Darcy

A ramble on classification... inspired by the shinogi comment, but more about what I seem to keep encountering in regards to sugata and determining when and what a sword is. First up, utsuri rarely shows in photographs. Of all the swords I took photos of, especially for the Bizen book, only three really had it pop out and only one was Kamakura period. Out of polish blades are also less likely to show utsuri, so its absence means nothing while its presence is a determining factor. A lot of the time on the gold old blades you can even read in the NBTHK comments that utsuri is there and then you can go nuts trying to see it, finding the right light and intensity and angle... this is with the sword in hand. Sugata is also something that is an ongoing thing where we are given instruction to place too much emphasis on it, leaving us thinking that it absolutely determines period and/or school. We went through that before when someone had mentioned that a blade did not have enough sori to be koto then we went through and found many old koto blades in o-suriage form that had less curvataure than a similarly sized shinto katana. My own Yukimitsu is a blade with a very shallow shinogi and deep ji and overall wide mihaba and extended kissaki and looks allllll the world like a Nambokucho period blade from around 1350 and it is classified as late Kamakura to a smith who ever saw the first year of Nambokucho. This kind of sugata puzzle has come up for me over and over again. Either the attribution is wrong, or we are too strict when determining swords to rule things out based on what we see. "It can't be X because of Y" is a really strong phrase and I think with Nihonto it might be uttered too quickly. For instance, the shinogi depth on this sword, part of the problem is that the angle of the photos are being used to present the hamon. This is causing the shinogi to recede from the viewer and present an impression of being more narrow than it is. On one photo that the sword is not angled away, creating a flatter perspective, I tried to measure it out as best I could. It is coming in at about 1:1.95 shinogi:ji. Compare: Osafune Kagehide (middle Kamakura): 1:2 Soshu Yukimitsu (late Kamakura): 1.3.8 (very narrow) Ko-Aoe (early Kamakura): 1:2.3 (slightly narrow) Osafune Hidemitsu (late Nanbokucho): 1:1.7 (slightly thick) Osafune Kanemitsu (middle Nanbokucho): 1:2.1 (very slightly narrow) Ko-Bizen Masazane (late Heian): 1:2.1 Fukuoka Ichimonji (middle Kamakura): 1:2 Osafune Motoshige (middle Nanbokucho): 1:2.35 (narrow) I am not super confident of my measurement based on the photo, but I used the one that had the least issues regarding perspective and measured accordingly. So perhaps a real measurement on the sword would clarify more... But... The above shows that there is indeed some variation on the old blades, partially from state of polish and partially due to the initial length of the blade. I think in general the ji becomes wider faster than the shinogi when the blade becomes long. This is what gives the narrow shinogi ji generalization on the archetype Nanbokucho period blade. But up until the end of this period, you did have swords in all shapes and sizes and that is, I think, going to end up in moving the shinogi around. Given also blades getting chips polished out and adjustments to the shinogi you get a further fudge factor added to the measurement. I would be hesitant to make a big judgment based on something like this, unless it is the case of something on the extreme, like the Yukimitsu above or say perhaps a Miike with the shinogi line running down almost through the middle of the sword... Where the attribution or gimei is showing up on this blade I think is not important one way or another in determining its period... as far as I understand it the attribution will come up on the side meant for facing outwards now, so basically katanamei, regardless of original use. I also then took the sugata picture for this sword and put it up superimposed on a Ko-Bizen sword by Masatsune. The sugata matches quite nicely. I tend to push away from things like sugata and depth of shinogi, etc., because of this kind of thing above where it's easy to be lead astray by pictures, and look more to workmanship. The workmanship though, the quality and work in the hamon and the ji, these I think are harder to lie with. A certain sword may have certain dimensions because of the man who was going to use it had requirements... or if it was made for a boy, or a kodachi instead of a tachi, and so on. There is a lot of variation from the archetypes and we have to keep in mind that sugata is one thing that is very flexible in terms of the skills needed to construct it being fairly constant and basic in comparison to the others. Ji, hamon, etc., these represent techniques close to a school, many lost over time, so are less likely to lie. But sweeping conclusions based on observations again get really hard because of the long timeframes involved and the many smiths. Some are easy: Norishige, Ko-Bizen, most early Soshu den. Rai. The thing with these are that they are all on some kind of extreme or demonstrate some special feature that others do not. I really wish I had some proper photos to post of a tachi owned by a friend of mine, because it is 36" nagasa, with koshi-zori, midareba utsuri, and choji-midare hamon and mokume hada. Strictly following the rules of kantei brings you to the exact wrong answer and 150 years off the mark, and reading the signature places it exactly where it should not be made by a smith who could not have made it. But if we skip past that and look in detail at the work, the quality of it, it might help (but in this case still would probably be impossible). Anyway, my own personal thoughts are that I think based on the hamon above that the blade is not Kamakura period Bizen, but I think that the sugata shows that it could have been.

