Darcy

Miike

Because of everything you said it has. In order to understand why green papers are bad, you need to understand three basic things: 1. the scandal in which bad results were deliberately rendered through the influence of yakuza and greed 2. that the NBTHK had a bias in early years to issue low level papers on blades that were questionable in order to encourage people to preserve artifacts, and with the understanding that the NBTHK was also a developing institution 3. that both these judgments were rendered outside the main office and so done without the top level of scholarship involved When you see Dr. Honma's sayagaki, that is an indication that this is not one of those blades. His judgments are quite reliable and so you can ignore the rest. As well, the dealers who are buying have enough expertise to understand what they are looking at. Some of them deliberately buy those blades with bad papers to sell to idiots who will defend the papers. They know exactly what they are doing, they won't try to repaper it to a new solid paper, they are intending on taking it to Yahoo Japan to sell to people who think they will win the lottery every day. As such a known bad paper with a high level name on it has value because they can sell it for a certain amount. But the blade with Dr. Honma's sayagaki, this is worth far more than the paper as if the quality is good then they know this will confirm already and potentially have a door open to be considered Juyo. But I stress that these are people who live and breathe swords and they are under no false impressions about the reliability of these papers in the slightest. The papers for them are a vessel to confirming an independent opinion for a client. On their own they know what they are looking at as dealers. The last category is because poor judgment may not be necessarily wrong as an equal and opposite manner, but it may be in the right area. Dr. Honma's sayagaki to Hisakuni in one case went through to Tokuju as just Awataguchi. Without his sayagaki a Takagi Sadamune with green papers was well known and tried to be sold by US dealers for $80,000. That blade was purchased in Japan for $16,000 approx because both the dealer selling it and the dealer buying it knew that the green paper was full of crap and nobody who knows anything has to have any extended arguments about the crap level of green papers. The only people who extensively defend green papers are: 1. people who own collections that contain green papered blades they want to believe in 2. people who want to source them for cheap and sell them to guys who think they are winning the lottery every day 3. people who want to believe the dream as a buyer so that they can beat the system and buy that Shinkai for 30% of the market price In the case of this blade with the green paper to Takagi Sadamune, it did pass Juyo but to Naoe Shizu. Even after that the dealers who had it continued to try to push to convince buyers (one of whom was a very young me) that the blade was SOSHU Sadamune on the strength of the green paper, and incorrectly judged to Naoe Shizu. They promoted that the Takagi Sadamune paper needed to be used to reapply to get the true attribution of SOSHU Sadamune. The blade was still pushed at $80,000. The real story is that they had attempted this several times in several ways to get the Sadamune attribution confirmed and the NBTHK made it clear that in no way shape or form was it Sadamune. Then they tried to return it to be Takagi Sadamune and the NBTHK was not accepting that either, they made it clear they knew these guys were playing a game and it was detected, and they would not accept the game playing. It was a good blade but Juyo Naoe Shizu was final. However this green paper continued to be dangled in front of drooling idiots as a promise that the blade was something more than it was. "This is Soshu Sadamune and if not then it is Takagi Sadamune as this green paper said. What? Someone told you that green papers are not reliable? They are wrong. They don't know what they are talking about. They are a crank. Yada yada yada. You can be the one who buy this one now for cheap and finish the story." And people fall in for the line. Now, when that blade sold to the first dealer in Japan, he was not an idiot and he did not believe it to be Sadamune but he understood it to be an over judgment of a good koto blade so he bought it. This is not the problem I continually talk about. The dealer he sold it to was not an idiot and also had no belief in it being Sadamune but understood it to be a good koto blade. For this reason people who know what they are doing can transact in green papered blades. In this case the dealer picking it up in Japan knew he could do a profitable trade with new papers and an accurate judgment and indeed it went to Naoe Shizu and Juyo giving him room to sell it for a profit. So this is not to say "never transact in a green papered blade." This is to say don't believe the green paper. You can treat it as your friend's advice or else treat the blade as a blade with no papers and make your own decision. That is all. But these are not things that new collectors can do or understand, and they also are not informed that there is any problem at all with green papers. Especially the guy selling them the green papered blade has no intention of holding his hand and explaining the issues. The problem is at its highest when that blade goes down the chain to the final dealer who is retailing it, and to consumers who are sold this song and dance which is simple fraud. And the paper is used to defraud that guy. That same guy will not buy a legitimate piece. He only wants to buy something for less than he thinks it is worth. We encounter this guy every day. This guy buys in, sends to Japan, gets the hand shoved in his face, comes back and says "everything is a scam" asks the corrupt dealer who sold him the junk to sell it to another cycle and he exits the hobby. So we lose one guy who could have contributed if he had realistic expectations, and furthermore he participates in defrauding the next collector on his way out the door. Yet, everyone moans about the community seeming to shrink: well, this is a major reason why it is hard to grow the community. Because very few people eat their mistakes, people are prepared to defraud their neighbors, and when someone like me is trying to wave the flag on an obvious problem that will help the community the result is a bunch of knives stuck in my back from everyone who profits off this crap or wants to defend the financial value of bad things they bought in the past. These all all reasons why newbies get scared off fast and when you can't find people to sell your good and legitimate items to because they won't join into the community, think about the community's reluctance to air out problems like this. Well, maybe it got Shizu Kaneuji attribution instead of o-Sa or Naotsuna, which it had per green papers and every other attribution. Maybe the owner did not bother. Maybe he died last week and the dealer was asked to sell them asap. This kind of things unfortunately are very common today in Japan - you suddenly get mass mail that 90 blades are out on sale, and they are basically as is Yes it's in agreement with what I've said above. The judgment can be in the area because it was just poorly judged, and yes, as-is and the dealer community buying them knows what they are dealing with. Sometimes on purpose buying green papers to sell them to an idiot and sometimes buying and ignoring the papers but reading the sword with a fresh kantei. Yes, sayagaki might play a bigger role for blades with green papers, as per I've never seen any issue (except they might not repaper with the same attribution) witht those signed by Tanobe-sensei. It does indeed play a bigger role because you can just throw the paper away and you still have a good judgment if the judge was good, but you also need to be sure that the sayagaki has not been faked. This has happened as well. Another trick is that people will swap swords and find a good sayagaki on a good blade to fit their old blade. This can be used to prop up bad green papers. Again, at dealer auction they do not have any romantic notions and are not stupid people. They don't believe in green papers like some people over here who won't let go of the dream. When I went to auction in London for the fittings collection I didn't look at the catalog, but I sat with a friend and looked at every blade and gave my own kantei. When my kantei agreed with what was in the book I felt more secure about what the book said. That's how I ended up with my fine Kanemitsu. And it had no problems papering through to Juyo as Kanemitsu afterwards. I had no romantic notions about what the museum had to say about their own collection. That is how you have to do it if you are going to dive into the junk pile and try to sort it all out. The problem only comes back to an unreliable