Sukaira

Late 30's

Thanks for this - scooped both of them up

That does make sense. I see where your thinking is now. I totally agree on the Enju thoughts as well. It was also surprising to me (the NBTHK attribution) because I own two Enju blades and they are both textbook ko-mokume with a white-ish hue and very visible utsuri. I have not seen an Enju blade with anything resembling the hada of this one.

A really cool update on this topic... @Rivkin it is interesting, and maybe even telling, that you initially thought the sword to be Hizen. As we know Tadayoshi's konuka-hada was an attempt at Awataguchi's nashiji-hada. So the other day I was perusing Nakahara's Facts and Fundamentals book and came upon a paragraph in the Q&A section on page 53 that kind of changes the game in Awataguchi's favor for the original blade in question for this topic...as in Fukunaga might be correct with his sayagaki, unless anyone can show me an Enju blade that replicates what I am about to describe. Seeing as how I also have an Enju Kunisuke right beside it (and would consider him representative of the school) and the forging is nothing alike, it seems unlikely. Hopefully the photos are not too low resolution to see, but when I first received and inspected the sword, I noticed what appeared to me to look like short, white dog hair in the ji-hada. I remember thinking that, because I have a white haired pit bull and saying to myself, this looks like her fur that sheds everywhere So anyway, back to page 53...Nakahara says: "It is written in sword appraisal books of around the late Muromachi period, the Rai, Awataguchi, and Ko-Bizen blades have masame-hada. This is rather difficult to interpret. I think that between that time and now, the difference in polishing techniques and the quality of the polishing stones used were somewhat different. What old kantei books referred to then as masame-hada was a condition of the hada that had the appearance of very short rabbit hair. This kind of description was also used for tea bowls. One type of Tenmoku (black glazed) tea bowl used in the tea ceremony is called Nogime-tenmoku (hare's fur Tenmoku). I suspect the same terminology was applied because of the similarity to the pattern of the tea bowl." So after reading that, I was like wow ok so what does this tea bowl look like, because the short fur masame is definitely spot on. See below for comparison

That is an interesting thought as well Rivkin

Just as the topic says - anyone here know of him or examples of his work? I can't find anything online.

I indeed would have dumped 1.2m on that. Kissaki geometry is really interesting.

Just opening this up as I have not seen many blades with this level of intensity on the itame. Is it bad, good, uniform, non-uniform? Looking for anyone who might be familiar with this as I do not have much context on this style. This is a blade I just acquired.

Im hoping so! If you saw it in hand, you would definitely agree something is "off" with the polish as is

what the....

@Rivkin yeah that's why I am excited to have it properly polished, as the jihada itself looks like it has great potential. This one is Koto and Soshu

Yes it is hitatsura

The jihada itself is great, underneath this crazy polish are good "bones" for sure, at least IMO

Might be hard to tell from my photo, but the polish is definitely not good at all.

I probably could return it, but I think the blade is good enough to polish into something really nice, so I am keeping it and having it re-polished with Moses. I can't link the blade since Tsuruta removes the page once it is purchased. However check the pics below: