eternal_newbie

Can't speak for others, but personally, I don't do anything to a tosogu box that I wouldn't do to a shirasaya.

Thanks Lee - I hadn't considered a tanto kashira since it's larger than all the katana-sized kashira I have, but a different koshirae style could explain it. I'll look around on the internet to see if I can find similar examples.

While taking inventory of all the items that I can sell off to fund my pursuit of Juyo, I found a strange little brass tosogu that I got as part of a bulk lot. It's pictured on the left here: http://members.iinet.net.au/~rjgengath/MiscItems/tosogu_03.JPG http://members.iinet.net.au/~rjgengath/MiscItems/tosogu_04.JPG I remember it being described as a kashira, but comparing it with a similar kashira (on the right) it's much deeper, has a curved base, and the hitsu-ana seems too small for regular ito. The hitsu-ana's size also rules it out from being a kurikata, unless you're using a shoelace as a sageo. It looks like the right size and shape to be a kojiri, but then why the hitsu-ana? Anyone know what this might be?

Also, even if your home environment is 100% humidity free (which I doubt, unless you live in the Sahara) - you still need to breathe, and your breath contains moisture. So unless you're holding your breath or wearing a gas mask every time you view a blade - chances are the rust will set in. Depending on your environment you may not need to re-oil for a year instead of every 3 months - but the oil should still be there when you're not actively viewing the blades.

Thanks Piers, I'll see what I can dig up!

Hello all, I'm trying to find a translation for a mei (at least, I think it's a mei) on the back of a kozuka. It's one of the items from my collection for sale at Grey Doffin's website and can be viewed (or bought) here: http://www.japaneseswordbooksandtsuba.com/store/nara-collection/r142-kotsuka-crows-and-waves In addition to the photos on Grey's site I managed to dig up a larger photo of the mei in question: Any assistance would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, Rohan

Save the sake for yourself - 99.95% or higher ispropyl alcohol (or isopropanol) and a microfibre cloth will work just fine. Whatever you don't get with the cloth will evaporate before any rust can set in, and then you can apply the thin coat of oil.

Thank you very much for your time and expertise, Morita-san! Time to do some research on those names - although some of them sound a bit too "big" for what I spent on this.

Properly trained - and therefore trusted - polishers outside of Japan are a rarity, and thus anyone who meets this criteria automatically becomes "a heavy". So unfortunately, your choices are to wait for a heavy to become available, or chance it with someone untrusted and untrained.

Not sure if this should be in the Izakaya or Translation section, but here goes: A few years ago, I bought an interesting kakejiku with a sort of collage of five paintings of birds framed by geometric shapes, each with a different signature (making it a gassaku work, if I'm not mistaken) to hang on a wall that we were renovating. The renovation got delayed, then when it finally went through we ended up placing a sofa against it. The kakejiku remained in its tube for a while until we decided to move the sofa - at which point it's now coming back out to go on the wall. I'm now curious to know a bit more about the painting, so was interested to see if anyone here would like to take a crack at either translating the signatures or analyzing the paintings themselves. I can say that it is in good condition, is rather wide - from roller end to roller end it's just over 100cm long - and is either from the Kano school of painting or inspired by that school. I'm not particularly interested in selling it (just wanted something nice to cover the wall), but on the off chance that it's actually valuable I thought it'd be better to get it checked out before leaving it exposed to the daily dust, wind and sunshine it would get from being on display. Full gallery with closeups of signatures is here: http://members.iinet.net.au/~rjgengath/Kakejiku/gallery.html

If sales go well, my annual donation to the board just might wind up being somewhat fatter than usual...

Hello all, Grey has now begun listing the items on his website and will be offering them at the Chicago show. http://www.militaria.co.za/nmb/topic/22320-nara-tosogu-collection-for-sale/ Thanks, Rohan

After receiving some good advice from the board in this thread, I have decided to send my collection of Nara tosogu (and a few non-Nara odds and ends) to Grey Doffin to put on his website. The pieces are now in the process of being listed: http://www.japaneseswordbooksandtsuba.com/store/The-Nara-Collection They are mostly fuchigashira sets, with a few kozuka and a couple of very nice tsuba thrown in for good measure. The collection will also be present at the Chicago show so anyone in the area can save on shipping by purchasing in person. Thanks for your interest and your advice.

I concur with Steve - I'm in Western Australia and have had all manner of nihonto and martial arts equipment come through without any Customs hassle (aside from the GST payment), both from other states and overseas. And the post office is quite happy to hold items for you for up to 5 working days if you're not home to sign for them. I've bought from Aoi a couple of times and shipped via EMS, and have no complaints on that score.