paper in the modern day being used to retail a dream to a sucker who wants to believe the dream. It sets him up for fraud, gives him a quick exit out of the community, and is then set up to defraud another and so on. It is a collector destroying virus and it is bad for everyone except for the dealer who is using the papers to repeatedly sell garbage to suckers. That guy makes money over and over again by wiping out new collectors. So the damage is shared by everyone except that dealer. This is why we as a community cannot retain romantic notions over the status of these papers. Because we all share the damage and it limits the ability of the community to grow. Now green papered sword going for 2mil - this one happens in Japan every month. I wish there would be piles of swords with green papers to Sadamune going for chop change - but alas never seen them ever. At one time I saw online three green papered Masamune for sale at Japanese auction sites. If you go and look there are several still there probably. And as mentioned I had personal experience with a green papered Takagi Sadamune and if you want some green papered Sadamune I can very likely get you a bucket full. If its a big koto name, there is a high chance it will paper to something very close to it. No it's not a high chance. Masamune is not going to come back as Norishige. It is going to come back as a Shinto fake. If Norishige papers to Uda, it is "close" in the sense of being in the right area but it is not close in terms of value. If it is Kanemoto or Nosada, it's just going to come back as gimei. But, it CAN happen that a Masamune becomes Shizu. That's why you need to use your brain and to analyze the sword as if it had no papers. The title of my first post about these problems was that green papers = no papers and the thrust was that the only thing you can really bet on if you want to take the odds is that it's by someone who is not listed in the papers. It doesn't say throw the BLADE away it says throw the PAPERS away. If your Shinkai is OK it will fly through to Tokubetsu Hozon with or without those green papers. If you want to buy a green papered Shinkai, take the papers entirely out of your brain and evaluate it like an ebay find. Maybe there will be a downgrade, but you take Masamune Juyo and send it to get Hozon, and well you might get a downgrade as well. Not likely. There are several categories of Masamune. 1. doubtlessly Masamune 2. most likely Masamune 3. old attribution to Masamune and begrudgingly accepted 4. old attribution to Masamune but dismissed in the setsumei 1, 3, 4 will pass again as they did. The 2nd can go back and forth. But, if you are shopping for Masamune you need to be aware of this and what you're looking at. The reasons that 1 passes as it does is that it has everything necessary. The reasons 2 pass as they do is that it is either masterwork of Yukimitsu or Shizu or Go or good work of Masamune. Those under 3 and 4, it's important to read the setsumei of every Masamune before buying so you know what you are dealing with. The begrudgingly accepted ones need to be understood as a Soshu school blade by one of four or five candidates and because of the historical judgment that is still with the blade, it is being left alone. The explanation is there for a reason but a lot of westerners stop reading at the first column. For some reason they never translate their setsumei or the sayagaki. I don't know why it is. But that's where the learning is. Item 4 that is dismissed in the sayagaki needs to be understood that it's still in the set of candidates of top smiths in Soshu but Masamune is the very least chance out of the group. A good dealer does not "like" swords because when you like something more than others do, you are going to overpay. He looks at a resale point. Which is for him all about papers. I have asked dealers in Japan what their favorite sword is and I got the answer of "Kiyomaro" and I asked why and he said "it's money." The best dealer of them all is Kurokawa san though and he clearly loves swords. He is a major collector first and foremost. I think your choice of words here is poor to say that a "good" dealer does not "like" swords. There is no "overpay" or "underpay" unless you are dealing with commodities. The best of all items are not commodities and you pay what you work out between the buyer and the seller. I have had a fine tachi handed to me, been told it was ready for Juyo Bunkazai but the owner chickened out at the last minute. This blade was previously sold for 170 million yen. The current owner bought it for 130 million yen. Both loved it. Now, who overpaid and who underpaid? We won't know until it's sold again and it is not going to be sold again in the open. It is Tokuju by the way and the prices above are over a million dollars. Furthermore if you like it, that blade pays you dividends forever while you own it. The problem when you don't like it it's just immovable merchandize. So the question is: how much is your happiness, fulfilment and enjoyment worth to you? That is a subjective value that goes into this purchase. It is not a spreadsheet calculation. Now, I love swords. I love that sword. I dream of that sword. But I know it is too expensive for me to own and for everyone else I know to own so I don't try to buy it. If I had that kind of money though I would be working on trying to get this sword. I have some things coming up for my website that I already wrote to a client and said, "I might die with this one. If so I want to go out like a Kofun warlord I want this to go into my grave." Who will buy it from me? I have no idea. I will take the chance as a "bad" dealer who "likes" swords. My love for swords has lead me to great items, though not always affordable. But, I'm not in this to churn out Chu-jo saku shinto mumei wakizashi. I'm in this to touch greatness. I will flip it around and say a bad dealer is the one who doesn't like swords because you need to like swords in order to both reach in depth knowledge and also to harmonize with the emotions of your client. If you don't like cars, you will never know what is going through the mind of the man who comes into your store to buy a Ferrari. If you do like cars and you do like Ferraris and stepping on the gas gives you goose bumps, then when that man comes into your store your brainwaves are in sync. If you are buying cars for resale and if something triggers your heart, and if you are in sync with other lovers of items, then, you will obtain items that are worthy of love. If you don't like swords what you have is an endless parade of commercial grade merchandize. It was picked by accounting methods and it will sell by accounting methods. You will not develop your eye and your customers will not develop their eye but everyone will have a nice spreadsheet. Those are two valid ways of developing a business. Because selling 70 swords a month picked by spreadsheet does work to sustain a business. It is more reliable. But if you want this you can buy a gas station too or a convenience store. It's the same business to you. Those are better businesses actually. So, say there is tanto Sadamune that goes for 2mil with green papers (and with good sayagaki this would be sort of a bottom price in Japan). Yes, at 2 million yen for a reliable Sadamune there is a very strong buyer's market but it is well below the bottom price. He thinks - ok Sadamune:Nobukuni:Shimada is a lineup to expect with this particular sugata (say its a somewhat later one), and since it does not sell with modern papers it probably papered to either Nobukuni or Shimada. This example is now discussing an unreliable sayagaki. But yes, this is pretty much exactly how it works, green papered Sadamune, blade looks good and koto just a weak judgment, it is falling into the Soshu area somewhere. So its 60% chance I will have unsgined Nambokucho Nobukuni (say 0.9-1.6mil) and 40% - Shimada den (0.6-0. . Basically I am being robbed blind out of 70% of my investment since around the top names the payout scale is very nonlinear and small downgrade can push the price down 10 times or more easily. Not sure about the conclusion. If what you have is a blade that is Juyo quality Nobukuni it comes out quite well. Shimada is going to lose you for sure though. But good quality Nanbokucho Nobukuni that is going to pass Juyo, I don't think this is available at 900,000 yen. The thinking is right though, this is how collectors need to assess green papers. PS. Regarding my previous post I use words like "crap" around green papers because after 40 years of evidence people still romantically cling to it so its the only way to get someone's attention and to make it clear it's not just a gentlemanly agreement and acceptance of divergent points of view. Crap, is crap and needs to be pointed out because it is a position that stinks and I'm tired of watching people being defrauded by others and come to me on email with this same problem.

