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It s often hard to tell on old high quality swords as even the core steel often had beautiful forging as well. I can definitely see clear hada in the above pictures so I personaly would lean towards it being part of the hada. Maybe patches of O Hada

If this is a Rai sword, there is a lot of debate about it as it s pretty much a feature of Rai hada

Thank you @Jussi Ekholm as always for your encyclopedic knowledge 🙏🙏🙏 With that said , I really like this blade. I would be bidding away if I had the funds 😭

Im not sure if it s Aoi s english wording but is this sword attributed to Sue-Sa AND O-Sa. The certificate seems to have both as well but wouldnt these be very different atteibutions ??? Granted it s still within the same school. https://www.aoijapan.com/katana-mumei-sue　sa-o-sa-schoolnbthk-tokubetsu-hozon-token/

He lists things very cheap and gets bought instantly. Mostly unpapered but there are occasional hozon and toku ho. If u look closely, most items will have some form of kizu but you cant really complain with how cheap they are listed. It s always good to remember that cheap unpapered blades are cheap bc they most likely cant paper OR they arent worth the shinsa money. Like a lot of the mumei shinshinto tanto and wak

Unpapered komonjo blades are almost always gimei but it s a nice looking blade regardless. Im not a shinto person but I always recall kinimichi kiku mon being very intricately and beautifully done. The one on this one looks a bit strange. If im not mistaked, faking a mon was a serious offense punishable by death

@Sukaira I am a huge lover of unpoular schools at the moment lol Mainly Kongo Hyoe and Naminohira. Still on the lookout for a signed Ubu Moritaka but it s gonna take some time I think. I find that koto period Naminohira is extremely hard to collect. Esp Ko Naminohira. They tend to be very tierd and thin/slender and the decent ones all tend to go exponentially more or juyo. I never had any interest in shinshinto but Motohira blades do turn my head every now and then. This one on AOI right now is just splendid https://www.aoijapan.com/katanaoku-yamato-ason-motohiranbthk-tokubetsu-hozon-token/

@Sukaira What an stunning work you have by Gorozaemon. The finest one I ve ever seen. 🙏🙏🙏🙏 I started out as a Kiyomitsu collector and have always prefered their calmer more subdued atmosphere compared to Sukesada. That sword is very unique that it has an original Futasuji-hi resulting in the mei being down the center. Im still contemplating on selling or holding on to my one Kiyomitsu blade since I ve shifted to collecting Kyushu schools. I know I wont come across another one like it if/when I sell it but seeing that Gorozaemon you posted def makes part of me want to dive back into sue bizen

@anguilla1980 Adding koshirae to a blade by dealers isnt really malpractice nor is Aoi bad for doing this. It s simply part of the general nihonto market. It s not that difficult to find a saya that fits if you match the sori. But you dont know how well it s been maintained if at all. Even a custom shirasaya can damage the polish with foreign particle build up with poor maintanace When you spend enough time in the hobby looking at blades every chance you get, you ll sometime come across a blade you ve seen appear at a different dealer or being sold by an individual seller and the koshirae can sometimes be added, removed, or a different one all together. Now for the 2 mekugi ana. There is no way to know for sure but the 2nd one was most likely made simply to accomodate a different handle. Could have been a new handle , old handle we ll never know for sure but these things were done all the time. And someone with more specific knowledge could add to this but the ana was punched during koto times and at some point during the edo/shinto period , they were drilled. I cant quite tell but they both look punched on yours with the bottom one being original. So the 2nd one might have been made a long time ago as well. I ve looked at a lot of sue bizen blades and that top ana looks unusually high to be the original.

@anguilla1980 As much as we like to romanticize the koshirae of a blade. You will find out yourself eventually that it is next to impossible to theorize when or how many times a blade has been remounted. It could have seen several dozens of remounting for all we know Furthermore, koshirae are put together and thrown on a blade by dealers to boost appeal ALL the time. AOI is esp good at this. And I am far from being considred knowledgable when it comes to fittings but at a glance, it looks like the ito and samegawa are relatively new. The ito in particular was not done by a skilled tsuka maker and this can be seen by the unevenness of the diamonds. We also dont know about the origin of the saya and personally , I would never recommend puting a blade into a dealer saya. A proper saya is always custom made to a specific blade and we dont know how or where it s contacting the blade. My Kiyomitsu came with a Koshirae and I would never in a million years attempt to mount it on the blade. https://eirakudo.shop/token/wakizashi/detail/319916