This is more of a style of gunome than of choji I think... also you can see how clean the appearance is, it's lacking the detail and substance of the great older Bizen works. I'm attaching a great Ichimonji from my book and you can see how much is going on in the hamon. So the backup theory on your blade is it might actually be one of the late generation Nagamitsu, into the Muromachi period. Blade was shortened afterwards. http://www.nihonto.ca/Ichimonji.jpg

I'm not sure about generalizing the Ichimonji boshi as suguba, the school runs about 150 years and has several major stylistic changes. I shot four for my book, the Ko-Ichimonji has suguba, the other three all are midare boshi. Nakago is always going to be depending on whether it is ubu or not and when the shortening was done and by whom. If this was a kodachi, it's just been shortened a small amount and the nakago would have been filed straight. A friend of mine has a 36" tachi, the only modification is that they filed the nakago straight on that thing too so it could be worn as a katana. No idea how they got the blade out of the saya.

The hamon looks like old Bizen work but looks more like Ichimonji style than Nagamitsu style. Nagamitsu is usually more quiet and Ichimonji more flamboyant (note usually, there is no hard and fast here). The skill of the chiseling is poor so it is enough to give it doubts about how legitimate the story is that is being told. This is the flipside of the Kanenori that we were discussing on the board, because it's attesting to a Nagamitsu one has to take it with a several hundred kilo grain of salt. However, the work is consistent with old Bizen style. However, it could be a shinshinto copy, as the shinshinto smiths were able to make very nice choji among those who took up Bizen style with vigor. I would safely rule out any Bizen between Nambokucho and the end of Shinto looking at the hamon. If the jihada is kind of weak, that is kind of standard for middle period Kamakura Bizen. These smiths were hamon men, they did not make the beautiful jihada that you see in Yamashiro or in Soshu (which is inherited through Yamashiro). So I think that you can have hope that this is an old Bizen blade. It is possible that it could be ubu or nearly so and was a mumei kodachi that was later on dummied up to pretend to be an o-suriage tachi. On the other hand, could be shinshinto, a kodachi that was then dummied up to look like an old blade. I think that you might be shooting with a bulb that is either behind a lamp shade or is a frosted bulb... if so use a clear bulb. Take these photos again, and show some pictures where the filament of the bulb is reflecting right into the camera. This will light up the nioi crystals and then give an impression of the detail and structure of the hamon. A shinshinto hamon I think will tend to be very "clean" where the older Kamakura hamon is going to have beautiful and natural detail inside it. I think that because of what is shown the sword really needs to be sent in for papers, to have a proper expert evaluate it and make a decision on what we're looking at. I'm about 80% certain that the "old mei, nagamitsu" stuff is BS, but it does not mean that the sword is not old Bizen. If you have an Ichimonji kodachi it's every bit as good as a Nagamitsu. Collectors would give a left arm for either one. Which also means that the whole thing has to remain suspect until it can be handled in person by someone who can make a proper judgment. My only concern looking at the pictures is that the structure of the hamon is very regular. Ichimonji brings the feeling of wildness, like you are looking at a fire burning out of control. This does not give that feeling. It's got more of a regular gunome mixed into the choji and so it then gives the feeling instead of a smith who is working within his natural form of expression, the feeling of an artist trying to match a template. So that would have me lean to a shinshinto work dummied up but I don't get that feeling enough to rule out that you have a nice old koto Bizen work. I'd lean to Ichimonji still over Nagamitsu if I were told certainly it is Kamakura Bizen, because the range is very broad. Included below is a middle period, likely Fukuoka, Ichimonji master work. This is a little bit more regular and sedate than the true grand flamboyant pieces, but you can still see the wildness and natural nature of the hamon. It is very organic, the structure it has feels like the structure of fire or anything that grows and is natural. When someone tries to replicate this centuries later, they have no idea what the smith actually did to pull this off, so work off of theories and attempts to duplicate it, and usually then a forced feeling comes through in the work. It's probably not until Ka that people really pulled off the same feeling, I am really enamored of Shibata Ka's work, the two that I have seen very much impressed me.