I'll comment because this is disavowed papers are OK propaganda. "Encountering bad papers is quite small", is a misinformed statement. Or, a misinforming statement. The NBTHK has disavowed all these papers now. They gave about 40 years for people to upgrade them. Say you have X papers in total. Y papers out of that total are bad, that means Z = X-Y are good papers. Every year that one old bad paper gets upgraded into a hozon paper decreases the number of Z. That means every year your chance of meeting up with an old bad paper increases. It was a bad enough problem on the day the NBTHK withdrew them and told its membership that the papers were not trustworthy. But literally, every month after that, the problem becomes worse. If you don't understand the basic math, you can understand this. You have a bag full 900 diamonds and 100 rocks. Consider that the old status of the unreliable papers. That's a 10% bad rate. If you grab into that bag at random your chances are 10% of getting a bad paper. So if you buy 100, at random and send for papers, you will have 90 diamonds and 10 rocks. The 90 diamonds go on to Tokubetsu Hozon. The 10 rocks go back into the bag. Now, the bag has 810 diamonds, and 100 rocks. So now you pull 100 at random in the next year. You get 89 diamonds and 11 rocks. The 89 diamonds come out of the bag and a re now Tokubetsu Hozon. The 11 rocks go back into the bag. The bag now has 721 diamonds in it and 100 rocks. You pull 100 at random in the third year. Again, by random pulling you have a 100/821 chance of pulling a bad rock, this gives you 12 rocks on the pull, and 88 diamonds. The 88 diamonds come out of the bag and become Tokubetsu Hozon. The 12 rocks go back in. The bag now has 633 diamonds and 100 rocks. In the fourth year you pull 100 at random. You pull out 14 rocks and you get 86 diamonds. The diamonds leave the bag and go on to Tokubetsu Hozon and the rocks go back in. The bag now has 547 diamonds and 100 rocks. Now you pull your 100 again and you get 15 rocks and 85 diamonds. Rocks go back in, diamonds come out, the bag now contains 462 diamonds, and 100 rocks. The fifth year you pick 100 at random, you get 18 rocks and 82 diamonds. Diamonds come out, rocks go back in. Bag now contains 380 diamonds and 100 rocks. Sixth year you pick 100 at random, you get 20 rocks and 80 diamonds. Diamonds go out, rocks go back in. Bag now contains 300 diamonds and 100 rocks. Seventh year you pick 100 at random, you get 25 rocks and 75 diamonds. Diamonds go out, rocks go back in. Bag now contains 225 diamonds and 100 rocks. Eighth year you pick 100 at random, you get 31 rocks and 69 diamonds. Diamonds come out, rocks go back in. Bag now contains 156 diamonds and 100 rocks. Ninth year you pick 100 at random, you get 39 rocks and 61 diamonds. Diamonds out, rocks in. Bag now contains 95 diamonds and 100 rocks. Tenth year you pick 100 at random, you get 51 rocks and 49 diamonds. Diamonds out, rocks in. Bag now contains 46 diamonds and 100 rocks. 11th year you pick 100 at random, you get 68 rocks and 32 diamonds. Diamonds out, rocks in. Bag now contains 14 diamonds and 100 rocks. 12th year you pick 100 at random you get 87 rocks and 13 diamonds. Diamonds out, rocks ins. Bag now contains 1 diamond and 100 rocks. ... This is a comb filter algorithm. If you continually skim the best items out of a pot and throw the garbage back into the pot, eventually the pot only contains garbage. Every time you skim the best items out and remove them, the next attempt, the chances are HIGHER that you will encounter a bad item. With 1000 items, 10% bad, 100 filtered on each iteration, it takes 12 iterations to get to only 1 good item left. From there on, it is forever that it's just bad items left. This is exactly what the NBTHK did to get rid of the bad papers. Every year people submitted their old papers to get new papers, and the good ones came out clean and were removed from the pool. Every year the concentration of bad ones increases. So, not only is it wrong that "it's rare to encounter one" (it's not), but, with every passing month, your chances of encountering one increase. It cannot decrease. The problem gets worse over time. Failure to understand this, is a failure to understand 8th grade mathematics. Now, people's ongoing inability to understand the problem makes them fall into a fallacy. In each of those interations, until the very end, there are still good items left in the bag. So what we hear is this: "I found a green papered blade and it papered Tokubetsu Hozon no problem, therefore this problem is overblown." And it's not. It is just one of the good samples left in the bag. Furthermore, it reinforces what I have said all along, that every time you do find one good one, you leave behind a greater concentration of bad ones. The fact that you just found that good one doesn't make it BETTER for the other guy it makes it WORSE for the other guy. Because you drained one more diamond out of the bag that he will reach into next. But this anecdotal evidence fallacy people use to try to prove there is no problem is still something people throw out there. When the concentration level got completely radioactive, the NBTHK completely pulled the plug on the papers. That took 37 years. Please stop spreading this misinformation that there is no problem with the disavowed categories of papers. 1. It flies in the face of 8th grade math. 2. The NBTHK specifically warned people about these papers years ago 3. The NBTHK pulled the papers in the end and they have no utility at all now in the papering process. That doesn't mean that they are all bad. It means that the chances that any given one is bad increases every year. The solution to this is the same as always: realize that with every year of pieces cycling through the market, your chances get worse. Not only do they get worse, it is an accelerating curve. In the example above, you can see that in the first couple of years your chances were still good and any particular year is not so different from the one before. As the process picks up steam though suddenly it's all rocks. This is very close to where we are now. It's almost all rocks. That's why you ask for a guarantee. It is the only responsible advice to give people. Old experienced collectors who try to deny this either: 1. didn't learn from experience 2. have a lot of green papers in their collection 3. are too old now to handle 8th grade math Sorry for the harsh words. Sorry to have to post here again. Not going to get into a pissing match. But when you deny these basic facts of mathematics, you are setting up an environment for new collectors, who do not know that you are posting a line of crap, to get defrauded by someone who is actively buying and selling pieces with disavowed papers, who does not care, who wants to make a quick buck off of someone who is new and thinks they can beat the system. And it is a line of crap. Anyone trying to sell anyone on this idea that the disavowed series of papers are reliable, and bad ones will not be encountered in the field, is spewing a line of crap. It is crap. Arnold, your idea is a big ball of crap. I'm sorry but that is what it is and older collectors should not be promoting this idea. Is this paper good or bad? I don't know. It's not the subject of my post and I didn't study the item. But anything that is not one of the modern accepted paper levels, is something I would insist on having a guarantee as a buyer (and that guarantee just saved me again this summer when I bought a blue papered item). And I won't sell them as a dealer without saying these papers are worthless -or- I guarantee Hozon or Tokubetsu Hozon or your money back.

