow, they took every machine tool to this - some kind of rotary grinder as well. Polishing all that out would be a significant job.

Also, unless the photos are fooling me, the kissaki appears to be not exactly symmetrical from one side to the other, which would be indicative of a pretty poor polish at some point.

And also if it had been cut down from a tachi, the mei, if there were one, would be long gone. It does appear to be suriage, but not necessarily o-suriage, which would be the case if this had been a tachi... unless more than just the original kissaki is missing.

The asymmetrical shinogi are indeed odd - first time for everything, I guess, but that one's new to me!

I'm not sure there's ever good war... but sometimes necessary war. The Ukrainians are certainly proving the heart of your thesis: that war is the ultimate test of what works.

Robots and machines weren't making Jaguar D-Types :-) Those were hand crafted from start to finish. Same with mid 30's Rolls Royces, which each had a unique body made by skilled craftsmen. I agree that, for instance, a 2020 Toyota isn't a product of art and craft. Although some of them may embody good design, as well as superb metallurgy, they completely miss the incredible dance between eye and hand that a great craftsman brings to his craft. But there are still lots of people out there building one-off cars. But enough about cars... back to nihonto :-)

I know VCI paper is supposed to work well... but the underlying paper makes me nervous, since it is likely not acid free. Don't really want a (very slightly) acid paper in contact with a nihonto for an extended period if the anti-corrosion agent dissipates over time.

Wow, that's more like it! So I guess this does put a date on when cast "copies" started to be made.

Too true. Although in this case, based only on the poor quality photo, I think they might be right about it being cast. But surely the question is: when? Could easily be a 20th century cast "fake", which some enthusiastic museum "curator" bought... and then realizing their mistake decided to make the best of it by owning up.

Those consistent parallel "polishing" scratches and the hada concern me. I'm no expert, though, so I'll leave others to weigh in.

Can't agree with you on the "comparing it to cars" front. I think the point that Jonathan was making is that hardness and resilience in a sword can be achieved in an ugly sword, and likewise a sword can have fatal internal flaws which render it highly vulnerable to breakage, but have a magnificently executed form, hamon, etc.. The parallel to cars is appropriate. You could take a Jaguar D-type and put a pinto engine in it, or you could take a pinto and put a d-type engine and good suspension in it (with some pretty creative shoe-horning!) The first would be beautiful but boring to drive, the second would be hideous, but fast. There may be an impression that koto blades, for instance, never combined beautiful form and lousy strength... but that is likely just because all the koto blades that had poor strength broke hundreds of years ago, so we don't see them. As a scientist, you will know that some experiments fail - it wouldn't be science if that weren't true. Likewise, craftsmen will always experiment with technique, and some of those experiments, despite being beautifully formed and polished, will inevitably fail when severely tested.

I'm not a "collector" in the usual sense. Over a life of experiencing the world, certain things across a wide range of categories have attracted me to own, or even better, make. Some of them I have now, and some of them I may never have (30's Rolls Royce is currently a target, and also a "may never have" :-) ). Mostly what drives me is aesthetics and a sense of wonder at craft and design of specific objects. I don't particularly care what they're worth, or to study a particular class of things toward the amazing level of knowledge that many on this forum exemplify, as much as I admire it. As far as nihonto go, I currently only have a couple, picked up for moderate amounts because they called to me. I may yet buy more, or I may not... but I certainly enjoy seeing and hearing about them on this forum.

Love the "undying optimism" description of dealer's pitches :-) .

The blade itself is not necessarily military issue. Individual officers did use family swords, often in military koshirae, which this is not. But as well lots of blades were surrendered which had not been used by an officer, but were simply family blades.

I'm seeing way too many of those polishes around - drives me crazy - gorgeous hamon over-written with "what the heck, something like this might look good" hadori. Why. I ask, why?

I believe that it simply indicates that the owner had complied with the surrender requirements. It does sound like the possible beginning of an exciting adventure to return the sword to the family of the original owner, though :-)

This one feels like it has more than average Chinese influences in the design.

100% it's a reproduction, and clearly not traditionally made. I'm just wondering if it might have been made in Japan if I'm right about the age. Those of us of a certain (advanced) age can remember when "Made in Japan" was a synonym for cheaply made items conventionally described as "junk" (1950's and early 60's), and not for items of high quality (1970's onward).

A friend was given this "katana" in gratitude for helping out someone. It appears to me to be a post-war reproduction. The blade appears to be made with a solid steel core, with laminated facings on both sides, similar to the way that some Japanese kitchen knives are made today, although with signs of weld failure between the core and the laminated sections. It then appears to have been etched. It does have a "mei", and the tang has been filed. The fittings on the saya are cast, probably in white metal, and then possibly plated. The saya itself has been re-laquered (painted?) at some point, but is old enough to have been attacked by wood borers My conclusion is that this is a "reproduction" from the 1950's or 60's, made somewhere in Asia. Given the much greater expertise of many on this forum, I wonder if there are any further thoughts on this. I know that they are generally described as "chinese fakes", but wonder as well if things like this were ever made in Japan as well for the tourist trade?

JEB: At this point, I have no certainty that the very worn out wakizashi that I bought is that old, although it has certainly seen a lot of polishing, which says something to its age. Given that it looks likely that it was made as a wakizashi, I doubt it's kamakura. I bought it on e-bay, and the polish was not decent as bought :-) In fact, it will probably never be able to be brought back up to decent polish overall, as it is already down to the core metal in one spot, and there is some corrosion damage, which I would be reluctant to have polished out, as it would probably reveal more core metal. But it is possible to see some interesting details - what looks likely to be battle damage, extensive Jinie, and the barest remains of a sugaha hamon. This is truly an exercise in trying to understand the smith's methods and intentions, and the impacts of forging and hardening on the metal at some depth within the blade, given that so much has been polished away - more like nihonto archaeology than nihonto preservation :-). I'll post some photos when I get time to do the photography.

I agree in principle, but the price truly has to reflect that it is only good as a study piece, and you likely won't get even your small amount of money back. I bought one recently for $100, because I wanted to learn about what a truly worn out blade looks like ... which was probably about the right price :-)