eternal_newbie

Worth noting that the same seller has also posted a 1st edition of the GH Naunton collection by Joly and is offering a deal on combined shipping if both are bought together. There is also a Kaga Kinko book but it is very heavy so if you're not in Australia, expect the bill to be on the high end.

It's a lovely and very interesting little blade... makes you wonder how many modern smiths' work would look closer to the unrivalled swordsmiths of yore with the same amount of polishing and reshaping that a 700-year old sword would see.

Assuming we're speaking about historical smiths, for me it would be option 3 - the max best sword could have been a fluke, a gassaku or daisaku, or even made using different steel to the norm and thus cannot be used as an accurate benchmark. And for the average output, I don't begrudge anyone for doing what they have to in order to make a living - sometimes the client just wants something quick, cheap and effective. Even smiths today do it; there was a website a few years ago that sold an Ono Yoshimitsu blade that he had made for his own iai practice - it's very, very different to the fantastic stuff he usually puts out for his art swords, but I don't think it should drag down his overall 'appreciation rating'.

Does it have a standalone habaki, or is it integrated with the shirasaya?

Aside from all the previous discussions about this seller and the blades they have on offer, "bare blade" is a key term here. Blades without a habaki and shirasaya/koshirae don't stay in good condition for very long - and blades worth keeping in good condition would have had those made for transport and storage. You can probably treat the mei on one of these the way you'd treat a "Kotetsu" or "Sukehiro" on a cookie-cutter kozuka - it's there for flavour, not attribution.

Michael and Ken have the right of it - for this to work as an actual recognition program for providing attributions, you'd not only need a huge amount of data, but have that data be in a standardized format (e.g. all the blades would need to be shot from the same angle, under the same lighting, and in the same condition and polish!). A better usage would be to train it to do things like try to work out the original shape before suriage, or identify flaws that a beginner might miss, such as retempering or reshaped kissaki. You'd probably have more luck with training it to spot gimei (we have AI that scans written signatures for forgeries, so why not chiseled ones) - but I fear this would have a negative impact in the long run since it would give fraudsters the perfect way to hone their art until it passes the machine check, at which point it'd be easy to fool all but the most knowledgeable experts.

I do think there's room to improve on how we handle these arguments as far as discussion goes - too often we allow the conversation to get dragged away from the initial point by trying to persuade (or browbeat) someone into agreeing with the rest of us when they are clearly unreceptive to it. While it looks and feels constructive, like we're defending the integrity of our fellow board members and upholding truth, it also grants the disruptive party more power than they perhaps should have by allowing them to dictate the terms of discussion. I've encountered this when it comes to arguments in economics, politics etc. - sometimes the most constructive thing you can do is state that you respect their right to hold an opinion, but disagree personally, and then return to the base topic at hand. In this case, what was (and to a certain extent, still is) a deeply informative discussion about the specific criteria and judging processes involved in the Juyo designation, has instead turned into a slugfest over whether art in general should be judged subjectively instead of objectively. It's true that there are artistic merits to the Japanese sword, but that's not the entire purpose of their existence - they are weapons with over a thousand years of martial and political significance, and as such, their historical import is every bit as germane to the discussion of their worth. Additionally, the idea that Juyo/Tokuju shinsa is a case of everybody overlooking the forest for the trees (or "dying over the centrefolds" as it were) presupposes that the Juyo participants reflect the majority of the sword market, when in fact it's mostly the cream of the sword collector crop and those attempting to break into that category, while the vast majority of collectors are quite happy to pursue the "girls next door." I am in the process of saving for my first Juyo, and in doing so I have liquidated my entire collection of "girl next door" nihonto. Every. single. one. of them found a willing buyer within two weeks of listing - even the one that had been burnt and has basically no hamon left. That one actually had a second buyer lining up in case the first buyer changed their mind! Rather than arguing over whether art has objective merit, let's go back to recognising that Juyo is a designation that intentionally encompasses artistic, functional and historic significance, and proceed from there. If you disagree with the fundamental basis of Juyo, by all means create a separate thread titled "What Juyo should be" or "The problem with Juyo." Those arguments have merit and deserve their own discussion in depth - but are not relevant to the original topic here, which is the outcome of the process that already exists, and what is required to receive those outcomes.

