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Hello: I think you should reread my post Peter as I said nothing about buying swords on eBay or buying from unknown persons. I said your rule of thumb isn't a bad one but with respect to swords coming from Japan one's hesitation can be reduced if the blade is offered by a well known and responsible dealer. I then mentioned Tsuruta san and him only. If it is unpapered he offers a guarantee, and if it is signed and gimei, he says so. A high volume merchant, as he is, needs turnover and the long wait for a paper on an unpapered blade going through the NBTHK process, is money foregone. As I suggested and James mentioned, there are many unpapered blades in Japan. Ben, the yasurime comment doesn't directly say your blade is gimei, however it is easy to forget that mei analysis starts with the yasurime and Terukane's is invariably sujikai as far as I can tell. Arnold F.

Hello: Your caution might not be a bad rule of thumb Peter and could save a buyer a lot of anxiety, however I think there are many exception cases. I think that the channel by which swords that are signed, or unsigned for that matter, come to the West from Japan, could considerably allay one's fears if they come from a well known and responsible dealer. The supply to market system in Japan, like in the West, can be from the collecting community, where you would expect that a blade for sale probably has a paper if correct, but they could also come from a non collector who just stumbled on the sword, for example from an estate which had it stored away for many years. Mr. Tsuruta's Aoi Arts is mentioned quite often on the NMB, and he will usually have papered pieces, but sometimes they are not papered. In the latter case you will often see him guarantee that a piece will paper at least at the Hozon level. I also notice he will regularly say that such and such a blade that is signed, and not papered, does not have a reliable signature. There were many families that had large collections and were called to get a torokusho for each blade in those special years of Showa 26 and 27, and the blades simply went back into the family kura. If the family was well enough off they didn't have to sell the swords. When such things become part of an estate that must be liquidated, well, no paper. I guess that Mr. Tsuruta handles a lot of estate or distressed sale situations where a blade has no paper other than its registration paper and he has a reputation to protect when they are put on the market. I think is also true that our current passion for papering everything is mostly a post-war phenomenon and people in Japan who are outside the active collecting community only need a torokusho just to possess a blade, signed or unsigned. That stock of blades that does not circulate on the market could be surprisingly large. The Cultural Ministry would have that data, and what interesting research it would make! Arnold F.

Hello: I think some study is called for starting with the yasurime, then some inferences from the quality of the koshirae, before going any further. Terukane is a well regarded smith. Arnold F.

Hello: Well "toban" is an older term for tsuba..... Arnold F.

Hi Ken: Each blade must be judged on its own merits and when a blade has flaws (and lists will vary as to what is on the list and how "bad" individual flaws are) you have to decide how negative they might be, whether they bother you, and what is the appropriate rate of discount that should be reflected in the price. There is no iron rule of thumb. Lists can be quite misleading. Gasam's suggested list mentions old cut marks and if acquired in battle many would be considered a plus as is stated. On the other hand one must be very careful on the criteria of a retempered blade as there are many markers. Mizukage, for example,is a virtual criterion of the maker when found on some smiths within the Horikawa school, particularly Dewa Daijo Kunimichi. Also there are ware and there are ware. Paradoxically they are a criterion on Hankei blades and on Yamato Hosho to a lesser extent. Certain Rai jihada features might be kizu when in the work of others, but for Rai it is a kantei point. Once you are thoroughly familiar with the features of particular schools and smiths then, and only then, can you judge the +'s and -'s. Seeing the image of a blade, no matter how excellent, is too risky to say much from. When a blade is thoroughly pleasing, in many respects it is like the comment of US Supreme Justice Potter Stewart, who famously said with respect to the definition of pornography, "... "you" know it when you see it..." Arnold F.

Hello: There is a difference between "kizu" and the eventual product of a sword being polished down sufficiently to display undesirable visual features that would not have been present when the sword left the smith's hands. There are many Juyo and higher rated blades with "visual" defects, some to the extent that they would actually impair the blade in combat (as if that were to happen!). A quick Google search should provide several discussions of kizu. Arnold F.