Breaking radio silence for this. Those that want to be perceived as teachers, including many hucksters who self promote their brands in the western world, are not teachers or remotely close. They just promote their brand. The humility involved in saying "please don't call me sensei" is one of the check boxes in my opinion for someone to really be a sensei.

I think you are on to something but the Juyo and Tokuju approach is not correct. Before the last Juyo and Tokuju are counted, there are a total of 1174 Tokuju items of all sorts. 357 Tachi 469 Katana 6 Kodachi 77 Wakizashi 130 Tanto 2 Daisho (swords) 2 Ko-ken 5 Ken 1 Yari 3 Naginata 50 Koshirae (including daisho) 40 Tsuba 1 Menuki 2 Fuchigashirae 5 Kogai 5 Kozuka 19 sets of tosogu of various sorts For Juyo 14,135 items, 11,577 of those are swords. The remainder are not all fittings are there are Juyo turtles, origami and guns. But they are mostly fittings. This does not include the last 12 months.

Since this referenced my site and seems to say I am supporting his expertise: 1. that tanto is part of the "soshu daisho" which I have talked about frequently on this site before, that tanto is gimei and came from a Christie's auction that had their guarantee. 2. it came with an equally gimei (kinzogan) Masamune which I have spoken about and I think Reinhard has on this site. 3. both were happily authenticated by Inami san I don't think that any of his paperwork or sayagaki means anything for holding any attribution weight. This tanto, the thoughts out of Japan were that it is a Sadamune that has a spurious Yukimitsu added. So don't use either this tanto as a Yukimitsu reference, or as me saying Inami san had any weight as an expert. I'm sure he knew his stuff I am just not sure that the attributions he made on things he sold shortly after the war, as this tanto was, is anything that can be counted on. I don't view his papers in any regard at all. That page was only documenting what was on the blade. I sold it as Nanbokucho period Soshu, as I was told the only two attributions that would be given to it if it were mumei were Soshu Sadamune or Shodai Nobukuni and I didn't let the buyer find that out until after it was bought (as I didn't want to use those names to leverage a sale, rather, leave it as a pleasant surprise). The Masamune katana was Shinto but a good Shinto, still, fake Masamune attribution on a great Shinto sword is of negligible worth.

