eternal_newbie

Is there anyone out there with knowledge of Shinto swords willing to venture a guess as to how this attribution was made? My own study and collection has been heavily focused on koto and shinsakuto, so I'm curious to see what someone with more experience thinks of it.

It can be a little hard to navigate, but when it comes to timelines and provinces for individual Koto and Shinto schools https://www.sho-shin.com/ is an invaluable resource.

Yes, I thought of the kenuki-gata tachi tsuka as well. Kenuki (毛抜) means "hair clip/hair tweezers", which is what that shape is meant to represent. https://picryl.com/media/tsuka-of-kenuki-gata-tachi-at-ise-shrine-ef881e https://nihontoart.com/shop/a-museum-one-of-a-kind-kenuki-gata-tachi-by-suishinshi-masatsugu/ https://samurai-jpn.com/kenukigatatachi_en.html

Yup. Part of the process of brute forcing a password is figuring out the username that each password unlocks. If you can't log in with your username (which is visible to everyone) that effectively gives you two passwords that they need to crack to get in. Which is why you shouldn't ever share the email address you use to log into the NMB in here; if you must put an email address for people to contact you, use a business or personal one that isn't linked to your NMB account.

You're looking for the Jūyō Tōken Zufu vol. 36 (重要刀剣等図譜 第36回). I can't find any English-speaking dealer who has this volume for sale, so it's worth a) making a post in the "Wanted to Buy" section of the forum so anyone with a copy can see there's a buyer for it and b) getting in contact with a couple of well-known dealers of Nihonto and related books and let them know you're in the market for it, as they do often encounter a bunch of books in the wild but often have to make an educated guess on which ones they'll be able to find buyers for.

If you find yourself at an impasse, some photos here could help us at least narrow it down to a specific period or school (or, if it's a non-Nihonto, the production company or smith).

This also illustrates the difference between non-traditional blades off a production line and traditionally hand-forged blades by a well-trained smith (which these are), even if that smith is Chinese or American. The contrast is night and day, regardless of the country of origin.

Howard Clark is a big name in contemporary blade makers and works by him tend to be quite valuable - handle with care. Paul Chen is an important name in the early days of mass-produced Chinese shinsakuto, and these range from entry-level beaters/mat cutters to high-level emulation of art Nihonto.

There was another Kimura Sukemasa mei on this forum a few years ago if you wanted to compare yours:

"Those who know do not speak. Those who speak do not know." This being a forum on the Internet, however, means pretty much everyone speaks, know or know-not.

Agreed, they look like a koshirae-shi's attempt to make a somewhat more ornate version of the formal Samurai koshirae required by the bakufu, probably for a rich client (merchant?).

It'll be a genuine nihonto of some historical value; it will always sell, whether on here, on the Sword Buyers Guide, on Reddit or on Facebook marketplace or even the 'Bay. Just don't expect to turn a profit, and don't be surprised if you lose a little (especially taking postage etc into account).

To add to this - at the price range you're looking for, and even up to double that amount, there's always going to be something 'better' (or at least compelling in a different way) than anything you can get. By the nature of the market, anything in that value range is going to be lacking in some way, so what you're really hoping for is someone selling something decent at a lower price than it should be; and you're not going to find that here or at a reputable dealer, because anyone fitting that category would know what they have and roughly what it's worth. I would recommend spending at least a portion of that money on some good books; if not the usual Nihonto guides then at least one or two catalogues from a museum exhibit (the Sano Museum ones have English indexes, which is nice) so you can look at the best of the best and see what sort of shapes, hamon and jigane appeal to you and then look for scaled down versions of those in the range you can afford. If you must have a sword, right now (and I can understand the urge, I really can) then look for something that appeals to you personally, even in spite of any flaws or shortcomings, even if you can't really explain why. Something that, when you look at it, you just feel really moved or inspired on a personal level, and then when it's in your hands and the initial buzz starts to fade, use it as a jumping-off point to learn more about your own personal tastes and goals in the field - the things that drove you to pick that particular piece. At this lower-end, the best you can really hope for when it's time to move the piece on is to get back roughly what you paid for it; abandon any hopes of selling at a profit and using it to buy something better. The real value you gain will be knowledge and understanding - if not for the blade itself, then about your own aesthetic preferences and desires that led you to that point.

Something to think about for the future, as this will eventually become an issue for Hozon/TH papers too.

And the other flip side, like my koshirae set which has blue papers but no real "attribution" or mei to evaluate, just a description of what's there and how they fit together. As Kirill pointed out further upthread, what could new Hozon/TH papers even tell us other than "it's a set of real koshirae" in either decent or very decent condition? Makes perfect sense that nobody ever bothered trying to repaper in the modern system.

Here is a good example from Darcy's old website courtesy of the Wayback Machine: https://web.archive.org/web/20060908062818/http://www.nihonto.ca:80/kissaki/

Another option is to work with a dealer who can sell them for you at a consignment (or even split the collection among multiple dealers). I faced a similar problem myself a few years back dispensing with a collection of middling-to-good tosogu and Grey Doffin helped me out greatly by selling most of them on his site and at various shows. Along with Grey, there are some other dealers active on the Board who can be found in the following forum area: https://www.militaria.co.za/nmb/forum/88-dealer-showcase/ Even if they are unable to help you out directly they will probably have better advice than most of us on which auction houses are better and things you should know when dealing with them. Best of luck to you.

I think Mino Senjuin is a good guess, and while rare, Mino smiths did sometimes use mitsu-mune on daito and naginata (so Naoe Shizu remains viable too, although I personally would expect a deeper nioiguchi and more nie in a Naoe Shizu blade).

This is good to know; I have a blade with one of these for the koshirae and had more or less dismissed it as irrelevant. I will have to re-evaluate my thinking there!

I've seen a couple of these before in random online stores, one was listed as a throwing knife blade and the other was listed as a paper craft knife. As to which (if any) of those descriptions were correct, I have no idea...

Here are a couple: https://swordsofjapan.com/product/etchu-tametsugu-wakizashi/ https://www.mandarinmansion.com/item/soshu-sword-tachi-koshirae Go Yoshihiro (supposedly Tametsugu's father) and Shizu Saburo Kaneuji both have roots in Yamato, so seeing some Yamato influence in either Tametsugu or Naoe Shizu would be quite within expectations.

I'm curious to see others' opinions on this, because I've seen many arguments over exactly what those silver-coloured squiggles are. Some folks say chikei while others insist chikei show up as black lines only; other folks say kitae-ware but still more folks insist they can't be ware because there's no actual opening in the blade; or that they're just a slightly more visible expression of the underlying hada; and so on. I do think there seems to be a difference between the ones in the Tadatsuna and Jussi's blade; Jussi's seems more like nie activity, maybe something akin to imozuru, while the Tadatsuna's lines look more like lamination/fold lines that weren't quite loose enough to become ware.

Yep, I've had thoughts along these lines. Print out a plastic/acrylic blank of your blade and send it to habaki-shi, saya-shi, koshirae-shi etc. while the real deal stays safe at home with you.

When it comes to subjects that are relatively obscure (such as Japanese swords) and especially that involve languages you don't know, stay away from AI. At best, you'll have a correct answer that will take a lot of work to verify, and at worst, you'll have an incorrect answer you have no way to verify.

Just human nature I'm afraid, especially if the response isn't the one they were hoping for (as was the case here). This is a single purpose forum so they wouldn't have much of a reason to remain active here, unlike e.g. Reddit or Facebook.