Darcy

I'm on a boat now for a few days going diving. I have intermittent internet so I can't respond easily or fast to requests. About this sword: I am not commercially involved so if anyone wants to contact the owner about it, they should do that directly and I would be happy if a member works something out with George to buy the sword and then will follow through on restoration. I can continue to guide the sword through that in Japan. But please read the thread and see where I have had to correct "Darcy said" statements and some statements that I've made in private for private consumption may be missing context where they are transmitted as hearsay so please do not hang anything on me because "Darcy said" something and I would appreciate if people let me speak for myself in my own words as much as possible. This will be difficult for a few days as trying to get cell phone access in the ocean is not easy.

On my end, I've just left Japan and had some other work I needed to complete. I haven't had chance to sleep much and have been working 7 day weeks for a few years but the last two trips took a lot out of me and I'm looking at my state of health with all this computer time and not liking what it is projecting to. Right now there is a blue blue ocean 30 feet outside my door and I am expending time trying to explain the intricacies of the sword market. The community has this one in good care. I've handed in about all the advice I can and I'm going to have myself a little sword vacation for a while. It will take about 3 weeks or so for the torokusho to be completed, and then 2 weeks or so to undo that and another week to send it back to the USA so during that time I'm still here for the owner to tell me what to do via email and I'll just be executing tasks.

Again, that is not quite what I said and is missing context. I told you the blade will always be worth more than the cost of the polish, so in that regard, is an easy decision to make. The rolling the dice part is that the value will go UP or DOWN based on a substantial offer that you received and refused from a high level collector in Japan, should you polish it yourself. Polish can reveal more issues or address current ones. You are painting this as your blade having nil value like you thought on day one and that polish according to my advice may put you into the negative and I wrote several times the exact opposite. I have to give some context here, there was an offer that is substantial. More than most members here have had to pay for polished and papered blades. Overlapping into the low bar of already Juyo blades on the mid range Japanese sites. When it was refused it was following a line of logic that money is just not a big motivation for this family so the offer wasn't of interest if it didn't advance other goals for the family. And I understand and respect that. But the opposite side of the coin is used: we have a low military income and money is an important thing to us that we cannot spend on something we don't understand is necessary and seems frivolous like restoring a sword. And I understand that too. But the two statements where they come together is what starts making me feel frustrated because they are contradictory. For a few reasons: 1. People find it disrespectful to bombard an owner with offers unless the owner comes out and says it is for sale. One of the reasons I want it back in your hands is so that you can say that to people if you want and consider offers, with the blade in your hands, and not while it is in my hands, so I can cleanly exit from any association of the blade being something I'm marketing. 2. The blade does not yet have a license and cannot move around easily in Japan. Nobody can see it except the importer of record (who offered to buy) and a couple of sword people that had a chance to see it as I was physically moving it from pickup to analysis by Tanobe sensei to delivery with the person who would complete the torokusho using the temporary import certificate. The final person who has physical custody of the blade and stated a few times he likes it very much in spite of the problems and backed that with an offer, will complete and get the license and at that point it could be moved around and shown. But all collectors will tell you of the rookie that came to the show one day and started in one corner, and went to the other, asking for offers, crossing out names and putting in the new high offer. Nobody wanted to really be part of that. They wanted to have a price they could afford be told to them and then a chance to buy it or not. That offer was left on the table as uninteresting, without any counter being made to him, which is OK because he is not a counter offer kind of guy. 3. While one person is looking at a sword, we do not go at it like we're trying to navigate a broken stop light at an intersection in Mumbai. That person looking at the sword has a chance to do something about it. If not then the next person has a chance. Unless you put it on a table at a sword show with a price tag on it where everyone can come up and take their turn making an offer, the sword is there in relative secrecy because it was about getting it authenticated and restored. 4. A lot of people are not comfortable with risk so prefer to keep their finger in the pot and see what happens as the polish process completes and the blade papers. This kind of buyer is then in the market. Another kind of buyer prefers stuff coming "out of the woodwork" like this and is a risk taker by habit and pride and looks for the chance to fix these up. These two buyers pay different prices, the hunter and risk taker is absorbing someone's risk so they want a lower price. The retail buyer who wants it ready before he looks at it pays higher but he doesn't tolerate any risk. 5. Because that offer you got was substantial it is above what a lot of people can actually pay, though it is not beyond the means of all to pay. Every member on this board if you just made a draw, every member would submit their name and hope to be the owner of it. But if you asked everyone on the board if they could buy it from you the answer would be yes, depending on the price, and a lot of them saw the initial estimates and knew that it would never fall to a value that they could afford it. And what I produced for you was something that I wrote to you and described to you as a *bottom line valuation* based on a real world offer rather than an estimate. That bottom line means that we know the market value is no lower than that offer. We do not know what the top line valuation is, but I think it is not higher than the guess I made and posted here and I said was contingent based on no problems coming up. Since we have a problem come up, the valuation of the blade is between that top estimate and the bottom line established by a real offer. In terms of time: it's been since March 21st and if your expectations is that the entire world of swords will be at your door already, you have to understand, we're off in one corner speaking english. A lot of collectors don't read the board. Japanese are the majority of the market and they don't know of your blade. And your blade is not yet presentable because it needs to be: - polished - papered - new shirasaya made for it - new habaki And then one of: - sayagaki - hozon papers To authenticate the signature. After this: - communicated in bulk to buyers that it is available for purchase and you have set a price And after you do all this it is not hunting where you go out and grab a buyer and force your item down their neck. It is fishing. You have your hook in the water and maybe the fish will bite. You are depending on ONE guy who has SEEN the blade who CAN AFFORD it and what's more HAS IT NOW because he didn't just have to put a new roof on the doghouse who is scholarly and can accept that an OLD BLADE HAS OLD BLADE PROBLEMS. Each one of those things narrows down the field. What is on this board is mostly guys who have enough pent up energy about swords that they want to talk about it and share info on a daily basis and argue about it too sometimes (a lot of the time), and come from all walks of life. This board can be an outlet for them to see and discuss things they don't get to come into contact with in the real world except behind glass. It is not a bunch of Ferrari driving supermodel dating rich dudes. It's enthusiasts. They are not offering to give it to you George. They are offering to give it to the sword. Because they want to save the sword from future decay and also, if lucky, get to see what it looked like under all that crap. Ted and I have seen the hamon coming through now and it is beautiful and tasteful. I don't want to get too far into what the NBTHK will do or won't do, but if a polisher can pull something out of that blank zone (and I wrote on one side I feel like I can see a ghost of a line, but the rest of it looks like dense activities of ko-nie going down to the ha), then I think that given my experience the blade will pass up to Juyo. If the whole hamon came out like it seems to be indicating without an issue it could pass up to Tokuju. The lower level they will pass it to Hozon or possibly Tokubetsu Hozon. So I think the sure level is getting Hozon and then possibly TH or Juyo but that is a decision that they will make and not me. I feel pretty good about TH and if I got TH I'd have no second thoughts about sending it for Juyo. If it got rejected at Juyo it would not change my thinking one bit on the blade.