Hello: Yesterday the mail brought the JSS/US Newsletter, Vo. 47, No.4 (July-August, 2015), containing an excellent piece titled Restoring Armour and Swords - Contrasting Viewpoints, by Ian Bottomley, F.A.B. Coutinho, B. Hennick and W.B. Tanner. This piece focused on swords, the previous Newsletter focused on armor. Both articles brought fresh insight to topics often raised under several heading in the NMB. Check the JSS/US site for Membership information. Arnold F.

Hello: Points well taken Joe and Steve. I didn't say any one person dismissed Kicho but I do want to lean on the quickness in general to dismiss old papers disestablished from the current NBTHK submission processes. For a quick look at a Juyo Koretsugu mei take a look at the one Aoi has for sale. It is not uncommon for Koretsugu and Moritsugu mei not to be accompanied with a date by the way. The Koshu TK paper is an early one, some were local but I don't know about the place of issue for that one. I think the local ones were the problem papers. I saw someone recently advertising their interest in buying (?) blades with Koshu TK papers. The blade in question seems to be a little suriage which might explain some things like the test and the price. Arnold F.

Hello: Just to extend this thread a little further I wonder whether we should be so quick to set older papers aside when they no longer are integral and necessary steps up the NBTHK ladder to sword certification heaven? There have been localized dishonest practices on some NBTHK papers decades ago, and while for various reasons it is now necessary to start the Juyo process with the blade having attained a Tokubetsu Hozon paper, and the older Kicho and Tokubetsu Kicho as well as the Koshu Tokubetsu Kicho are now disestablished as part of that process. I say "disestablished" rather than "invalid" as they former is procedural in nature and the validity, that is the representational truth of the older individual papers as to correctness and quality, have not necessarily suddenly become unreliable. After the war the old Juyo Bijutsuhin were disestablished, though curiously they still may not be exported legally from Japan, and the Juyo Bunkazai designation was awarded to some. I have never heard of anyone unwilling to own a Juyo Bijutsuhin sword. Similarly after the war it was years until the Tokubetsu Kicho designation came into use and many blades that would eventually become Juyo and Tokubetsu Juyo had only the Kicho paper, and early ones of which, should you find one, could well represent a potential treasure. By the same token the Koshu Tokubetsu Kicho papers, issued for a few years locally and in Tokyo, were heralded as one step down from Juyo. I just think we should be a little careful about our assessment of older papers. I suspect that the vast majority that are associated with signed (!) swords are correct. Every sword should be judged on its merits, and that goes without saying. The Koretsugu at the start of all this appears to be okay, the write up, short on description, needs a lot of careful filling out. The Chikuzen Ishido group is a good one and Koretsugu and Moritsugu are excellent smiths. The group usually followed Ichimonji models and have some degree of utsuri. It might be there and it would be nice to have been in a detailed write-up. Arnold F.

Hello: 1. Late Shinto/early shinshinto. 2. Early Muromachi. 3. Early Nanbokucho. 4. Early Kamakura. Arnold F.

Hello: Points well taken Paul. Of course the blade is the thing, signed or unsigned. I have some unsigned blades too as a consequence of suriage and sometimes we can be quite confident of the period and tradition, but I always have to have some skepticism as to maker, though that can be buffered to some extent by a Tokubetsu Hozon or higher paper, and hopefully with a respected sayagaki too. Arnold F.

Hello: Interesting topic, but probably under the wrong heading. Provenance, taken literally, means "coming from", and the term is usually used in the context of the history of ownership of a blade. Auction catalogs love to tout the previous ownership of an art object to try to enhance its status in the mind of prospective buyers. The Christie's catalogs for the Compton sale were full of such information, and it seemed to me that it carried little weight in the ability to sell or on price unless the blade had a good paper and/or was signed. In the case of blades without a mei or high status papers, once again we saw that the uncertainty of that condition was not easily overcome by provenance. The issue in this thread is one of daimei, wherein the blade is master made and student signed, or daisaku, wherein the blade is student made and master signed. There are a number of examples of daisaku in the case of a smith who lived a long while and when elderly would do little more than sign. The same would go for an injured or infirm smith. I do not think it is likely that a shinsa would make note of such a situation if they could identify it, as daisaku are considered legitimate. There is a third case and that is where the blade is made by a son or student, and signed by him with the mei of the master. I am not sure what such a blade should be called and whether it is legitimate to any extent. Does anyone know how such a piece would be assessed? Would it be a gimei? The master might have agreed to such a situation, but how would one know? Arnold F.

