eternal_newbie

If you'll permit me a slight deviation from the subject of Norishige and Soshu, the discovery of the Kinoe-Inu Nagashige and a few other blades have upended a relatively recent consensus. Nagashige was traditionally thought to be the younger brother or even son of Chogi and a peer of Kencho; not only is the new consensus that Nagashige was the eldest and likely the one who taught Chogi and Kanemitsu the secrets of Soshu smithing, but there's an increasing volume of evidence suggesting that Kencho was in fact a junior peer of Chogi and Kanemitsu under Nagashige's supervision (much as Norishige was to Yukimitsu and Masamune under Shintogo).

"Masamune Juttetsu" can be thought of in the same sense as the phrase "God created the world in 7 days" – even most modern-day Christians believe it to be, at best, an allegorical phrasing or a mnemonic for teaching scripture. Here's where, to my knowledge, the current consensus stands regarding which Juttetsu may actually have been taught directly by Masamune: YES (with an asterisk) Norishige - As we now know, he was less a pupil/disciple of Masamune than a peer, yet nonetheless he would have learned directly from Masamune in the same way any artisans in the same workshop will generally trade techniques and provide assistance Go - The same as above; the large amount of crossover between Go's work and both Norishige and Masamune suggests he was an active presence in the same workshop (as do the records of Norishige mentoring Go's son, Tametsugu, after Go's untimely passing) MAYBE Shizu Saburo Kaneuji - The abrupt change in style — combined with many of his works being so similar to Masamune's that the two often swap attributions — suggests there's truth to the tales of him being, if not a direct student, then at least in the same location and learning from someone with direct instruction on Soshu smithing Samonji - Again, an abrupt change in style with a clear delineation between his more provincial style and his excellent Soshu work. Given just how different the techniques and materials are between the two styles, it's likely that he was either a direct student, or had close association with someone who was Hasebe Kunishige - Opinions currently divided on whether Kunishige learned in Kamakura, or sent someone there to pick up some techniques and bring them back. There may in fact have been several smiths with that name working concurrently, one of whom made the trip to Kamakura to get some tips or scope out the competition UNLIKELY Rai Kunitsugu - While his work does show a more dynamic and nie-rich hamon than his predecessors and contemporaries, I hesistate to actually call it Soshu or even a Soshu hybrid rather than simply an evolution of the mainline Rai style. We see other Rai works with the same qualities, even from his father, suggesting the Rai group were able to come up with these innovations on their own as a response to changing tastes Kinju - Similarly to Rai Kunitsugu, he was likely influenced by changing tastes among the clientele in the region and as a result made "Soshu-like" work Sekishu Naotsuna - The dates don't add up, and there's evidence of other smiths in the region around the same time and even a little earlier experimenting with Soshu-style innovations. Most likely Naotsuna was simply the latest and most successful among the smiths in that region to blend Soshu technique into his own workmanship Osafune Chogi and Kanemitsu - Again, the dates don't add up. They likely learned Soshu techniques from Nagashige, who is now believed to be their older brother or uncle and who currently has the oldest dated and verified Soden-style blade (the Kinoe-Inu Nagashige, dated 1334) Kongobyoe Moritaka - Was, in some older texts, sometimes considered to be one of the Juttetsu despite his work being further from Soshu than any of the current Juttetsu; this further supports the idea that the Juttetsu are more of a mnemonic/allegorical construction than a literal one In the same vein, the best smith we know who most definitely was Masamune's pupil was Soshu Sadamune, yet he is not included among the Juttetsu (presumably by dint of being Masamune's heir; a student of nihonto would not need a mnemonic device to remember him among the luminary adoptees of the Soshu tradition).

eBay, Reddit and Facebook all have good places to sell lower-end pieces. The issue is that people on NMB tend to know what they want, and what they want is at least mid-range and with some kind of certification.

Glad to hear he's doing better!

As Tanobe-sensei might say... your spoons are chin-chin, cho-cho

It is a Chinese dadao: refer to this reddit post for more discussion: https://www.reddit.com/r/SWORDS/comments/12px748/anybody_know_what_type_of_sword_this_is_my_friend/ As to whether yours is very old, be aware that red or orange rust is usually relatively fresh; it's black or dark brown rust that's a real sign of age.

I concur, aside from the surface the shape is somewhat inelegant and the plain brass habaki is also the type typically found on Chinese production blades or iaito/mogito.