I wonder if it was originally part of a daisho, and the katana was the one with the kozuka?

Some nice koshirae on that one Ray... I like the yanone fuchi/kashira, and it's pretty cool that they worked a yanone onto the rim of the tsuba too.

This applies to Japanese buildings too - the number of times I've heard about this or that building being the oldest of its kind, having stood there for however many centuries, only to find out that this includes being rebuilt exactly to spec every few decades when it was levelled by fire or some other disaster!

There's one up for auction on Aoi-Art now: https://www.aoijapan.com/kikuchi-yari-kikuchi-jyu-koretada Interestingly, it's a shinsakuto yari (made in 2004) which I haven't seen very many of.

Boy, Chinese fakes sure have come a long way since I started collecting... I remember the good old days of wheel-buffed temperlines, engraved signatures and tsukaito that looks like it was made from someone's leftover shoelaces. You kids these days, you don't know how good you have it!

Hard to tell with the low resolution, but the symbol inside the circle looks like it could be related to the 6th one on this list (in the second table): http://quanonline.com/military/military_reference/Japanese/blade_markings.html

Please don't hold this against the owner of that website - he simply posted up the wording I provided, which was essentially the description given to me by the previous owner. He is blameless in the matter and the fault lies entirely with the previous seller (who, surely coincidentally, I can no longer reach) and myself for failing to adequately verify that the description was indeed accurate. That being said, I think it's best if that blade and the description were to be removed; I will contact the website's owner and get it taken down, if for no other reason than to preserve his good name. Edit: and yes, there is a boshi-like hadori line - you can see it (faintly) in this picture. It even has turnback at the top!

Somewhere out there is an actual Nigerian prince who wonders why ladies always make a face and tell him where to go whenever he tries to impress them with his heritage and title...

I was the one who sold this blade to Ben. As it is now on its way back to me, I think it's my place to reveal the bad news. He took it to a professional togishi, who revealed that the oddities are almost certainly the result of a retempering (or fire damage). In addition, much of the hamon is actually fake (by the hadori polish) - enough traces of it remain to give the impression of completeness when held under the right lighting if you aren't sufficiently experienced/eagle-eyed. I'm not sure if the previous buyer was aware of this and chose not to disclose it, but given that I was sufficiently fooled enough to resell it, I'll give them the benefit of the doubt. I confess that I couldn't quite make out the details of the hamon in the kissaki, although I assumed that was just due to the polish as I've seen a couple NBTHK-papered blades with boshi that looked similarly indistinct to my eye. At any rate, looks like I need to do a lot more research - if I can't spot a fake hamon, I suspect a Juyo token sword would be wasted on me...

Thank you all for the very helpful advice. While flying over to the US and/or Europe for a show certainly sounds like a grand adventure, my remote location and full-time work commitments mean that it would end up costing me the price of a decent sword, if you factor in accommodation and missed income. Therefore, I have decided to first get in touch with Grey to see what my options are regarding consignment or bulk sale before I make a final decision. Regards, Rohan

Note to other members/moderators - I'm not sure if this is an acceptable thing to be posting here, so feel free to delete this if it's out of line and/or issue me a stern warning In order to focus on my sword collection I'm looking to move my modest collection of Nara fittings, consisting of several sets of fuchi/kashira, kozuka and a couple of tsuba all sharing similar materials, craftsmanship and themes (mostly herons, kingfishers and reeds, although there's a turtle and a couple of bats hidden in there). I'd like some advice on the best way to go about doing this. In particular: Method of selling - Do I try to sell them all as a single collection? Split them into smaller batches? List every single piece individually? Try to get them to an auction? eBay ? Ballpark valuation - Obviously, I know what price I paid for the items, but as I'm not an expert on tosogu I don't really know what I can expect to get for them today, especially with the market being drastically different to the time when I started collecting. I'm not so much concerned with being underpaid as I am about wasting my time and that of potential buyers by setting an unreasonable figure. I am, of course, willing to pay a consignment fee or related costs (e.g. better photography) for assistance in moving these items, especially as I'm living in a fairly remote part of the world as far as this hobby is concerned (Perth, Western Australia). And of course, anything sold via this board will result in a donation to Brian to help keep this wonderful resource and community alive for the benefit of future collectors. I'm still working on getting my photography right as I'm even less experienced with photographing tosogu than I am with collecting/appraising them, but for now I've attached a couple of rough photos below to give an idea of what my collection is like. Thank you for your time, Rohan Postscript: I also have a handful of fittings that don't match the theme of the collection below - those will be listed on NMB separately.