OK, exceptional reason to post as some of my stuff is getting dragged in here and I want to make some clarifications and explain, or try to, what is going on. I told Fred I wanted to blog the answer but he got a bit excited, now I'm drawn in here for some other things I've said, so I should clarify the situation about the sets passing Juyo. The early history of it is that swords and tosogu have been treated separately. In Juyo 4 two swords were submitted together with koshirae and those got folded into the papers. As Michael showed above some koshirae have kind of an equal billing with the sword on the oshigata. Sometimes they didn't photograph the koshirae but only described them or noted them, and sometimes including signatures. I had an example where they extensively described a koshirae withe elements by Yanagawa Naomasa but did not photograph it. When I first saw these notations showing up, sometimes on the front, sometimes on the back, and they are also broken out in the Juyo paper, I asked Benson what the deal is. His words to me is that the sword and koshirae passed Juyo together. In one of these cases with a text only annotation on the koshirae, I told a dealer in Japan the koshirae were great and I was going to send them back in for their own Juyo paper. He told me this wasn't permitted, that they would be rejected and returned as already designated Juyo. That hasn't stopped it from happening though, because it's very hard to match a submitted koshirae against a text description. There are examples around then where the koshirae passed with the sword and then in later years the koshirae went back in and got its own paper. In the English Token Bijutsu there is an article about koshirae going in with swords, and basically it seems to be something started by sword collectors rather than put in place by the NBTHK so it was not handled very uniformly. The statements from the NBTHK in this article were: 1. we want to improve internal judgment abilities on koshirae and tosogu (NBTHK being primarily devoted to swords and had outside judges frequently for tosogu) 2. we've noticed more people sending in koshirae with their swords for Juyo consideration and we think this is a good idea, and we want to encourage it If the koshirae is not significantly Juyo quality, or historically does not belong with the sword, it won't be written into the paper. So, Guido is technically correct, there is no specific paper for a Juyo set of sword and tosogu, the sword I say leads the package and then the koshirae is added, and from everything I can tell they are Juyo together. It's in the papers, it's on the setsumei, Benson told me about this in the first place and if you can't resubmit it to Juyo on the grounds it's already Juyo that means it's Juyo. There is another form though, where the koshirae are significant enough to pass Juyo but the sword is not. In this case, the set can still be shown as a set but will fall into the koshirae section in the zufu. If the sword were significant it would go in as a sword with the koshirae accompanying it. In this case the sword though is most likely not considered Juyo if the koshirae are leading the set. Sometimes the sword is noted on the back of the oshigata in the setsumei but I have not gotten a look at any of these to see if the sword is noted in the papers. But again my feeling is that if the sword is Juyo strength the whole thing would go into the sword section. Sometimes just the mei of the sword or the nakago is shown when the koshirae passes Juyo or Tokuju. It is probably true that when they pass together there is some leverage on the koshirae provided the sword is excellent, that is, that the package of sword + koshirae with a strong Juyo sword and a koshirae that may be difficult to pass on its own, can go together on the strength of the sword. But a weak koshirae won't go in with the sword. This was inconsistently handled in the early years and is a bit more consistent now, but it is still fairly loose in how it's implemented. Because there are also examples where people have sent in their sword and koshirae on separate submissions in the same session. There is a Masamune and it has a Goto Ichijo koshirae, both of these passed Juyo separately in session 22 and then passed Tokuju again together but separately in Tokuju session 4. In this case the Ichijo has a notation on the front that it belongs with the Masamune from the same session. In Tokuju 23 there is a Horikawa Kunihiro that passed Tokuju and there is also an Ichijo koshirae with it, but this time on the back of the same page as the Kunihiro and would be noted into the papers. I sold an Aoe once and failed to notice that the koshirae was written into the Juyo paper, because the owner had also separately gotten Tokubetsu Hozon for it. Again, that probably shouldn't happen once it's on the Juyo paper but if it's written in as text only there is no way of really figuring it out. So I just saw the Tokubetsu Hozon and described it as that. So formally, there is no category for these sets. In practice there is, and the koshirae is to be considered Juyo if written into the paper with the sword. Considering if the koshirae was junk they wouldn't do it so the koshirae is satisfying some quality and importance criteria, as well as a judgment that they belong together and it's not a mix and match special. It would be nice to formalize this further but also formalizing it means that they will be really forced to make strong judgments about whether the koshirae has been there forever and this is not always possible. By my count there are about 300 koshirae that have been written into Juyo papers accompanying swords, maybe half of these are further photographed on the front or back of the oshigata. If you have great koshirae that goes with a sword you are submitting, you should certainly send it along with the sword for Juyo consideration as a set. Some of the above determinations may also be because of how the owner submitted it. In the case of the Masamune/Ichijo clearly the owner submitted them separately. If the koshirae passes with the sword noted the owner probably submitted the koshirae and brought the sword along. In mathematics we would call something like this "ill defined". But that doesn't mean it doesn't exist at all. I won't follow up here due to my personal no arguments policy, email me if you have questions.