Ah yes, I had just glanced at what was there and had assumed it was the same one without looking at it deeply. Big oops.

水心å­æ­£ç§€é€ Suishinshi Masahide Tsukuru I don't think they are new. The surface finishing on the mei side is consistent with what you see in some of these shinshinto kogatana and is pretty much identical to a very nice Ozaki Suketaka I had. They are probably gimei, maybe made around Taisho or something. Masahide is faked almost as much as Kotetsu. http://www.nihonto.ca/masahide/ Some of the smiths doing the fakery shortly after the sword ban were pretty good. This tanto was really, really nice and I've seen others that have fooled some good people (including myself) when faking Shinshinto smiths.

Think it is: 備州長船ä½é•·å…‰ Bishu Osafune Ju Nagamitsu å¤éŠ˜ Komei (old signature) Might be referring to a shortening. Think we talked about this one before but I didn't read those other two characters. The hamon is very nice and consistent with old Bizen work. Should be sent for papers.

When a sword is shortened, sometimes the entire nakago will be refinished with new yasurime. So you kind of get a "reboot." Alternatively, polishers are able to patinate nakago so that it is very hard to detect difference in age. I'm not sure what the procedure was hundreds of years ago, but even if they did something very basic to age the new surface in the nakago, after a century it would really blend together. Finally, on many swords the borderlines are very clear between the shortenings. I had a Ko-Yamashiro blade and it was pretty clear where the original nakago was still there, and one or two shortenings above that. Not only is the patina different but the texture of the steel's surface becomes more rough with age. So your feeling from the top blade does hold up in the case of a sword that is shortened successively.

Yes, I had loaned the swords to Clive for a bit and he wrote that. He makes gorgeous oshigata. I wish I had 1/10th the skill.

When I decoded all the paperwork and the dates of it, it was clear that the two pieces were purchased at different times in Japan, and the koshirae while from 10 feet away seemed to match they were of different make up close. Both were bought at Japan Sword shortly after WWII, as the papers were written by Mr. Inami, SHO-SHIN Masamune and SHO-SHIN Yukimitsu :-). The papers for the daito had a transfer of ownership from Viscount Inaba to Japan Sword when it was sold, so that part of the history looked OK. The tanto was actually noted as belonging to the Kishu Tokugawa. So yes, really no clue why the got paired up other than trying as collectors will to put together a daisho.

Ugh, I really struggled with the construction of the middle sentence where he evaluates the sword. Please feel free to correct me... 1. 池田家傳来大磨 Ikeda ke denrai o-(suriage). Ikeda clan heirloom, shortened 2. 上無銘御刀遂熟 (o)-suriage mumei on-katana togeru juku katana with no signature. On accomplishing a thorough 3. 覧申御品相州行光 ran shin on-hin Soshu Yukimitsu inspection, I attribute the honorable object to Soshu Yukimitsu. 4. 之古極結構に鑑之刃文之働き地鉄之精良能き Kore ko kiwame kekkou kan Kore hamon no hataraki jitetsu no sei ryunou ki. The activity of its hamon, and spirit of its jitetsu are an example of extremely wonderful, classical, natural skill. 5. 御品長く御子孫に御傳 The honorable object should be handed down to the descendents of the head 6. ？御大切に被成度？？ with great care (some info missing) 7. 来阿弥光遜 Honami Koson 8. 六月上？ In the first half of the 6th month [of 1954]

Interesting, so with this date then being 1954, has to be one of his last... I wonder if the Ikeda still owned the sword at this point, my gut feeling is that it was sold and the new owner brought it in for origami.