All of the advice given above is correct. George, the information you are relaying is not what I had written to you. I was not saying the papering process is crazy, it is a comment on the market sometimes being irrational. Another example: a blade with a questionable but not false signature ("to mei ga aru" note) will often price less than a similar blade that is unsigned. That makes no sense at all, because there is still a strong chance that the questionable signature blade will turn out to be authentic. So rationally the price should be: false-signature < unsigned < questionable-but-possible < authentic False signature is easily adapted to unsigned by removing the signature. But the market prices them like this: questionable < unsigned < authentic Which is not rational but reflects simply that a questionable signature makes people feel emotionally uncomfortable so some number of people shy away from them. That causes lowered demand which affects the price. What I was trying to express was the reaction of the market to something like an interrupted hamon and that's where I said if it were cut in half to be a wakizashi and a satsuma-age tanto, they could both pass Juyo and have substantial value. Thus in my opinion: An intact ubu blade regardless of problems should be valued as MORE than what you'd get if it were cut in half. But the market may not agree, but that is my assessment that the blade regardless of those issues retains a lot of value. Less than it would be without the issues but I would value it higher than the average person would. Papering is simply communication about authenticity. If a young blade has a fatal flaw, it won't paper which is a holdover from the fact that these flaws will imply that their utility as a weapon has passed. It is also an attempt to protect collectors to some degree from such things. But since we are not going about bashing each other with swords anymore, issues that were important to samurai needing to kill with a blade should not be held so important to us as custodians and art lovers. For old blades then "fatal is not always fatal" and I wrote about this topic on my blog. The older it is the more can be forgiven. The more positive attributes it has the more can be forgiven. And the papers are just a vocabulary we have to communicate with each other about the relative importance of blades, it is an imperfect vocabulary but it's necessary especially when we are talking about authenticity. It's really not a discussion that is supposed to be boiling down to papers. It is a discussion about whether or not the blade should be restored / given away to someone who can't properly maintain it like a military museum / put back in the gun safe / sold to someone who is prepared to invest in restoration. About your last sentence there about going on gut and sentimentality, that of course is your prerogative. It's your property. Factor in that it's not just your property though to be treated based on personal sentimentality and "gut" thinking, because it is a historical and cultural artifact of which there is no other perfectly similar object in existence. If you do decide to say the hell with everyone giving good advice and the hell with all of that advice and that your gut knows better, at the very least talk to someone here who can tell you something about how to maintain it or pay for someone to make a shirasaya so it can at least be stored properly and oil the blade forever and it will lower the rate of further decay. You will be out a few hundred dollars and you are already way ahead of the game because of donated time and materials from Michael, Ray, me, Ted, Tanobe sensei and every board member who took time to weigh in.

To clarify, I didn't want to speak on the condition issues as it is not my sword and it is not polished, so I left it to George to choose to mention that aspect of it. Importantly: I did not suggest that anyone would cut the blade in half to paper it. What I said was that the value of the item needs to be understood as more than the top half as a Juyo wakizashi and the bottom half as a Juyo satsuma-age tanto. If you want to correctly value the whole in spite of an issue like this, you can start with what the market would say about it in parts and then you can attest that the whole has to be worth more as an intact and ubu blade. There is no suggestion that anyone would cut it in half now as a realistic approach to dealing with the blade. This blade should paper after a polish, whether to Juyo, depends on what happens to it after a polish. But all this needs to be assessed after a polish. The importer wanted to buy it so I told George of the offer without any recommendation that he should accept it or decline it as I don't know what the value is due to the hamon. That is what brought up the illustration of two parts to be used to value it. In the end what I told George was to get the blade back in his hands first, verify what I've told him, I informed Benson of the blade, and gave Bob Benson's contact info to George and suggested he seek second opinions and then do some soul searching about what is best for the blade and his family. What I don't think should happen is to put it back into a gun safe for 50 years and call it a day as I think that will kill the blade. The people that saw it in Japan reacted to it 100% positively because ubu, authentic and zaimei is something you can never take away from it, and that puts it among the most rare blades. The hamon situation needs to be dealt with by a top polisher to try to rescue what is there, and if this ends up in the wrong hands eventually after a long time then nothing good will come of that (see: ebay purchassa, and amateur polish outside of Japan).

