Darcy

It's sending me emails from you guys signing up. Wordpress... has its own issues... and I am not an experienced user. One of the options was in conflict with one of the others, something like "User needs to be authenticated to post [x]" being turned on while "Send user authentication email [ ]" was turned off by default. So the first few are in some kind of hell. From which I don't know if it can be resolved... I'd say try again.

A lot of Japanese collectors choose Shinto for the same reason. The old timers though say it's a path you have to go through to get to koto.

This is a hard question to answer without going through and reading a whole lot of Japanese. Off the top there are by my count 153 Tegai Juyo Token (not addressing Yamato Shizu Kaneuji and his followers in Yamato). 40% of these are Tegai Kanenaga alone. Another 109 Yamato Shizu group (sometimes Shodai, mostly not). The difficulty from here is in figuring out dates for the rest as this isn't something that the NBTHK will often stick their neck out on unless it's very clear. There are seven dated Tegai Juyo, dates are 1308, 1317, 1333, 1370, 1388, 1465, 1529. Mostly these are tanto. There is a 1379 Jubi (Kaneyoshi) tachi. Some of it is confusing like a tachi with a katanamei of Kanemune saying it is beginning of Muromachi. The smiths in this with signed work that look Muromachi are Kanehisa, Kanekiyo, Kanekuni, Kanemune and about 10 others which spread over about 30 pieces. Some of those names get handed down through time and some of those might be overlapping with Kaneuji's group. There are 62 mumei blades attributed to Tegai. My feeling is the majority of these are Nanbokucho and if the NBTHK thinks they are earlier they will tend to get Kanenaga (not always). The hamon on this blade above fits well within the examples of Tegai excluding the earliest works. Kanetoshi's hamon are all suguba with small activities. The question deserves a couple of days of reading all of these to try to sort it out, but the primary problem is always going to be conservative workmanship and repeated names of smiths through lineages making it hard to nail down time periods exactly. I could run through all the mumei pieces and try to see if any extend past Nanbokucho. There is some vagueness because the NBTHK may not mention any date on some blade, on another will say it's from end of Kamakura to Nanbokucho, on another say mid Kamakura to Nanbokucho, another flat out Nanbokucho. Date is not a "required field" in their reports and it is often expressed as a fairly wide range that can be over a century. That, is fair. But exactly Zero flat out say "Sue-Tegai" and none (looked through them since writing the above) indicate any date later than Nanbokucho for mumei work. Several point out time spans between middle Kamakura and end of Nanbokucho but these are indicating the footprint of the school. Those usually conclude with the useful statement "Tegai school made this sword." Only 5 Tegai mumei passed Juyo in the last 12 years (one of Kamakura, Nanbokucho, no time stated clearly). I don't think it's from a shortage. If a Tegai blade is a masterpiece I think it is going to get Kanenaga, this is what the Juyo look like. Failing Kanenaga it will get Yamato Shizu if it is exciting work and that will make it more likely to pass than generic style. For instance there is no flat out Tegai accepted at Juyo even until session 12. It's all Kanenaga. After 12 you start seeing Yamato Shizu and Tegai attributions appearing. Also after Juyo 10 is the beginning of standards falling and this peaks at Juyo 24 I think which is the weakest session. Yamato in general spikes as a percentage between Juyo 22 and 27. These also are the weakest Juyo sessions for quality over all the sessions. Just saying. The signed blades by the other smiths can make it through if they are old because they are indeed rare and valuable. Over the last 30 years only two clearly Muromachi signed Tegai blades have passed Juyo. That's about as good as I can go without spending a few days reading and making notes.

I don't think I am accusing anyone of promoting this as a Juyo candidate, other than that this is going to be the thoughts in a lot of people's heads (it always is) whenever they have a chance to think these thoughts (which is on any nice looking mumei suriage koto blade). This is not the core thought I am trying to advance either, Juyo candidacy or not, it is peripheral to what I am trying to get through.

