Jesta

Very creative. My hotel had this as the clothes rail.

Found this in an odd little shop in Himeji. Would anyone be able to help with the mei and any thoughts on the origins? It is iron, with a nice wave pattern, which seems to have silver highlights (which are a bit faded on the omote side, more visible on the ura), and bamboo or reeds in gold. But, that’s all I can say for now.

Thanks… now I have that image in my head…

Thanks. Another one that looks pretty ancient. I think that the upside down presentation probably comes from thinking that swords are slung and presented edge down, and seen from the point back to the hilt, in Western cultures so they just transfer that here. You can see this even in modern katanas (largely sold from China to the US) where the tsuba is put on the wrong way round so that the design faces the blade rather than the tsuka.

I am off for a short trip to Osaka and Kyoto. Are there any particular shops I should drop into to look for tsuba or other pieces of koshirae?

Thank you. Yes, no tapering edges, but the shape of the openwork on the right is identical. For time being I will refer to the shape as either a fan or a tray… The tray design would fit with the porcelain plate posted by Dale. That could be a version of the tray…

Reminds me of some of the tachi tsuba that also have three pieces with overlays holding the decoration inside a tsuba with a raised mimi like this.

That's a very interesting comparison. It definitely looks very similar, particularly because of the rounded, rather than pointed, side.

Thanks, as always… The way the hitsu are presented makes it hard to know if they were meant to be the same thing or something very different. I was just getting used to seeing how the three in this post could be inome, and then you throw “bag” into the mix . Now I am just confused… I suppose that the ones on mine could also be beans… What do you think about giving it a “koshoami” or “shoami” school origin?

Thank you both. Does the Saotome design you show have inome? Is that design a very stylised version? I can see that the one Jean shows is similar, but I can’t find many with the very large inome with rounded (rather than pointed) shapes. I would also guess that mine doesn’t have hitsu-ana since the inome don’t extend to the seppadai like the one in the Met.

I recently picked this one up on Jauce, with very little information. I liked it for being unusual, but that also means there aren’t that many out there to compare it to… Thanks to a previous post by SpartanCrest I have found this at the Met: https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/34912 but there is no info on the tsuba. This site: https://tsubashi.com/product/nobuie-boars-eye/ has something very similar, and notes that it might be “Nobuie School”. Does anyone have an opinion on whether it would be Nobuie School or from some other origin? Iron, with dimensions of 7.8cm x 7.8cm. Edit: I also found this one: https://japanesesword.com/archived-pages/2017/9/22/shoami-tsuba That refers to the design just as shoami.

One that I fell in love with early on: This one is a bit more whimsical:

My guess is that if it has a function then it’s to do with balance. A heavy tsuba would bring the center of balance back towards the hands. There are some techniques involving locking tsuba against each other in sword combat, but I’d say it is debatable as to how much they were ever really used. Probably not enough to warrant any redesign of tsuba or we would see this kind of thing more often.

I haven’t bought this one. It’s on Jauce. I have put in a low bid, so if it comes through then ok, if not then…

Thanks 🙏 both.