It can't get a sayagaki without a new shirasaya, and it being in polish. It can't do those without engaging in some risk, as it needs an expensive polisher and fine hands. The owner is not willing at this point to engage in any risk and is unsure what to do and I think the valuation question is difficult to answer in terms of how-much-money-would-someone-hand-over without a completed polish. Any sword collector will understand the issues trying to value a rusty sword and the nature of polishing. So it really needs to go back into the owner's hands and for his family to make a decision about what path they want to take. The mission was not to sell the blade but to authenticate it and prevent it from being predated if it was authentic. Those were successes and after this the family needs to discuss what they want to do and how. To them it is an heirloom and maybe more value to keep, but there is some stubborn resistance to the idea that it needs to go through a somewhat risky restoration process if it is going to be locked into some kind of condition that won't decay further. Having the blade back in one's hands when you don't know the field is the only way to feel firmly in the driver's seat, so this was my recommendation to the owner, facing some uncertainty and dealing with opinions from people he's never met or known by email for a couple of weeks. My primary worry is that it goes back into the gun safe, is forgotten, rusts further, hands down a generation, ends up on ebay, is sold to someone who hands it to an amateur polisher who sandblasts it and kills the blade for good. But it's up to the family to decide now if it's their private heirloom of their grandfather's exploits and what condition in which to keep the blade, or to sell it and I don't think selling it is on the table at the value it can get in the current state. A lot of people who have something like this adopt an all-or-nothing mentality and anyone who is buying a sword that is rusty, you know when someone wants from you a full retail Ginza shop price that you don't want to adopt their risk and pay that out if you can walk into a Ginza shop and spend the same amount on a Juyo blade with no risk and walk out of there with after market service and a place to return it if you need cash in the future. So there is some tension in this kind of decision and I think it just needs time for them to sort out the priorities and what is the most desirable outcome. I accomplished my mission, so I am basically checked out. I have a secondary mission which is that the blade doesn't end up on ebay and killed in a possible future that is probably on the scale that is outside of all of our lifetimes. But it's something you need to worry about with something like this, there are only 5 signed examples apart from this one and only one ubu, and no ubu in kijimomo. That is balanced out with the fondness of the family for the object and their connection to their granfather through this item. There is no good answer. I advocate selling the blade to someone who can care for it because that will put it on a track of permanent care and prevention of decay. Keeping it in a family that does not collect swords means it will go to neglect again at some point. And then the future is on ebay from a grandchild or something like that that views it as some junk their great-uncle left to them and would rather get some money for a new iPhone 37.

So we have wrapped it up in Japan for the blade. It's been positively appraised by Tanobe sensei and there is some interest from Japanese collectors in buying it as is. However, the blade after it gets its torokusho will end up being re-exported and returned to the USA. It needs to get restoration by some top hands in Japan due to its age and that it's a bit thin and this goes hand in hand with some risk. I think probably some time is needed to process all of the information and decide what to do with it as well as how best to handle that risk. So it will come back to the USA and back to the owner and he will consider its future either as an heirloom for his own family or a future sale or donation. My own job is done and signed off on, we authenticated the blade and I will certainly vouch for my conversations with Tanobe sensei over the blade.

Rather than a window, Ted was able to get some uchigumori and is doing the whole blade. It's not a polish but an attempt to reveal the hamon. Done with the permission of the owner. It has come out as choji midare based on suguba with some notare. Boshi is present, takes more work to expose it, jihada coming out and looks good. It is textbook Ko-Ichimonji.

Omar is right. Hard to say except the blade was in Tensho fighting koshirae. But the kind of fuchigashira for a rich and powerful man. Sounds like a daimyo family blade. Who? We don't know. Window will be opened in the morning. It's possible to brut search their registers and find matches but you don't get a guaranteed result.

Also Michael smacked me upside the head and said I better look at this thing otherwise I'd be drinking sake.

Also one more thing, as for the speed of getting this done, it is down to luck and some work and some kindness. Luck because if George posted it one day later there wouldn't have been enough time to do it. This trip was planned 9 months ago, as I fly on points I have to book that far in advance. Second, Ted hand carried it and George went all in and got it to Ted with one day to spare, I had already arrived in Tokyo. Third, we had 3 blades to bring over for papers and polish, and one of those blades got bumped to make room for this. The owner of the blade was/is aware of this thread and you all know him from the board, but I will leave it to him to identify himself if he wants. He took his blade out of the set in order to make room for George's and that was a generous move. Karma has already visited him.