Very cool info Milt, I never knew that... I know that they seem to have been close with the Emperor's family as one of them married the Showa Emperor's daughter, but didn't know about any Tokugawa connection. Gotta now translate these blue kanji and see what Mr. Koson is trying to tell me.

I think a forger is pretty easy to figure out because of the profit motive. They have a fixed amount of time, are greedy, are con artists, and so want to make as much money as they can. The proven route to this is always to lure a buyer and use the buyer's greed against them. There is a particular sword that was brought up here in the past that sells as an important piece that has been back and forth to Japan 4 times in the past 10 years or so. Every new buyer who thinks he has a bargain gets screwed in succession. Their own belief is what allows an obviously low ranking sword to be passed off as something important. Now say if this sword were to be passed off as something else low ranking... yes, very clever, nobody would suspect that... but... why would this person do it? Obviously people are lining up to be defrauded for big dollars, and it is working, so why on earth switch a low maker for a low maker... and even if you succeed in the scam, just exactly how do you defraud someone this way? I mean if the sword were an Ujifusa and this scammer cleverly substituted Kanenori... well the owner has a sword of approximately the same value anyway. The sword seems well made and fits with the reputation of the maker, so ... where is the scam even? Just a guy who is doing this for lolz? I think when it comes down to this kind of thing, the student is best to use a test of reasonableness. Nothing is cut and dried in Nihonto, anything can be true, but playing the odds is the best way. So yes, could this have been an attempt to fake a Kanenori? Yes, it's possible. Is it a reasonable possibility? No, not really, as there is no profit to be made from such a fake. There are plenty of Muromachi Mino laying around for anyone to buy if they want one, and the maker is not of the kind of reputation to make a buyer's ears perk up and be licking his lips. Change the name around, put Kotetsu on it, and I'm right in there being skeptical.

Gah I wrote up a huge reply to this but don't know what happened to it. Anyway the short version is that I went to Christie's and bid in an auction, I was jetlagged and awake for two days. I viewed the swords for a couple of minutes and went in to sleep then missed the second viewing so was kind of flying blind. I thought the dai was a Shizu (doesn't look anything like a Shizu) and the sho of the pair was a Shodai Nobukuni. Felt both would go Juyo, they had nice koshirae too. All the Euros knew the dai was a Shinto blade so there was not much bidding. I also bought two other swords, one of which I was bidding on the wrong lot. Never do this stuff jetlagged/awake for two days :-). There is a very long story in the middle... but Bob Benson discovered the koshirae tsuka maki was a work of Tsuka Hei, which is pretty big news. http://www.bushidojapaneseswords.com/Di ... %20hei.pdf He wrote that article on it. I am not sure if people thought I was a dummy for buying the pair of swords, but as Reinhard mentions the katana as being a masterpiece of Kunimichi in the Horikawa Kunihiro mon, it was very good, but the tanto was what I was really interested in. What screwed me up is the katana not being koto, so it being mumei after kinzogan removal would have killed the value. What everyone missed though is that the tanto was even better than Nobukuni, I think the shadow of the Masamune-as-Shinto cast itself over the tanto and the two came as a pair (tanto with gimei Yukimitsu on it). I was told in the end after sending the pieces to Japan that the tanto would pass Juyo and the mei should be removed because it was . If not that, then definitely Shodai Nobukuni as I had kantei'ed. I ended up selling the two to a client who wanted them. I described them as a Shinto katana with false kinzogan and a Nambokucho Period Soshu tanto with gimei Yukimitsu to my client list as I did not want anything not on paper to affect perceptions of value. I stated what they cost me, and a client made a nice offer so I sold them. After they were bought I gave the owner the good news as a bonus. So basically the fake Masamune was hiding a . There may be no more Masamune to be found but one can hardly complain about discovering what I discovered . I would be very interested if Reinhard were to give the background information that comes to the conclusion of the daito as Kunimichi. I would tend to agree with that opinion, and the others I got were that it was Satsuma.

ps. it is kind of an april fool's joke, and a lot of people thought i was the fool except I wasn't .