Hello: For koshirae go to "Bid". Arnold F.

Hello: Bob Elder's Orlando show is small (for the time being), friendly, helpful and interesting. Arnold F.

Hello Henk-Jan: What is the threat of the TPP? Arnold F.

Hello: Should you have any doubt such tsuba are considered legitimate pieces, and they are not particularly common. Arnold F.

Hello: Richard, I mentioned the man only because he worked at the Jinja, came there rather late and was not identified as a Yasukuni smith on the Aoi site. He is mentioned in Tom Kishida's book on the Junja, b. 1915, d. 1995. His total production is given as "Approx. 20." I have no interest in post-war swords. The blade looks very nice, 450,000 JPY if I recall correctly. I think it would be impossible to find a war-time Yasukuni blade that is comparable for that kind of money, but of course this one is post-war. Arnold F.

Hello: No, I believe the last Yasukuni smith was Kotani Yasunori who died is Kure City, Hiroshima Prefecture, March 1, 2003. Arnold F.

Hello: I nice looking sword by Masuda Yasuaki popped up on Tsuruta san's Aoi site thismorning on a buy it now basis. It is tachi mei, quite long and with what seems to be a sayagaki, but I can't tell by whom. #14877. It is post war manufacture and without a paper. Worth looking at I think. Arnold F.

Hello: Thanks Steve; I stand corrected. I just had not seen that mixing myself and find it strange on an official document. Arnold F.

Hello: On perhaps a minor point, to transliterate is, in the case of English, to render kanji, and Japanese supplementary text, into words, using the Latin alphabet, that capture the sound of the Japanese text. Various systems have been used, all imperfect to a degree, and none are necessarily more correct than another. Is it Yedo or Edo, Yezo or Ezo, Tsuneiye or Tsuneie, Kaneiye or Kaneie? Take your pick. The idea is to capture phonetically, however imperfectly, the Japanese spoken sound. To translate, not the issue here, is to render the Japanese text into English, German, French, what have you. As for Kaneiye/Kaneie, Robert Haynes in his earlier writings went for Kaneiye, as did many other writers, though now Kaneie seems to be the more common usage. More to the point of Simon's tsuba, rejecting it as a mere mass produced thing might be a little premature. The orthodoxy of the moment is to recognize a first and second Kaneie and reject all others. In the pre-war era, one of the major ranking authorities Kawaguchi Noboru, in his magnum opus Tsuba Taikan (Token Shuju Shinbun Sha, 1935), advocated a theory that there were multiple generations, nine by my count and going into the early 18th Century. The mei of an illustrated 5th generation looks very much like that of Simon's tsuba. Kawaguchi's theory has since fallen into disfavor and I do not subscribe to it in any hard and fast way, but we do see some very nicely done Kaneie pieces which certainly fully invoke the classic paradigm of the group initiators. Tsuba study is very much in flux and open to different re-workings of linages and relationships and who knows what the future will say about Kaneie? There is a somewhat similar issue with Nobuiye/Nobuie tsuba which now readily accepts various provincial makers separate in space but similar in work style with the Owari masters. Arnold F.

Hello: I recognize Steve that the numerals are in the Japanese order on the nakago and the Arabic order (if that is the correct term) on the torokusho. Have you seen that numbering order on another torokusho? I haven't and I just wonder why they did it that way. Arnold F.

Terrific Markus!!! Arnold F.

Hello: Jussi isn't it strange that the torokusho date seems to be written ni-roku, 26, our Arabic numeral order, and the age of Hisayuki as shichi-ju-go, 75, in the usual Japanese order. I don't know if I have seem the order forms combined like that before on the same document. Showa 26 is usually, but not exclusively, seen as the first post-war registration date, thought by some to be the golden date for such, and was also in accordance with the Japanese independence year after the Occupation. Arnold F.

Hi: Thanks Ted; several valuable take-aways there! Arnold F.