$100 dollar bills are being printed as we speak, day by day. One of those modern day $100 bills will always be equivalent to another $100 bill from the same process, currently in circulation (assuming it's not too badly damaged to be used as currency - this is a 'fatal flaw' like a hagire). But then something changes - a new form of serialisation number, a slight change of artwork or background for added security, a change in the makeup of the paper used to print it. Suddenly there's a finite range on those old $100 bills. Slowly, over time, some of them get destroyed - by wear, water damage, burnt in fires, or simply blown away on the wind into the sea. Those bills get rarer and rarer, and their historical value starts going up. A 75-year old $100 bill from a different printing process, of which maybe 100,000 remain, is now worth more (albeit not too much) than a modern $100 bill being printed by the millions. This is not to say it's any more or less useful as currency, but the historical value has now changed. Now imagine the case where out of those old 75-year old bills, a very small fraction of them had some sort of defect. Maybe the 1 was facing the other way, or there was a very slight misalignment. Possibly 50 or so of those remain in existence, throughout the entire world... That's your Juyo. They now have significant historical importance for numismatics and are universally recognised as such, regardless of whether any given numismatist prefers collecting old Japanese coins or shiny new Euro notes. And out of those, maybe 10 were still in close to mint condition, no tearing, very little folding or foxing... that's your Tokuju. Now imagine this assessment of "important or not" was done once a year. Imagine it being held a mere 10 years after these bills stopped being printed, and the assessment was flooded with a bunch of those defective bills. Only the nicest, cleanest ones in mint condition are considered important (if indeed any of them are considered important at all) - after all, there's hundreds, if not thousands of them in imperfect condition floating around, right? Then 65 years later, when there's only 50 left in existence, one of those slightly foxed, crumpled notes that was dismissed all those years ago shows up again. Is it still dismissed as not important? Obviously it's not a perfect comparison as with art we have to deal with how the work compares to other works of the artist (see the endless discussions around -den) as well as how highly regarded/influential the artist was in his field, while $100 bills more or less appear identical, but you get the idea.

I think the relevant part here is this sentence in Darcy's post: Deciding if something is nice, or even very very nice, is obviously subjective. Deciding if something is important, within the context of a well-established field with not just prevailing trends but also historical records and an agreed-upon baseline for what is considered significant, is far less subjective. You don't need to be a fan of ko-Bizen to know that a signed, dated, ubu ko-Bizen tachi would be extroardinarily important to the field as a whole. You might think Masamune is a gaudy hack and "real" art is calm and austere like a good ko-Mihara suguha, but if you find a Masamune blade signed and with an inscription detailing who it was for and the occasion it commemorated, you better believe it's important to the Nihonto world and its institutions. If Gassan Sadakazu goes Juyo (and that's not a guarantee!), it will not be because attitudes changed and his blades are suddenly viewed as being far more beautiful than the primitives were capable of appreciating in the 2010s. It will be because the Juyo committe now has the benefit of hindsight and historical context of not just his own works but how they compare to his immediate peers and successors - and with this new context, his blades are now understood to be of importance to the history of Nihonto.

I am very sorry to hear of your loss. My deepest condolences... He was most fortunate to have had you for an owner.

I'm going to go with Komihara as well, simply because I used to own a Komihara blade with nearly identical hada, hamon and boshi. The hada is just a smidgen too loose for Aoe, and I can't see any masame that might push it to Tegai.

4kg?! That's gonna leave a mark... for reference, I have a 60cm heavy duty crowbar that weighs just over half of this (2.2kg, or around 5 pounds). More like a helmet crusher, if you ask me...

Not only that, but in many cases now you can't leave negative feedback under certain conditions (too soon after purchase, no recorded contact with seller, etc).

Great find, and some serious food for thought. I especially liked the (academic equivalent of a) mic drop at the end, with reference to all the 'sokes' that seem to pop up everytime there's a martial arts boom in popular culture.