It reminds me of when Amazon patented "one click" ordering (nobody ever thought of less than two clicks! It's an invention!) It would seem to me that his trademark application is issued by someone who doesn't know that Nihonto is not a made up word. I fail to see how it is enforceable, as it's like trademarking the word "Spoon". If you have a company named "Spoon Innovatech Software Industries" you should be able to trademark the word Spoon only in that context. If he wants to have "Nihonto Europe" then perhaps he can have that and could argue as having a right to that in order to prevent other people from infringing. But trademarking "Nihonto" on its own is the same as trademarking "Europe" on its own, it's a generic word, it just happens to be that the trademark office didn't realize it is such in a foreign language. Similarly someone in China is not going to get a Chinese trademark for the English word for "car". Brian asked about 10 direct questions which could have had clear answers. Basically, Brian: "Are you going to use this trademark to give people s**t who don't deserve it?" Answer: "I'm a nice guy do you see it in my character to do this?" That kind of political talk show non-answer works in the context, but if someone like this refuses to make a clear statement then I think it is fair to assume the worst. The next person he attacks, basically that is the time for people to rally behind the victim and pony up a defense. As well whatever can be challenged now should be challenged. I dodged this by changing my website but trademarking the word "nihonto" is going to blindside about 80% of people involved in this hobby, whether a collector with their own website or a sword polisher or a dealer. Since this guy won't offer a simple and clear statement, I would say again, it's fair to conclude the worst. I wouldn't recommend harassing him by leaving 1-star reviews, that can ultimately blow up in your face. Though it is emotionally satisfying and feels fair when someone else is doing something inappropriate, it's better to take the high ground and keep an eye on his behavior. Make this a sticky thread in NMB so it shows up in Google search for anyone he attacks. Make it clear how the community feels about trademarking "nihonto". Those of us who have actual real legal experience should probably continue to coach the rest of us in what kind of response we should be attempting. One person who has the time and wants to be the lead should kind of structure a community response. If a letter is drawn up as a community response I would sign it and I am willing to bet that any dealer with the word "nihonto" in their website name is going to sign it too. I think as well that the community here should vote with their wallets. If there is going to be an aggressive trademark troll, customers need to decide if it is in their best interests to support that kind of cancer (ultimately if all searches on "nihonto" go to his site, the answer is pretty clear). Also I would suspect that Katana is not going to go down, but this should be the time to complain about Katana and refer to Nihonto as something invalid and explain the reasons. As well I think this is an issue for the NBTHK and NTHK and the EU branch as well as American branches should motivate themselves to comment on this, though this is more a decision for their leadership (I am not a member of either but a lot of you reading this are). I suggest if the issue concerns you, write to your branch president. Also this will blindside both NBTHK and NTHK as it would not permit them to use the "N" word anymore. Obviously both have publication histories going back a long way in Europe and the USA and that will defend the use of Nihonto as a generic word. Anyway just my thoughts, I think this is an important issue and the community should rally. I'll repeat: 1. Don't troll this guy. He will be judged on his behavior and you will be judged on yours. Take the high ground. 2. Taking steps to ban him and so forth I think is not good either, keep a communications channel open, but as well keep this thread sticky so that his customers understand how he is treating the rest of the community. 3. If he doesn't intend on using his trademark as a blunt weapon to smash competitors and people who irritate him, he is welcome to make a clear statement about that which he has obviously avoided with intent. 4. Someone has to seriously be the head of the spear, someone who knows what they are doing in this field or as close as we can get to it. We all know what happens when people with no sword knowledge come here and start trying to tell us why their Chinese fake is real. In the legal field that is about as much knowledge as most of us have so we do need members of the community with some expertise to be the spearhead. Regardless of any statement he has to make on how he intends to use this thing, basically it's a WMD and the community should be taking steps to disarm it so regardless of one man's personal agenda it can't be used to disrupt the hobby. Since I changed my site name, as mentioned, I am impacted much less than other dealers but I am willing to stand in solidarity on principle. For life will suck for all if we have to write after the words katana and nihonto.

Regional domains give search engines a signal that they interpret to various degrees. So what you see in whatever region you're in is indeed filtered highly tailored to where you live. It's possible to go one way, which is to fine tune a regionless domain name for a region, but not possible to go the other way which is to tell them that it shouldn't be geolocated. I didn't like the asymmetric search results so I moved to a .com.

I have to break my self imposed exile for this. That was for private consumption and not as a thread starter. What I'm going to talk about with friends in email is going to be handled a bit differently than if I am posting my thoughts in public for consumption by everyone so I have to clarify my my thoughts here. To be clear this is speculation based on what I can see, and what I can see is not so much. In the past there have been swords posted to this site from that site in which nobody looked at the papers, and the papers have information that reveals more about the piece in question than the knee jerk evaluation does. The Kiyomaro that came and went and came back and has some weirdness to it had an older paper that said the mei was from the very end of his life, and that can have some additional things read into it. So it's important when the man puts a picture of the paper up, that you look at the paper, he's put it there for you to look at after all and there is a message there that is implicit. Do your homework is the message, and here is the information. There are some weird things on this piece and one of them seems to be the horimono quality. Also they pass halfway through the hamon which is unusual and in none of his works. But they don't look like any of the good horimono that are associated with this smith and also Yoshitane. The hamon in the paper and the hamon in the photo of the blade are very different and about six months exists between the photo and the paper. There are two scenarios: Scenario 1. for some reason the polisher put hadori on the blade as if it had a low suguba hamon in the Hosho style which complimented a masame construction when it really had a florid notare hamon. His reason for doing this may have been that the hamon was invisible so he put a fake one on. Then this blade with the florid notare hamon that was invisible with a fake suguba hamon on it went to the NBTHK who gave it Tokubetsu Hozon in spite of this and the dragons. After papers then the polish was corrected and the hamon revealed. And the hamon just happened to go halfway through the horimono. And mizukage appeared after the polish was corrected on the right hand side. 2. the blade was found, as-is not so good condition, papered to be sure the mei was correct, and after this money spent to "enhance" it as the hamon was maybe dim and not saleable. There is a possibility it is indeed just polishing but it's hard for me to wrap my head around the original state being dressed up for a low suguba hamon and then the hamon being this florid thing going through the horimono. Maybe it's been given a bit of acid treatment which brought out the jihada as well as the hamon. Whatever it was, it is after it was papered is the only thing that can be known for sure. As for "someone should tell Tsuruta san", this I think would be speculating that you have some knowledge you can impart to this man, who is I think an expert in swords and needs no lessons from westerners and is aware of the strengths and weaknesses of everything he acquires for his inventory. They are what they are and they are filling a niche in the market, as there is demand for what they sell and how they sell it. Back to exile.