I am not an engineer of course so engineering is going to be over my punching weight. Throwing this out there first, Kenji Mishina and I were looking at newly made Juyo some years ago at the Museum and I asked him what swords he preferred and who his favorite smith was and what he thought of Shinto blades. He pointed at a Shintogo and I said "I like this." About the Shinto blades he said that under his stone he could tell that they were different from the koto blades. They were less pliable and he felt harder, with the exception of Sukehiro. He said Sukehiro's blades felt more resilient to him. About the hamon then, a few things... you need to first think of the sword in terms of a massive investment in resources if you are going to get a master smith make it for you. Same as today. Now you are going to be handling that thing with a cloth and gloves and you will freak out if someone spits a little drip of spit on it. Back then you would cut someone in half with it. Through bone and blood and then you'd maybe be looking for someone else to cut in half. It was a tool. This is brutal use and they would be damaged. You need a few things then in the hamon. You need to provide enough hardened steel so that the blade can be polished. Sometimes when Japanese dealers write emails and they are not so good in english they will say even now, the blade is "being sharpened." But that anyway is good to think about because I don't think back then people would be thinking, "Oh, my blade needs a polish" after cutting a couple people in half. They would be thinking, "Oh, my blade is screwed up from smashing and killing people, it needs sharpening." They were made with a use projection that included being damaged, being repaired, and being damaged again. You cannot do that with a smallish hamon. So in this you end up with, by necessity, a wide hamon. Too wide and you break. Being able to make the widest hamon then without breaking is going to be a stunt pulled off by the most talented guy. Also it will be the most valuable sword. Not because it's flashy because you can tell your customer, you can get the most sharpenings out of this thing before replacing it. Like if you buy a new set of tires and they last one week, they are not as valuable to you as tires that last four years. You would pay more for the four year tires unless the one week tires were special race tires or something. Anyway you get the point. If you could make a wide hamon then and an unbreakable sword it would also behoove you to advertise that and a little bit of flamboyancy never hurt. The thought that the Ichimonji mei meant "Muteki" in that there was no enemy who could stand against it is also in agreement with this thought. Why make a midare hamon on a sword? Because you could. Because the other guy can't. His will break. Yours, you can do this and it won't. Because Muteki. Because you're just better and this is how you show it. Now suguba was there always and will be there always and there are maybe indeed some functional differences in that it is ideal in some ways. But if you are good enough and your testing shows that you're getting 98% performance with 500% sex appeal, what do you think your marketing department is going to report to the CEO in terms of next year's product design? It all hinges in your ability to pull off the stunt. Clearly the Ichimonji blades did this because they were around a long time. With all due respect to the various theories about the mongols, we keep hearing this from time to time but it is relatively anecdotal. The Mongol invasions in Japan were 1274 and 1281. Ko-Ichimonji is a label placed on certain stylistic developments happening in Bizen around 1200 that are taking place in Fukuoka. There is an overlap with the groups that we go on to call the Fukuoka Ichimonji school. Fukuoka Ichimonji goes on from the early 1200s and there are smiths still working in Fukuoka around 1300. Yoshioka Ichimonji branches from Fukuoka and starts around late middle Kamakura. There are often blades attributed to this time period with remarks that the workmanship looks like Yoshioka or Fukuoka work. The Noami Bon says that Yoshioka work peters out at the end of the Nanbokucho so lasts roughly a century, winding up around 1360. Iwato Ichimonji is a thing of the very end of Kamakura and so goes into Nanbokucho as well. Katayama Ichimonji is from around the time of Fukuoka and goes into the Nanbokucho period as well. Katayama work is as flashy as Fukuoka work. Katayama Ichimonji Ietsugu, Fujishiro has him at 1368. Note in the late Kamakura into the Nanbokucho as well that Aoe made flashy hamon. At the middle and end of the Nanbokucho of course Hiromitsu and Akihiro maxed out the concept of "how far can we go" in terms of hardening the surface of a blade. Chogi and Kencho as well made super flashy flamboyant pieces. Winding back to the late Kamakura, though Rai Kunitoshi started making calm pieces his very last dated work is 1321 and is done in his Niji Kunitoshi style with a wide hamon and very similar to the Kuniyuki on my site. Rai Kunimitsu made this style from time to time and so did Rai Kunitsugu into the mid Nanbokucho. There is unbroken evidence of flamboyant midare hamon being in use from the middle Heian all the way through to now. There is no full stop experience anywhere that made midare hamon no longer be used. The Ichimonji smiths did not fall because of the Mongol invasions. Yoshioka kept on for almost a century after. My own personal theory on Ichimonji is that the school spread both because of demand for the product and because of exhausting local resources. If you go to the river for iron sand consistently every day of the work for 40 years you may indeed run out of the best quality of ore you're looking for. If you are already pressed for resources and your school is growing and you have more customers, well you might send the sons out to establish their forge somewhere in the region but not in your back yard. Somewhere they could find again good local resources, and not compete with you for your dwindling supplies. Eventually everyone extinguishes as the best resources are used up and then product quality starts to fail. Sooner or later (this has happened time and again through history, some of us exist here because grandpa and grandma back in the old country bailed the hell out for brighter horizons) you might pack up and move too. Either to where the better, untapped resources are, or to where the action is for selling your product. So: honestly, I think this mongol-invasions-killed-midareba holds no water because midareba was not killed, Ichimonji was not killed, and there is no direct evidence for any of that and all the direct evidence is that Ichimonji kept on keeping on. If there is any document from the Kamakura period that says Ichimonji swords are bad because we can't kill mongols with them I would like to see it. But what does happen is that Bizen remains dominant for 500 years of master smith after master smith after master smith and their reputation is untarnished until today. Midareba is an essential part of what Bizen is. 40% of all Juyo Token are koto Bizen swords. Half of all Tokubetsu Juyo are Koto Bizen Swords! Half of all Jubun and Kokuho are Koto Bizen Swords! This is not a sign of failure, this is a sign of mind blowing success. Midareba was there for all 500 years in Bizen without pause. This goes for the ikubi kissaki theory that is thrown around a lot as well. No direct evidence and as well, ikubi kissaki as iconic as it is, is not on every blade and chu-kissaki is quite common through all the ages. Chu-kissaki is the suguba of kissaki and people continued to depart from that design only to return to it. I think that is the beginning and end of the story on ikubi-kissaki. Anyway back to the midareba, I'll just repeat again that basically the fact that your swords could look like that and not shatter is why you would do it. Anyone here know what a tourbillon is? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tourbillon In summary it is a super technically difficult thing to make which helps a watch keep better time, and it is also completely unnecessary as well as being completely and incredibly overcomplicated and has extremely low benefit compared to the work and sophistication required to achieve it. Especially with pre-modern era tech. Is is internal guts of the watch. The tourbillon is considered to be one of the most challenging of watch mechanisms to make (although technically not a complication itself) and is valued for its engineering and design principles. Think about why you would want to put a tourbillion into a watch. This over engineered, difficult to make thing that may probably not even show noticeable benefit? Why do any of these things? Why go to the moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask, why climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas? We choose to go to the Moon! ... We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win. If you can make a functional tourbillion, if you can send a man to the moon and bring him home again safe, if you can make a sword that won't bend or break and send the hamon to the shinogi like fire, you are the best. You do it by choice, not because it's easy, but because it's hard. And if you succeed in making something functional, not just a fancy toy, everyone who is anyone will know you are the best at what you do. When you throw that gauntlet down, you can stand and look around, and very few will pick it up. That's why midareba hamon.