Hi Jean, I don't have any overall view :-). Very few takers, I was surprised because Reinhard already wrote that he thought it was a Dewa no Daijo Kunimichi masterpiece.... hmmm. :-)

The corollary of "For every 10 Kotetsu, 11 are gimei" is that low ranking smiths tend to show genuine work when found. If this guy is going to go to the effort of replicating a mei on a piece like this, he's going to upgrade it from Kanenori to Kaneuji if he wants to turn a buck because that is where the money is. Signed, ubu, dated Kanenori can be had and not very expensively, so one that has been shortened and lost the mei is not going to be particularly valuable. In the case where he may have written Kaneuji, or Kinju, or any much earlier and more valuable master smith, then one has to take a higher degree of skepticism. I don't see any reason to have heightened worry about this piece. I agree with Jean completely. It's a mistake to take one example and extrapolate to sweeping "facts" as a result. For instance, the smith has a Juyo Token so he is a target of fakers because he makes important swords. The smith or line possibly is responsible for 6 Juyo, and this is not due to lack of manufacture... contemporary Kanesada has 33. It is a name like this one that one needs to be skeptical of.

Shape kind of looks Muromachi and the nakagojiri would go with Bizen. The shape of the nakago though I find is a bit crude, the ha is wavy. The yasurime and finishing of the nakago are not that old. I'm not perfectly sure that it is ubu, can you see the hamon at the machi going into the nakago? Sure it comes off the edge? Might have been a blade that broke in two and ended up with a new nakago. The hamon reminds me in places of Ichimonji (before the flowery stuff), Kunimune, Kagemitsu, elements of all of the above but does not seem as sophisticated. I would say it is Bizen work or Bizen inspired, period unsure, some of the Sue Bizen smiths were indeed talented and liked to take shots at replicating work of other periods and schools from time to time. If the nakago is original then it is probably Shinshinto I think.

I think we are very blessed indeed to have our translation angels looking over our shoulders like this. It's hard to be where we are with limited language ability and limited access to learning material, and the contributions of people who know both the subject matter well and the language well are in my opinion invaluable. You both set a very fine example for the rest of us, always giving, never taking. Thank you very much for your contributions, they are unique.

Hint: o-suriage mumei sword.

I think the piece was originally a full daito from the Muromachi period. Might have broken at some point, and then was shortened. I don't think it was shobu zukuri. The fukura is very curved in the kissaki and I think does not represent the sugata of shobu zukuri correctly. My own opinion here is that a polisher removed the yokote and partially reshaped it along the ha to to make it look like shobu zukuri. Otherwise, at tanto length with a yokote the piece would look very awkward. Just my gut feeling for what it is worth, and not 100% certain.

Thanks guys... By the way, anyone know when Honami Koson passed away? The sword was papered in the 18th, 20th, and 21st centuries. That's pretty cool now that I think of it. My inkling is that it's been continued to be suspected to be a Masamune and so the maker is revisited very often. It doesn't look like any Yukimitsu I have seen before, and with the kitae and shape I tend to think it is more likely Sadamune. So they keep going and checking it out I believe, and as the stack of authorities before all say Yukimitsu it gets harder for the next guy to disagree :-).

Never noticed this before but there is a bit more on the inside (back) of my Honami Koson origami. It's dated, Showa (?)9. The rest of it I can't read. Different hand from Honami Koson looks like, and it has a seal.

Decoding this one is giving me fits. First part is straight forward: Ikeda clan heirloom, shortened (honorable) katana with no signature. The next few characters with the missing stuff, looks to me like perhaps he's agreeing completely (missing char) extensively (missing block). (with the previous judgment) <- in the missing block, then Soshu Yukimitsu. He may have seen the Soejo from his ancestor. Then he goes into his judgment... The aforementioned (read as "to the right", which when brought into english would be "the above mentioned") work has wonderful... then with the missing characters I lose the structure. He is describing vigourous hataraki in the steel of the hamon and the jitetsu, and calls them excellent and wonderful. I am missing something there though in the missing characters. He then suggests that the sword should be handed down with (honorable) great care, from the head of the family to the descendants. The last little bit starts mentioning a warehouse/treasury, the last character before the missing two is indicating a degree... Then he signs off, Honami Koson, written in June in the first half of the month.