Tanobe sensei confirmed it as authentic. Interesting kantei point, he said the lack of shinogi on this kind of old nakago helps confirm the age. That the early Kamakura and Heian nakago lack shinogi. He said the mei was better than some of the examples that the NBTHK has had in the past. There is an equal one that is Juyo Bijutsuhin but the blade is suriage, though it is also kijimomo and you can still see that in it (that one belonged to the Shimazu daimyo). There are only 5 other examples extant and published, one suriage in Juyo 13 (two character signature right at the bottom), one in Juyo 57 (two character signature but the tada is eroded away and it is attributed as DEN Ko-Ichimonji Munetada in spite of there being the one character visible, when you get DEN in combination with a signed blade it registers as very cautious). This one with the weak mei passed Tokubetsu Juyo which repeated the DEN Munetada and it's also suriage. That's it for the NBTHK blades. There is a Juyo Bijutsuhin with a weaker signature, and suriage (mei right at the bottom), and then the Shimazu one mentioned which is suriage. There is one Juyo Bunkazai that is ubu and owned by the Mishima Taisha. So that one is not leaving Japan nor will enter a collection. So this is the sixth known example and has the best nakago of them all including the Jubun one as that one is not kijimomo. This is going to await NBTHK confirmation still. Info on the other blades is from me not Tanobe sensei. He went over all the existing signatures and said this one has the proper common elements and is in his opinion authentic. Polisher has been suggested and agreed to and the owner is going to move it forward and see what happens. It can't get fixed up in time for the upcoming Juyo shinsa so it won't be in there but if it polishes OK I think Juyo is basic and then I think should be a strong contender at Tokubetsu Juyo. Still some ifs based on polish results. All positive so far.

People probably want to hear some news ... I have the blade in Tokyo now and I am 100% sure that this is a late Heian / early Kamakura blade. The curve is great the nakago is perfect. I showed the blade at a dealer today and a Japanese collector was in there as well, when the nakago came out of the tsuka it got a couple of gasps because of the kijimomo shape. Japanese collector in particular smiled at me and remarked on it. The hamon is hard to make out in the current state but it's there. The shape is everything it should be and there is only one ubu blade by this smith and that blade is Juyo Bunkazai. The problem is that it is a bit thin now and polish will have to deal with the defects caused by rusting. I think the mei is legitimate and I don't see any reason to doubt it offhand. What's more the saya and tsuka are Tensho koshirae (Muromachi period) and worth fixing up and preserving. The menuki were lost and the fuchigashira were replaced in the Edo period and appear to be Yoshioka school and high quality. The tsuba is not high quality and my theory is that this blade was rushed into service, it had a nicer tsuba which was set aside when the owner went to war and a serviceable one put in place. Not enough time to redo the tsuka lead to the good one being used. Probably when it was taken back the menuki were removed and used as ornaments or cufflinks at some point, as they were probably something like goto shishi. I will show the blade to Tanobe sensei tomorrow. Since there is only one ubu blade by Ko-Ichimonji Munetada if this is confirmed it is a major discovery. It is just hope if it will polish out OK, about 40% of the hamon is visible and because of the rust defects it's a bit hard to know where there is choji and where it is wishful thinking. As Ko-Ichimonji it should be a ko-choji based hamon so will see more soon. It's nice to be involved and the board should be too, especially hats off to the owner for submitting it and Michael pounding the table, as the blade appears to be an important treasure. Even if it polishes out weak, you cannot take away an ubu early Kamakura nakago.

Michael has given a lot of good information. The sword has a lot of indications of being from the mid 1200s. I'm not sure if the signature is OK, but sometimes a blade of that age has a signature added later to try to match what it looks like. In the current condition it's difficult to assess. You need to be careful with this because it is a potentially very valuable thing ($100,000+) if it checks out as Ichimonji Munetada. It also could be a fake signature but if it checks out as an original size Kamakura blade it will still be worth tens of thousands. Those are market/retail prices and achieving them takes time and work. People will try to shark you out of it and before making any decisions about what your end goals are with the blade. Something like this needs a close look in hand. If it passes muster at that point then it's worthwhile to bring to Japan and have top experts handle the restoration there. I can bring it to Japan for you for no charge and have Tanobe Michihiro, the retired head judge at the NBTHK, examine it and give his commentary. You should do this before making any decisions about the future of the blade. Where it is right now is speculative, the signature looks a bit sloppy but there are not a lot of examples of these old signatures and a lot of swordsmiths were illiterate and learned only how to sign their names from priests. As such the oldest signatures look quite rustic and charming, while others are clearly very sophisticated in the same era. Because this one has what looks like to be a very old shape to the tang as Michael pointed out, it means you have to hold back a bit on judging the signature. The reason for this is that many old smiths used names over a number of generations, and not many examples exist now. But they tend to be samplings from a lineage of smiths so there are changes over time. But it is possible to examine the condition of a tang and determine the age, and whether or not the signature comes from the same time of manufacture or is a later addition. That is the first step to analyzing whether or not the signature is authentic. If it fails that test it fails all tests, if it passes that test then the information is carried into the next test which is the style and construction of the signature itself. If the signature is not authentic it is a minor operation to remove it and a sword like this with its shape and in particular that of the nakago, is still likely going to turn up great work from an old period. You sound like a good individual and you need to be very careful because old blades like this are treasures that can make other people a bit blind to ethical behavior. In those cases they can and will do what is necessary to get you out of the blade and to add it to their collection at minimal cost to themselves. It can be hard for good people to recognize that other people don't always act with honor. So that is my warning to you. I recently brought a general's sword that was captured in Bali by the Australians and held by the grandchild back to Japan and walked through this process for the owner and you should probably speak with him briefly to understand how it can go. In that case the signature of Izumi no Kami Kanesada was verified on the sword (a great master smith from 500 years ago) and the top collector in the world bought the blade from the owner after that. It's a bit hard to tell from the quality of the pictures but as Michael pointed out, there are a lot of highlights that turn up positive in this and so it needs to be treated conservatively. That means while we should remain skeptical about authenticity always, it should be handled and decisions made as if it is completely authentic, until the questions are all answered. A lot of the time it's possible to dismiss things at face value as there are a lot of clear recent period fakes out there and a conservative stance is not needed. I think here you should tread slow and carefully. You can ask anyone here about me and if you want, contact me via my website if you'd like me to authenticate the blade for you in Japan.