Robert, not commenting on your green papers, but commenting on the Saneo. I haven't seen yours so I have no comment on it as I have no data. Just that a large number of green papers have suspect opinions that will not be confirmed presently. Regardless of the provenance of anything with green papers, one must take it only as a "slightly informed opinion." If the blade is in Japan 37 years after they were determined as a class to be unreliable, then it is very close to a guarantee that the best answer for "who made this" is anyone except for who is named on the paper. A blade that was papered in the 70s and has not been back to Japan since, the papers are suspect still because of the same reason the NBTHK got rid of them in 1980: vast quantities were no good. Anything US based that didn't go back is not exempted from that class-wide issue that caused them to be disowned. But those in Japan now with green papers and big names, have no excuse because the owner will make more money with very little work and protect his reputation when selling if he simply takes two months to confirm it. If i tell you, wait two months and I can get you $10,000 extra and all of us can relax with our reputations intact if we just upgrade this paper, you and anyone reasonable, will agree to this. If everything is OK with the blade, we will all make more money and we all (owner, future owner, and middleman) reduce our risk and potential loss of reputation. It is what we call, a no-brainer. When outside of Japan and never been back you need to use your judgment on a case by case basis, but you still deal with that general fudge factor of a great many of them are no good, so many that the NBTHK deleted the category. Again, comments above are directed at the Saneo as it is being used as a reference piece for this smith, while the signature does not match reference examples, while it is hard to find reference examples, while it is being sold attached to the name Kiyomaro, while it has green papers, while it is expensive, while the oshigata looks a lot better than the blade. This does not mean that it is surely no good. It is a series of caution flags and when so many come up in a row then the reasonable person needs to accept caution and put an asterisk beside it. ... There is no such thing as any reliable green paper as the primary issue is that they could be written at regional offices, or so I understand the problem. So they basically lack expertise and were subject to corruption. Any particular green paper or any others of the less-than-Juyo classed papers from these eras, what it suffers from is going to be a case by case basis. If you can look at your paper and determine it was issued by the main branch then better experts would have looked at it. Outside of Tokubetsu Juyo there seems to be a general theme of relaxing standards that applies more as the papers go down in levels in the 1970s. Maybe the introduction of Tokubetsu Juyo and now the focus on these being centerpiece swords contributes to that. It seems at least to have caused Juyo to relax. People do not believe me sometimes when I talk about this and people do not grasp it entirely. Over time the judges change and standards change at the NBTHK and mid 70s era is a low bar for Juyo to cross. I have had people on this website come and attack me for saying that. [Edit: I use "you" a lot below, this is not aimed at anyone in particular, please read this as "one must" instead of "you must" when I'm talking like this...] It doesn't mean that every 1970s Juyo is bad any more than it means that every 1970s green paper is bad. It means that the low bar for Juyo is very low indeed, so low that some of those blades will not pass Juyo today. Did you get one from session 26 that will not pass today or did you get one of the best from session 26 that will pass Tokuju today? This is why you need to study and not just believe that Juyo A and Juyo B are equivalent. They are not. Similarly the green papers, the bar was so low that fakes got through. For those that still don't believe, this chart shows the number of Juyo accepted in every session from beginning to now. There are major trends and minor trends and pretty obvious. Juyo volume 58 has 47 swords in it by my count. 9 of those passed Tokuju over two sessions of Tokuju. Juyo volume 24 has 482 swords in it by my count. 28 passed Tokuju over I think about 21 sessions of Tokuju. So 20% of Juyo 58 passed Tokuju after two attempts. 