Arnold... What I do not want to do is to is see applause on this site make it sound like a confirmation that this is a reliable, repeatable, and simple process for potential readers who put "export Juyo bijutsuhin" into Google. It's not an attack on you, it's an attack on making a conclusion based on one data point and this is a particularly serious one. Nobody is mentioning the failure data points (I know of them, they exist, you don't know about them, without the permission of people who failed it's not within my comfort level to publish their failures), so the best I can do is write something here to try to in no uncertain words say, don't draw conclusions from this. Avoiding the handwaving and repeating this: It is very interesting to hear that such material can now legally leave Japan and I would put that down to the growing reality of the internationalization of the market for Japanese swords I don't think it requires a degree in english literature to understand this and if you did embed all kinds of linguistic trickery into it, it still reads plainly on its face, that there is a conclusion here that "such material can now legally leave Japan" (you don't know this until you get a letter from the Ministry saying it can, and that this one was not granted a special dispensation because it came in from outside of Japan) and then you went so far as to attribute the reason why of it. That's simple english and the conclusion is wrong, as well as the attribution of cause of the conclusion, it's nothing more than pulling things out of the air. Anyone at all here can write to the ministry of education and ask them the correct process for exporting these and if it is 100% reliable to do so, and if so the matter will be clarified and then you can make the statement you did. Nobody has done this yet and since only apparently one or two people have ever gotten these out of Japan in even small quantities, this leaves the "correct" approach a mystery. A secret owned by only these people? Who knows. Certainly not you, and certainly not me. The fact that this blade came out means nothing until the process is published, and/or examples shown, about how it is done. Otherwise it's like that time I dated Christie Turlington. I would very much encourage our members who are in Japan to make inquiries and find out if it is possible on a regular basis, and if the answer is no, then the best case scenario is that someone granted an exception for a foreign own blade that got sent to Japan and allowed it to be returned to their owner. There is no reliable information here being presented that is of any use to any collector, and it is defense of one blade being exported. In my opinion Fred owned it and Fred deserved to have it back and the right thing was done. I write what I write, only so that someone doesn't google into this thread and see a bunch of NMB members talking about how great it is now that you can export Jubi and so get the wrong idea in their head. This, as mentioned, can be clarified should someone simply write a single page letter, in Japanese, to the Ministry of Education asking for the correct forms and process. Should someone do that, now we have useful information for collectors. This here has nothing valid that can be taken home from it, nothing that applies to you or me or anyone else other than the person who exported this particular blade. Get that information and now you can make useful sweeping conclusions, like it's good to know that things like this can now leave Japan and it's because the Japanese changed their mind about it. And honestly it's no fun to me to be the guy sitting here with multiple counterexamples in my head that I can't share while the applause is going on. I don't want to have the fights and pissing matches on this board about this kind of thing, having to hold cards in my hand I can't put down, and have arguments with people that don't have direct experience. So, this is my last post. Not on this thread, but on NMB.

Those were made for use in Edo castle. I'm a bit late here. But if the fuchi are being stripped from tsuka with horn kashira, those had a role for someone in a daimyo clan to be able to wear in Edo castle. That is the explicit role of this setup. Don't separate them from their kashira at least, but if possible, better to restore the tsuka. My two cents. At least keep them with horn kashira. This is not just everyday walking around garbage and they are not orphans from kashira with mon. These belong together and mean something. Tomoe mon also invokes Hachiman, god of war. I don't know the backstory here and sorry for interrupting.

I visited Australia once. Border people, taking all my stuff apart (just clothes and computer), they brought in the food / wildlife expert for some reason. I suppose their job is intended well, to protect the unique ecosystem in Australia. My stuff got torn through again. She found something that bothered her, held it up and asked me, "Is this food?" Because I guess you can't bring food in. The thing she held up was a bottle of Tylenol. I didn't know if this was an intelligence test or a trick question or what. My answer was, "Well, you eat them, so technically it's food?" She came close to protecting Australia from my bottle of Tylenol but in the end, gave me grudging acceptance to bring my food into the country. I never went back. So, good luck with your swords.

Brian is a god.

Agreed, nothing to do with speed. It's how you make a square peg fit a round hole.

I don't think liberalism is what got the sword stolen.

Note the blade was sent to Japan by the legal owner at the time (Fred) and then took a year to get back to him. It's not the same situation as someone going over and buying one. The handful of Jubi that are out: 1. some were war booty that left in the chaos after the war 2. some left under unknown circumstances Nobody has ever published any exportation documentation or application or correct method for them to go out. I think if you want to draw any conclusion from this, it's that they ruled in favor of letting the legal owner / importer get his property back which is fair, because they shouldn't be stopping the legal owner from getting his property back on a paper who's status was revoked (now getting close to a century ago). It is not the correct conclusion to jump straight to "oh it's easy to export Jubi now" from this example. At some point I will try one if I can get a refund guarantee from whomever is going to sell it to me. I know it will be hard to get such a refund guarantee, because they will tell me it's not possible to do, to begin with. But if I can get someone to guarantee me a refund, I will try one, and if I try one, I will publish the method and the documentation. Nobody has ever published the method or the documentation. Without that, you can't conclude that it is a slam dunk to get any particular Jubi out, vs. a special case dispensation issued after a year of appeals to give the owner his property back. I didn't want to post on this, when I saw the first post though I thought, uh oh, NMB is going to grab the ball and sprint for the end zone and that's immediately what happened. What we need is for someone who has done it, to publish *all* of the details. I wouldn't recommend anyone who stumbles onto a treasure Jubi to immediately assume from this that they will be as lucky, nor would I recommend to people to run out and buy a bunch of Jubi and assume that it is a slam dunk process now. It has nothing to do with "growing reality of the internationalization of the market". If that were so it would be possible to send a piece of tosogu from Tokyo to anywhere in the world, which is not something that can easily happen now. I recently had a koshirae fail because it had a wooden tsunagi in it and so that triggered them to reject it for export. So, really, honestly, don't grab the ball and run for the endzone screaming touchdown until you yourself successfully get one out after doing all the paperwork right. It's not a touchdown until the ball is in the endzone and the referees have reviewed the play.