There is no guarantee I have it right. 名刀 is meito and it generally means famous sword. But the first character means "Name" and so you get Name-sword out of it. Daimyo are the Big Names: 大名. The most famous swords are the meibutsucho swords and they are called meibutsu 名物. But they had these names well before they were famous or collected in this list, so meito is not a back contraction from meibutsu. Colloquially meito has also simply meant good sword. For a sword to become famous it needs a name and getting the name is part of it becoming a famous sword so it's linked together. The word for the sword's name is a Go: 号 The NBTHK will use this to describe a sword with a name: 号初霜江 (Go: Hatsushimo Go) If that name was in the meibutsu this item would be referred to as 名物初霜江 (Meibutsu: Hatsushimo Go) With with Meito meaning something less than Meibutsu, I think it is a fair situation that a Name-Sword is a sword with a name. The colloquial use of meito as being a good sword is that it has the same qualities as a blade that became famous. Just without the name. Lastly, these blades with names, may be "famous" with small letters. Famous to the family, in family history and so on. There is reason that someone gave them a name. By the way that blade above is a strong Juyo candidate and a great piece, congrats to whomever bought it, send to Juyo.

Stephen, I'm not mad, I just don't think what I am doing and saying is not constructive nor is it going to change any opinions.

The reason I get pulled in is because I see damage being done by conclusions without the experience or facts that should lie behind them, and that this board can be an echo chamber and it can affect newbies coming in. Like uchiko. Still trying to get good old Jim K's generation's sin of uchiko off of us. But I don't want to fight here and intend to stick to my blog. My request to people should be less concluding and more question asking. Because I get more conclusions on NMB than I do when talking to Tanobe sensei. His answers are often, "that's a good question" and "more research is necessary" and "I would like to know that myself" and "isn't it interesting?" I brought him a great sword and asked him to make a pronouncement on it. Everyone here would do so including me. He said, "I'd like to study it before I say anything. Can I have some time?" My answer was "take years if you want." Because it's critical and I want him to go through whatever process is necessary. Try to not be so bold about what you think you know and try to keep the cup somewhat empty so new stuff can flow in. Now, back to my exile, for good this time. Brian if it's possible to lock or ban my account please do so so a late night half asleep state doesn't tempt me into these discussions again. Good luck gentlemen.

Meant to delete this before I went to sleep.

The "fumei" Chogi is Shu-so Chogi fumei. Shumei is an older red lacquer attribution that (I think) follows rules about the piece being ubu and unsiged and shuso is later red lacquer attribution. I think Markus wrote about it somewhere. Fumei means it's rubbed off but they can still make it out in this case. Ryumon is a fairly new attribution, in the past these may have been den Ryumon Nobuyoshi. Last two years are the first times they used Rymon like a school. Last two years has also been a "surge" in Nakajima Rai and some of those I have a feeling are more conservative readings that might have had some leeway to individual Rai smiths in the past. We are seeing Awataguchi slightly more often as a school attribution recently (as many in the past 20 years as the 40 years before that). Those usually went to Awataguchi Kuniyoshi in the past, but an Awataguchi school attribution does not necessarily equate with Kuniyoshi as they can be older. The one I sent in is older. Bizen has been about 30% of all Juyo in the past and about 40% of koto Juyo. The comment about Rai Kunizane, it is the backwards thing again. Rai Kunizane as an attribution has a second meaning as a second tier or third tier Rai work that doesn't match first tier Rai properties. If his work matched first tier Rai properties then he would have a 650 year old reputation as a first ranked Rai smith, which he doesn't. So his reputation sets the expectation for the blades. If the unsigned blade was outstanding quality past the reputation then it would make it very difficult to attribute it to him because the quality of the work is the primary factor in the kantei. There are no Tokuju, no Jubi, no Jubun, no Kokuho and very few signed works (only one that passed Juyo) though probably older oshigata exist and certainly he didn't pass down a history. He's thought to be a son of Rai Kunitoshi and he probably worked under Kunitoshi and then under Kunimitsu and as a result just didn't put through a lot of blades in his name. He's a backup singer.

The point is exactly that it is not semantics. Viewing it as semantics is the essential error I am pointing out. > there are no signed Yamato Shizu swords There are at least five from the school. This is neither here nor there though. There are no Yamato Kaneuji Shodai signed blades known, that part is true, but it doesn't mean that you should confuse your nomenclature. You are conflating attributions with arbitrary basis with nomenclature. There isn't any debate on conflating Yamato Shizu with Shizu. There are swords that are so right down the middle they could be attributed to either group but this doesn't mean that you should mix the groups up. Similarly you don't call "Niji Kunitoshi" as "Rai Kunitoshi" even though they are in fact the same man. Even though there is not a clear zone left to us where the name changed and the style evolved over maybe 10 years rather than overnight. There are blades that can go either way in terms of attribution. But Niji Kunitoshi means one thing and Rai Kunitoshi means another and you shouldn't use one to refer to the other. That is a nomenclature issue. > For Yamato Shizu all are attributions which while made by experts can be problematic as proving them to be a fact is pretty much impossible. Proving any mumei attribution to be true is impossible. It does not mean that it is OK to get your nomenclature mixed up. Looking back at Rai Kunitoshi again especially if it is signed only "Kunitoshi" you are doing it wrong if you point at that and say Rai Kunitoshi, even though it is one and the same because that is not how the nomenclature works. When Niji Kunitoshi works were made the Rai signature did not exist. With the invention of a new style, roughly at the same time comes the introduction of a new signature. > I am not (yet) sure how many surviving true pairs of swords there are for Kiyomaro (with any of his signatures) What is in public is one single daisho set and it is Tokubetsu Juyo. Then other set is Masayuki and it is the only Masayuki in public. That is the one Iida san has. It is very rare and important but you shouldn't call it Kiyomaro if you want to be accurate. When it was made Kiyomaro did not exist. The styles are different. Kiyomaro is an evolution of Masayuki. And there is a clear price difference in the market. It is a brand after all. He didn't intend them to be equivalent. Nor are they equivalent. The conflation of the two leads to conclusions which are not accurate. Why do I make a point of it? Because if you don't note the difference it bites you in the ass one day. If you spread the mistake of conflating the two it bites other people in the ass one day. Someone goes and buys Masayuki for well below the price of Kiyomaro in the market and they pat themselves on the back for how savvy they are. If they have heard everyone talking about them as the same thing. If they believe they are the same thing. It's a position of ignorance because it isn't the same thing in the market. In reality they paid what they should have paid. It is a huge issue because about 70% of business is driven by the perception of value. A lot of newbies will buy their Yamato Shizu school attributed blades and then pat themselves on the back because it was a lot cheaper than a Shizu which is attributed to Kaneuji in the text. They do not recognize the difference, they think it is all Kaneuji. They also don't recognize that there is a difference between a school attributed Yamato Shizu and a Shodai or Nidai Kaneuji attributed Yamato Shizu. As a result they just look to prices and when one is cheaper than the other they get that one and pat themselves on the back. There needs to be an understanding that the terms are not interchangeable and in order for people to understand that, it helps if people don't spread interchangeable use of the terms. We can go down through more gray areas like Sukehiro, where your average collector is not aware that there are three tiers of Nidai Sukehiro. The result is that they will think they are getting a bargain when buying the first tier and then price compare it against the third tier. Even if the signature are the same characters the signing habits being different reflect the period and skill level of Sukehiro while making the blade. From a practical matter people call the last and best form "round Tsuda" and that is how dealers will refer to them to each other to be clear. When selling they are not going to pound the table with the difference because it is going to be better to let the customer think he's getting a bargain at half Sukehiro price when he doesn't understand the difference. Most dealers will not try to inform people or teach them but will just lay stuff out and let the buyer/collector make a decision. In this way a metric _____ton of stuff gets sold to people who think they are getting bargains only to find out many years later that they are not the same thing. So, I am hammering the point so people can learn something. Masayuki is not the same as Kiyomaro and you shouldn't consider it a simple case of semantics. It's a case of lack of knowledge or a case of carelessness or a case of expediency but none of it helps clarify the real underlying difference. Continuing it as a habit is spreading disinformation, not for any nefarious purpose but it's a lazy use or an unknowingly incorrect use and ultimately that leads to someone making a terrible mistake who has absorbed all of that incorrect or mistaken use.

Jean is right. Rayhan also has the price about right. Some people think though that Masayuki mei blades are better and in the Kiyomaro era there was a lot of "phoning it in" due to demand. I have also been told that he changed steel to a better source towards the very end. People should not call Masayuki as Kiyomaro any more than they should call Yamato Shizu as Shizu or Kunisada as Shinkai. Even though it's the same guy the styles are different and eras are different and the work is different. I sometimes call Echigo no Kami Kunisada as Terukane in the past and that's an error. The name you use implies what era and style you're talking about, so these should be called Masayuki.

This is why I don't like to post on this board. Luis, this is not the argument: The board ate my response. Then I wrote a long one and I deleted it because I don't want to have these arguments. By all means assess me as the guy who just doesn't get it, who needs to learn more and study more and get more insight into what is going on. Your wife's opinion on swords may be different from your own and that is just an argument that she doesn't know anything. That same differential in knowledge applies at every scale going up. It's just that you think you have hit the peak and your subjective belief is objective and it isn't. Modern swords are from a period of time after the samurai era. They are products of atomic theory, computers and electric lights. They will exist in their thousands, they were never meant for use, they will never be used and do not have to maintain a reputation for cutting and durability. They are only objects for visual appreciation. As such they do not stand with an 800 year old Heian blade that cut people's heads open and lived to tell the tale and then suffered through centuries of war and chaos and at impossible odds survived to the present day. What you are doing is propagating the bad and wrong idea that a pretty sword is a Juyo sword. Master smiths got a reputation of being master smiths because they made masterpieces. As such they pass Juyo not because there is bias to the smith, but because their work is masterwork. That is the beginning and the end of it. If such pieces were considered masterpieces over 800 years then they would be easier to pass Juyo today. When 800 years of Japanese warriors, noblemen, emperors, daimyo and scholars never gave a smith credit, but you and your wife do today, it's not because THEY don't get it, it's because YOU don't get it and you need to put the ego down and study.

It is not hard for a sword to reach Tokubetsu Hozon. Tokubetsu Hozon is a default ranking for a sword that is intact and has some basic criteria associated with it being a good antique. A sword that cannot get out of Hozon, with the exception of gendai blades, is a problem blade. It has been given the rank of Hozon to show it is antique and worth preserving but it can't get to Tokubetsu Hozon because it has some issues that make it considerably less than average. Tokubetsu Hozon was promoted as a "high rank" in the west for marketing purposes. A blade that has achieved Tokubetsu Hozon can be considered to have met the base standards for being a good sword. But it is not something that makes a blade special, it is the default situation for a well preserved work by a smith of adequate skill. About favoritism. There is favoritism for the works of Mozart, Beethoven, Van Gogh and Da Vinci. The reason there is favoritism for these works is because they are outstanding masters who elevated their art past their peers and those that came after. When someone comes after who is another standout master like Renoir they are given additional favoritism. There are two sets of mentality when you get bad news. The one is that the judges are corrupt, that the system is rigged, that what you have is just as good as everything else and bias is what stops it from going higher. The other point of view is that the failure is data you can learn from and become a better student. There is routinely this idea in foreign circles that the game is rigged. When people succeed it is because of their merit, judgment and intelligence. When they fail it is because of bias and corruption. So what we have is a tautology, both successes and failures confirm what people want to believe about themselves and their judgment. As I sat with a client earlier this year and he reviewed his 30 submissions to the NBTHK, 15 of which returned as gimei, he scratched his head and he said to me, "I don't understand how the judges could make so many mistakes." There is only so much you can lead the horse to water but in most cases it will refuse to drink. There is nothing I can say to this kind of guy because if I say yes it's gimei then he categorizes me as just another bad judge. What such a person is looking for is ego satisfaction, and confirmation of their savvy. If you don't give them what they want, then you will be judged yourself. As a result, especially from dealers, a lot of collectors get patted on the head. If the dealer does not pat you on the head and give you the warm and fuzzy feeling in the stomach then you will leave there with a bad taste in your mouth. Eventually someone will come along and pat you on the head and tell you what you want to hear. Many dealers are masters of this. One of the best things I ever heard from a dealer was Bob Benson telling me, "Why did you buy that piece of junk?" On another blade: "It's a toothpick." This is how you cut your teeth and learn something. So understand Tokubetsu Hozon should be the default level. One that cannot break through is like Tokubetsu Hozon --. Juyo is not awarded by bias nor is there bias for schools. Failure to understand this is failure to understand that attribution is the first form of quality assessment. If a sword is attributed to Kagemitsu it is because the sword represents master skill. As such it is already a Juyo candidate. When it passes Juyo it is not because there is bias towards Kagemitsu. The sword in part got attributed to Kagemitsu because it was master work. You cannot be a crap sword and get a Kagemitsu attribution. Similarly if you get Norishige it means that the sword represents peak level Soshu den. If it gets Tametsugu it means Norishige--. It is a near miss, it is high skill work but it is just not enough to get into the consideration of Norishige. If it just gets Uda it is Tametsugu---. If it gets Shimada, god help you. If you are angry when your Shimada does not pass Juyo because you think it's a nice sword and you say the NBTHK is biased towards Norishige, then it's because you have got the entire system understood backwards. Shimada can pass, and it is better if signed but it will always be third or fourth rate Soshu-like craftsmanship. As such it is a bucket, like Ganmaku that is ill-defined and it does not actually matter. People get upset and they call judges into question for failure to be consistent in assessing these third and fourth tier works. But to understand it, these things are like me taking a bucket of paint and throwing it at a canvas and then asking an art critic to evaluate who made the painting. The answers are going to be random. But if you have an unsigned Rembrandt then the focus becomes extremely narrow and the judgement becomes much more accurate. The threshold is very high and the ability of someone to do it within the time period is narrowed down to almost just a single individual. Rembrandt does not get put into museums because there is bias towards him. Museums exist because of artists like Rembrandt. There is no bias toward Go or Norishige or Rai at Juyo. Juyo exists because of artists like Go or Norishige or Rai. "nice sword" does not cut it for Juyo. Juyo means "important" not "nice". There is a huge problem in the western world when echo chambers build up around certain ideas, one of which is the bias of judges and and things like a facebook discussion on whether or not Masamune existed, with the table pounded and theories promoted by people who never held or looked at a good Soshu sword let alone one attributed to Masamune. At this last Tokuju shinsa I picked 6 items from what I had and sold and 5 of those passed. If i were to do that 10 years ago I'd have gotten zero probably. The difference between then and now is about 15,000 hours of studying, documenting, and identifying what makes something important. I am only scratching the surface but I have an idea now. But I listened for 10,000 hours before I started even talking about it. I went another 5,000 hours before I started to feel comfortable. And even now I will sit and just absorb when I am surrounded by those with deeper knowledge. Some of that I toss, some of that I try to integrate with what others say, I am trying to stitch together a truth that comes from a dozen viewpoints plus a metric xxxxton of data. In all of that I can just continue to distill down to those who have only 15 minutes to listen that they need to understand that Juyo means Important and Tokubetsu Juyo means Extraordinarily Important. If you can just sit and meditate on those two ideas for a week and then look at something in your hands and say, "Is this important?" or ... is it just a nice blade? If you can do that you can take a few steps into the light and understand what is trying to be assessed. I go into the museum and I still don't understand everything. I get angry at some things I see and others I dismiss but I do so always with the voice in the back of my head, "Maybe there is something here you don't understand still." I never throw out bias, there is no bias. It's like saying there is bias for the $100 bill over the $10 bill. It's not bias. It's recognition of innate properties. If someone can't tell the difference between a $10 bill and a $100 bill because they are both greenish and printed on paper and have an old white dude printed on them, this is a fundamental lack of understanding of the currency and as Tanobe sensei says, "More research is necessary." Many questions have only this answer and what anyone needs to do is to look at the results and then let the results filter into their brain, instead of taking their brain and trying to impose it onto the results.

1. The measurements do not mean anything in the context of that blade. 2.9 mihaba is correct for the school. One of 3.4 mihaba is not "a better Nio" because it's wider it is "maybe it's not Nio it's something else like Rai Kunimitsu. This is what I am getting at. You don't understand the context so you are applying a simple measurement as a global indicator of quality at Juyo and it does not work like that. Mihaba is not in the discussion for Nio unless it means it's a kodachi and it weakens the submission. Needs to be accepted and understood. 2. All of them are close to your heart / Darcy you don't understand it's a nice blade, I hear this so many times from everyone. What they are is defenses of the decision making process that got us up to the present. If that cup is full of ego it has no room to hold knowledge. You need to dump this equal love for inequal blades. You need to fight to the death someone who wants to take the Hasebe from you and shrug if they want the Tegai. You need to look at the Tegai as simply: this is a mistake and here is why. And then separate it from the Hasebe and put your love where it belongs, with the masterpiece. If the Tegai is the best blade you can own then it is the one you can love best. If it is not you should have no love for it. This thinking blocks you from learning. 3. You have no feedback in your acquisition process because you buy almost completely from one dealer who has a policy of "problems are for the buyer to find amongst our photoshop and nice oshigata that all look like kokuho". And if you are not equipped to see these obvious problems as in 3 of the above blades, they apparently do not have the desire to tell you you are wasting your money at Juyo. Because you believe that you bought a blade for X price and its quality is at or above Juyo. And it's not. But they don't want you to shake that impression because that will shake your faith in them. So they let you waste your time and money submitting and after you don't come to the conclusion that there is a show stopping problem... no you come to the conclusion of hard shinsa and maybe I need to spend $3k polishing a turd and then sending it in again. Yeah an old beater in a messed up polish because it wasn't cared for can get a shiage and contend but you can make that choice when you know what it is that is the problem. Just randomly polishing failures with the hope of improving papers is not only failing to understand why it is not passing, it's causing damage to something that is already in its best state and should just be preserved as is. Anyway the core issue here is you won't get feedback that you need to increase your knowledge from a dealer who's goal is to provide the perception of value at all costs and who lets you load the sword shotgun and fire it at the target, the few hits you get confirm you're doing the right thing but the failures you're not using to understand what you're doing wrong. They don't intend to help you and if you repeat the same stuff and confess your love for all of the weak items to be equal to masterpieces then you are deluding yourself for ego reasons and cannot progress in knowledge. Now with that in mind tell yourself the Tsunahiro had no chance because you made a major error in evaluating the blade at purchase, and at the time to submit it. It has a major issue in terms of Juyo, though not collecting a sword or its functionality, but that makes it one of the least ideal types of its kind, rather than the banner carrier for the very best of the Shinto period as you believed it (you need to believe that to submit it). If you can do that, swallow your ego, discharge your equal love of that blade to the Hasebe which is a great masterpiece, then you will have learned something from what you have done here. Even a stopped clock tells the right time twice a day. Your failures tell you far more about what you know than your successes do. Remember random selection among the body of Juyo works will obtain a 10% success ratio in Tokuju. Exceeding that means you are beating a random number generator at understanding sword quality. Below that and people should be asking the RNG questions. Similar number goes for Juyo. There exists a spot for: "My belief is that this will fail, and here is why I think it will fail, so I am going to test this theory" as a one time case in point in order to expand your knowledge and establish a new portion of a theory that can be used to understand overall importance. I sent in a published tosogu this year that I fully expected to fail and I knew why I thought it would fail. It is legitimate and masterwork but it can't pass for a simple reason and I wanted to test that theory and it did. I sent 3 items in I selected for passing and all 3 passed and I am not surprised. I will be wrong in the future and I will use a bit of hope from time to time but this stuff was not any worry, confusion, stress or whatever. I went through those stages 10 years ago and I dumped my ego and then tried hard to understand what was greatness. When I do not share my love with things that are not great, I am called a snob. But someone may love their daughter's 1st grade drawing, however that love should not be the artistic love for the work of Rembrandt. It is love because your daugher made it. Unless she's a swordsmith then you shouldn't love them all. You should make them compete for your love. Compete to the death. Goes for everyone.

Your answers: The Tsunahiro is machi-okuri (i.e. it is not ubu, this kind of description is an asterisk and better described as "ubu nakago but machi-okuri") and will never pass Juyo in this condition. The Tegai is ato-bori bohi and not just ato-bori but awkwardly ato-bori in an eyesore manner and cannot pass Juyo in this condition. Nio is a third tier school and is in general not a good candidate for Juyo. The photo is not good but from what I can see the jigane is not good enough for this school in order to get past middle rank amongst all works of the school and is not a good candidate for Juyo. Mumei Nio needs to be understood as not-as-good-as-Aoe-or-Rai-or-Enju. These three were wasted money to submit. The Hasebe is excellent and should be tried at Tokuju. Enju is Enju, maybe your lucky day. Your Nio should not be polished in an attempt to change the colors of the papers. It is fine as it is for what it is. Furthermore the measurements do not mean so much as the quality of the blade. Longer is not a compensation for lower quality. Longer separates two blades of equal quality. Mihaba of 2.9cm is not a negative on a Nio it is a kantei point on the blade that helped bring it to Nio. Not every blade is a big chopper, you would not dock a Kagemitsu for being 2.9cm motohaba. It's just part of a blade being late Kamakura period.