The import process is fairly streamlined now but yea it was a bit messy in the beginning. AOI uses UPS and they will let you know via email if they need additional info and any import duties once it enters customs

Yea for sure. I ve looked at works from shinto sukesada here and there and they were definitely not this extreme

Looks like a good amount of buffing and or polishing compound. It s a shame bc it lookslike it might have an interesting hamon. Good news is that the foundation doesnt look severely compromised and can most likely be brought back to it s proper state of polish. Seen swords in far worse state being restored by a good togishi. But the reality is that it s probably far from being financially worth unless the blade has special meaning to you

Unfortunately they remove both now but I did download the image Cant post full res due to image aize restriction tho. I believe it went for well north of $100,000.00 USD

You ll see a lot of Sukesada blades come up. The quality after Eisho ( 1521 ) will be all over the scale. Many with poorly made loose hada. Some decent ones and a few nice Tokubetsu Hozon blades every now and then. The crown jewel of Sukesada blade was actually just on sale at AOI about a month ago. An insane work by the shodai Yosozaemon Sukesada

Nice blade @anguilla1980 Im a fan of sue bizen kiyomitsu but I do enjoy checking out Sukesadas whenever they come available. I did like that one when it came on AOI. This blade has a particularly defined jigane compared to other ones i ve seen in a while. Almost all swords from the sengoku , even high level zokumei blades will show tierdness in spots but even the core steel on this blade looks well forged for the most part. A very nice sword indeed with a very active hamon and boshi to top. Congratulations on the blade and hope to see more photos

Is this how Hozon certificates used to be ? Never seen one with oshigata before https://www.aoijapan.com/katana-hizen-hirado-shin-masamitsu-1818/

Lol yes im definitely biased towards suguha and notare most but for that particular sword the way to togari being so high and pointing towards the tip of the blade just breaks the flow for me personally. Of course it s just personal preference and im sure there s plenty out there who cant stand suguha. I think part of it stems from when I was a kid. I used to have a lot of imitation katanas growing up and whenever I see hamons with a lot of togari it reminds me of those fake hamons lol. Esp some of the mino blades

I know people have all different taste but gosh that hamon looks dreadful lol i couldnt handle it

And yes when a koto blade undergoes suriage, a lot of time it is very obvious from a mile away without removing the tsuka. This is my biggest problem when purchasing a late kamakura/nanbokucho blade. Their sugata is greatly altered and many of them just looks strange

Im not exactly sure of the reason why it was frowned upon. Swords and swordsmithing have always been considered sacred so perhaps the altering of it was considered a bit tabboo. I dont think shinto suriage/osuriage is unattractive most of the time but they certainly stand out and looks obviously altered. We have to also consider that a lot of koto swords were probably suriage in a very short amount of time due to the edict restricting the length of blades during the edo period. Edit: Great article by Mr Sessko as always and basically answers this in his own view which I always trust.

Hi @Subayai Kitsune Funny you mention this bc I just came accross this on a Japanese nihonto chanel on youtube and they briefly hit this topic. Based on what the translation said, suriage during the koto period was somewhat frowned upon and a lot of effort was put into shaping the nakago to as close to it s original shape when suriage was done. In shinto times however, suriage of old swords was very much the norm and the nakago was simply cut to fit whatever length.

He can be reached via Robert Benson https://togishi.com/index.html

yes Woody Hall will do an amazing job with it. He has a very beautiful and unique style thats far better than anything that comes from the dealers in my opinion. It looks like you might only need a shiage togi . You might want to consider a slight kissaki shaping as it looks slightly mishapened but there s really nothing wrong leaving it the way it is. He s the only togishi I ll send my blades to and he has done a number of shiage togi for me. Each blade came back looking like a juyo sword lol

@NotANinja Time periods specifically for nihonto can be a little confusing at first since they often dont match the historical time periods. The koto/shinto division is one of them but I ve always stuck with 1600. Historicaly , the nanbokucho perio 1336 - 1392 viewed as a period WITHIN the Muromachi period. ( 1392 - 1573 ) This is very important to avoid mixing up bc the Nanbokucho period is a very specific and separate era in terms of Nihonto. In Nihonto , the Muromachi spans from 1392 - 1600 but this is in direct conflict with historical timelines since the Muromachi period techinically ended in 1573 with Nobunaga dissolving the Ashikaga shogunate and doesnt include the Azuchi Momoyama period. It s very easy to be confused at first with all the discrepancies so I would just strictly stick with the established Nihonto timelines.