The main utility for pieces like this would be for research and/or practice: Using the cross-section of the cut-off blade to determine what kind of forging style was used, e.g. kobuse Practising your polishing on them without any real stakes if you make a mistake Taking apart the habaki to see how it's made, and using the blade sections to practice making a habaki or tsuka for them

Certainly looks like a yoroi-doshi to me! One thing you can do to check the original thickness is see if there's a point on the nakago that's thicker than the blade itself. Since the nakago doesn't get polished, this can be an indication of how much material the blade has lost over time.

I do wonder if there's also the possibility of mumei blades being made for customers whom you didn't know particularly well, or was likely to be taken onto the battlefield and potentially seized by a victorious enemy. After all, it wouldn't do for the blade that cut down the Emperor's favourite general or relative to end up literally having your name all over it.

See for example, the ongoing debate over Bishu Osafune ju and Bizen Osafune ju, a variation happening within a single school. For all the debate over branding, quality and so on for all we know it could have simply been a statement of patriotism at a time of particular strife, e.g. "Product of the Bishu Region" vs. "Proudly Made in Bizen Province".

Immediately brought to mind this thread: https://www.militaria.co.za/nmb/topic/56700-tsuba-made-by-a-drunk If you were born into a lineage of this kind of craftsmanship, evidently you started in the family business *very* early. No doubt a combination of innate (inherited?) talent, plus having that talent nurtured from a very young age while growing up alongside others with that talent as mentors and role models.

Agreed, if you can afford it and you'll put it to good use, then go for it. People here may quibble about just how much a non-Japanese blade will actually handle/perform compared to a proper nihonto, but if you're going to be using it to train or do tameshigiri, I think we can all agree that it's better to do it with a Lonquan copy rather than your Masatoshi.

Personally, I agree with @Tan-C - I find it charming in a way, especially given how polished and skillful signed works (or any works that make it out of the workshop, really) usually are. In some ways, just as important and rare as a masterwork from the artist's prime years.

You have it right: Fujiwara Nobuishi 藤原信石 Edit: another possibility is SUKE 右; there was a Bakumatsu-era swordsmith who signed Kashu ju Fujiwara Nobusuke 加州住藤原信右

If anyone's curious about how well-regarded Ono Yoshimitsu is in the world of nihonto, he's the one living smith whose newly-made swords regularly fetch prices higher than the average Juyo. He's considered a shoo-in to be appointed a Living National Treasure, assuming there will ever be any more appointed.

Apprenticeships often started very early in life, this could very well be the equivalent of baby's first drawing that gets stuck on the family fridge.

And also to prevent you from losing a finger... or something even more important!

Looking forward to it! Always nice to see one of these out and about among the common folk.

11. @Lewis B is right, this is a fantastic deal. Many well-done photos, done in settings that emphasize nie and hataraki, even showing through the hadori polish - something that often isn't done on blades of this calibre 16. "Massive" doesn't just mean "long" - the book itself is quite large, and so are the photographs inside Good buys here for folks interested in top-end blades.

I hope to someday find a light source neutral enough that we can photograph the "bluish-purple" steel of Masamune or the "deep blue" of old Bizen. I do see swords with a bluish sheen on some dealer websites but I think this is a function of their lightning temperature since all their listed blades, even shinto and gendaito, appear with the same colouring.

Blame the forum software. Basically, unlike most forum searches, rather than run the search in the background and then give you a token so you can page through the results, the "search" is actually just a query string in the URL: https://www.militaria.co.za/nmb/search/?q=hector&quick=1 This means that there's no cached search results to quickly grab and show you, so every single page is indeed its own independent search (i.e. page 1: find me the first 50 posts with "Hector"; page 2: find me posts 51-100 with "Hector"). Most modern forum software is better than this, so hopefully the planned upgrades will make this a thing of the past.

I think it would be more appropriate to call this another koshirae style, as the shira- in shirasaya implies that it is unadorned (which includes lacquer). It's obviously not intended for practical use; perhaps more like a display koshirae for when visitors come to the house (looks more formal/impressive, but doesn't require nearly as much time to assemble/remove as a proper koshirae)? The Katana Hanbai listing itself describes this as 朱漆塗鞘 ("vermillion lacquered saya") rather than 白鞘 (shirasaya).

Thank you for the fix and the prompt response!

I imagine this is a software bug - it should be fairly simple for @Hoshi to fix this by adding a check to ensure that notifications are not sent out for items that were already unavailable at the time the crawler/parser picked them up. Or at least add an opt-in setting to receive notifications for "historical" listings, as there are some Big Data nerds out there who want to know about everything that's ever been on the market. Either way, I doubt this is an intended scenario as the volume of emails I've been seeing are rapidly approaching the "ISP/email provider automatically adds it to the spam folder or blacklist" threshold (of course, this will vary depending on exactly how many alerts and notifications you've set up).