Came for the dragons, was not disappointed!

Best stay clear of delusions of that magnitude, especially when tens of thousands of dollars are on the line... there's only two possible outcomes: 1) nothing changes, 2) you make an enemy.

Sure, this $2000 blade with Kicho papers might be a Juyo-worthy blade that I could resell for - on average - $30,000. There are around 10,000 Juyo blades out of 2 million registered blades, so that makes the odds around 0.005. If it turns out to be a Juyo-level blade, I will need to spend at least $10000 on a good polish and shinsa to get those papers. ($30000 - $10000) x 0.005 = $100 return on average for $2000 spent. Sure, you might be able to resell the blade to some other sucker to make up for the money you spent - but then you're becoming part of the problem (and you'll lose some money in the fees/conversion/opportunity cost in the meantime figuring out that your 'diamond in the rough' is really a bit of broken glass). And of course, those with real expertise will know that the proportion of blades on eBay at the Juyo level are significantly less than the proportion of blades in general at Juyo level, so the odds are even lower than that...

Interesting section about the Kimura / Akamatsu Taro family of smiths - I have an nice iai shinken by Kimura Kanemitsu in a vibrant choji midare. If I'm not mistaken the family (especially Kanetsugu) are particularly well-known for their works in the style of Kiyomaro...

I don't know Grey, I've had the misfortune of running across a few FM 'samurai' items in the past, and I'll say that as obviously fake as these are, they're better than the average FM effort (think sanded-on sawtooth hamon and nylon tsukamaki). That price though... sheesh!

Funnily enough swords are probably the thing I've had the least problem bringing in (apart from the inevitable customs/GST dues) - probably because I get the sender to mark the full value on the shipping material, and they don't want to be the ones getting docked if it gets damaged! On the other hand, here are some things that have somehow triggered red flags at customs: A large pack of handkerchiefs. These were opened, unwrapped and rewrapped individually, and a "Customs was here" leaflet inserted. My sister's theory is that they suspected the fabric might have been impregnated with drugs of some kind... Two sword books from Japan. Maybe they were expecting naughty manga and were disappointed to see oshigata An MP3 player (back when your phone couldn't do that for you) A box of Harry Potter novels for a young cousin (seriously, why so suspicious of books...) A very short, very heavy faux-shinai for indoor suburi. This one I sort of understand, given that it looks like bamboo. However they have (thankfully) heavily relaxed the rules for food in your luggage - our tiny, understaffed airports simply couldn't cope with 4 in 5 travelers going through the "Declare" line because of a bag of chocolates or a sandwich from the plane.

If nobody bought it in the auction, they may have found an in-store buyer for it. Otherwise, it will probably reappear with a non-auction fixed price later.

My guess is that it's a clerical error on their end - the description itself doesn't mention anything about the sword being suitable for iai, which Aoi Art typically does whenever a blade is listed (and just about all such blades in the past have had koshirae included).

As always, the first and foremost rule of getting a sword for iai is "ask your sensei" A blade that might be fine for a Jikiden iaidoka who's 5' 10" might not be for a Shinden iaidoka who's 5' 10", and so on... I do agree with John and Rayhan that I'd prefer something that already has an iai koshirae. In addition, blades used for budo have a slightly different polish to those meant for appreciation - I suspect the polish on this one would be the latter. The price is also an issue - compare it to some of the swords here in the similar length range with full koshirae: http://www.e-sword.jp/iai.htm

There's also a decent range of modern iai swords in that price range here, updated fairly regularly: http://www.e-sword.jp/iai.htm The advantage (aside from being less controversial) is that these would have been mounted especially for iai, and so the koshirae would probably hold up better to repeated use in a dojo. Also worth noting, when Aoi feel a blade and koshirae is suitable for iai or batto practice, they will mention it in a note on the listing (along the lines of "We recommend this blade to you for iai"). The note isn't present on this one...

I concur with Donny - this was well done and much appreciated. Looking forward to poring over them in great detail when time permits. Cheers, Rohan