There can be some variance in the methods. Some of the worn down Masamune show signs of a soft core coming through once the skin steel has been polished way. But as Jean and Paul indicate above, one piece construction is there and on Awataguchi blades, they can sometimes never become tired because of this. This is an extremely important Awataguchi Kunimitsu tanto I once had (and stupidly sold before I understood what I was doing). It has a 1287 date. This is the remains of the head of a suken: This shows where the whole suken was: The steel is still clear, bright and beautiful. It's the only dated Awataguchi Kunimitsu by the first generation (era is on the other side). There are some other signed Jubi/Jubun Kunimitsu tachi but the signature looks more like the 1323 dated nidai tanto to me on those. So this could be the only signed Shodai piece. It's the only dated work though and the only signed tanto. Selling this was one of the major mistakes of my life. Later on a jackass dropped it. It's somewhere in Europe or England now so one day probably will show up at an auction house. If you see it, buy it.

It's also possibly a misdelivery.

He signed fairly close to the mune but this one is definitely cut off.

Usually they are gimei. Or possibly from someone very far down the lineage.

Art object takes its definition from an opposite sense to utilitarian items. A blacksmith's blade, a machine made sword with serial numbers, poorly made Showato, those are utilitarian blades. They have no worth beyond their utility value. They are subject to destruction then since they may be nothing but weapons. Thus an art sword is something that is simply more than a weapon, more than a utilitarian item, because of the skill involved to make one, and the subjective beauty it has, as well as its age and history. Rudimentary blades from prehistory are still "art swords."

Funbari I think is more elastic a concept than is being thought of here. It's not just a measurement of a few inches above the habaki and depending on who you ask they will say different things about it. It has to do with tapering and the back and forth above has some objective and subjective errors I think. First objectively wrong thing is that it is koto only. I've read it in Shinshinto Juyo and the Token Bijutsu describes a Shinkai as having funbari. INOUE SHINKAI Both the width and the size of the point section of this blade are ordinary. The kasane is slightly thinner than usual. The back is iori-mune. Koshizori is more marked than usual, resulting in the shape with funbari. KOTETSU: This wide wakizashi has a sturdy structure with a large kissaki at the top and funbari at the base. Muromachi period describing a Muramasa: Both mihaba and kissaki are formed in normal size. The shinogi-haba is narrow. The saki-zori is conspicuous with funbari. So immediately we can rule it out as a period-only thing. They used it on a Kiyomaro tanto as well. And say it's generally true of Samonji tanto. In these cases I think it's referring simply to a tapering shape. Though we see definitions that talk about the area just above the machi, it is common to see it in use to describe the taper of a whole blade: Yamanaka: The Ko-Enju blades have much fumbari tapering narrow towards the kissaki ... the others have the width of the blade made about the same at the machi and towards the kissaki. English Token Bijutsu uses it again to mean over the whole blade: His tachi blades show marked thrusting curvature in funbari toward the point together with the ordinary width of the blade and the size of the kissaki. Describing a suriage blade where the author is now focusing on funbari at the machi: Because of absence of funbari, this tachi needs to be judged as being either suriage or osuriage. With other context they say that funbari takes place below the monouchi and above the machi: The curvature in shallow koshizori shows funbari (a tachi shape in koshizori given a well balanced, stable proportion in the area between monouchi and habaki-moto). And yet more context explicitly defines it as being between saki-haba and moto-haba: The shape of the blade caused by this marked difference in widths between saki-haba and moto-haba is expressed in the technical term funbari literally meaning a standing position supported by two legs wide apart. (Sato Kanzan) In other places you can see clearly people dismissing a blade as being old because it "lacks funbari" and they are focused on the machi area. Out of this I feel the stricter sense is more correct, referring to a tapering that is seen in the lower half of the blade. But as can be seen it is often used to describe tapering over the entire blade. This feeling for me is emphasized whenever they say "funbari at the habaki" ... there is no need to keep pointing out the exact spot if funbari is tightly tied only to one spot in the blade. This is an example: the sori is relatively more pronounced with funbari formed at the base At best, funbari is subjective as there is no strict measurement or area provided in these definitions which refer to the feeling of a man standing with his feet apart and other poetic versions like that. So for me I took it to be taper, specifically and more correctly, taper close to the machi but in a general sense taper over the entire blade. Just in the Token Bijutsu there is enough material to support both interpretations, but it is most often mentioned in association with koshi-zori blades.

I thought Tokubetsu Hozon was no longer possible for gendaito? http://www.nihontocraft.com/Nihonto_Shinsa_Standards.html This only mentions Meiji and Taisho blades as qualifying for Hozon if in excellent shape, signed and ubu. Only their very best work can go to Tokubetsu Hozon. No mention of Showa period blades. So, anyone know for a fact if Showa is completely on the outs for Tokubetsu Hozon? You can find a Gassan Sadakatsu from time to time at Tokubetsu Hozon but my understanding was when they revised the standards they were not going to allow that anymore.

Last year people knew this year's dates a week or two after.... How I wish they would go back to the beginning of November. Hallowe'en in Tokyo = side bonus. But it seems like there are a lot of conferences always in Tokyo at the end of November and it makes the hotels spike. Ugh.