5% of Juyo 24 passed Tokuju over 21 attempts. That tells you something about the average quality of blades entered into those two sessions and indicates that no, they are not equivalent in the least. Both have top line items that went on to pass Tokuju, but the average blade in 24 is far below the average blade in 58. That blade in 24, the odds are that it would not pass in 58 if submitted. Stuff in 58 is very close to meeting Tokuju standards on average. Having a juyo 58 is like having a mini-Tokuju. And the blades from the 70s, they require a lot of knowledge on the part of the person looking at them to determine if it truly meets the standards of Juyo from a modern perspective. The numbers do not lie. You need to put your thinking cap on hard, retain scepticism and make conservative judgments. I do this all the time, I am acutely aware of these things and I am spending my own money too and obviously I am researching the hell out of trying to make good decisions. Even so people who don't study the issue will sit down and have a good fight over it. For me I caught onto the shifting Juyo standards when a dealer calculated the market value of a sword I had in front of him by looking up the session and the attribution about 15 years ago before even looking at the blade. That's when I knew that you had to factor in the session. From there I wanted to understand why, and to look at the evidence that supports the why. And the evidence is there if you get to see enough of the blades and then if you look at the raw data and what it points at. If you want to whip it out and piss into the wind of the facts you can in fact succeed. As can be seen in Juyo 24, 28 times, brave men pissed into the wind and succeed. But generally when you piss into the wind it ends up on your face especially if you don't know just exactly the tricks and techniques involved in doing so. Many of those weak Juyo ended up in the US market because they could be acquired in Japan for cheap, and then sold overseas as Juyo on the strength of the papers because people do not bother to study and want simple answers to complex questions. One of those simple answers is that there are four price categories that correspond to the four levels of modern NBTHK papers and it is patently false. One dealer will use that to attack another dealer's sword and win a customer by saying, "You don't want to buy that Tokubetsu Hozon blade it is too expensive for Tokubetsu Hozon. Here, let me sell you this Juyo blade. Now you have a Juyo." Then he can whip out a session 24 that won't pass today either and is JINO. Meanwhile the TH blade with a good smith, ubu, long, nice horimono, nice koshirae, all the bells and whistles... that gets shot down as the collector is hypnotized by the yellow paper waved in front of his eyes. Getting back to your green, nobody will ever know how good it is until someone tries to get it through the NBTHK. Every paper is some level of opinion and needs to be taken with some amount of salt, large or small quantities, and never can someone let their discretion slip. I am very concerned though with my comments above that people will take it as a statement of "if it is Juyo 24 then it's no good" and I am not saying this at all. I am saying that the standards for these sessions were lower. If the most beautiful girl in the world goes to the high school beauty contest she is going to win though the standards are not high. But she also might win Miss Universe. The runner up though at the high school beauty contest might not even get into the competition for Miss Universe. It is up to you, as a student, to look at an individual sword and say, "Is this one the champion or is it a runner up that won't even get into the competition now?" To answer that question means internalizing a lot of knowledge. There are no simple and easy answers to any of this and our desire to make abstractions and make it easily digested and to have simple rules we can always apply is human nature but that is how people end up making bad decisions. Abstractions work, but sometimes you need to unplug them and not try to hammer a square peg into a round hole because your board has only 5 round holes in it. If the round peg fits into the round hole it's fine, if the square peg doesn't fit, hammering it won't necessary lead to the right result. Some answers can only ever be given as probabilities. Like the position and momentum of an electron at the same time. You know one, the other one is just a curve. A green paper is a curve with probabilities of being legitimate and illegitimate. In Japan now the probability of any existing green paper is approaching 0 for being legitimate because it's not reasonable to believe that nobody will act in their best interests over 37 years to answer the question and remove the risk and get the max value out of the blade. But even removing that easy opportunity the green paper is still just a probability function, that has got a substantial probability of turning up bad because it is what it is. 1970s era green is not reliable and will never be. It could still be ok, and the only way to know is by sending it in.

I don't know about brilliant, and I make mistakes, and I am usually banging this stuff out at 3am. Same as NMB posts. I want to pop some bubbles with the blog, it's all, and try to get people to apply more critical thinking to what they are doing. One of the strongest skills we have available is common sense. I just had an obvious mistake pointed out on my website that came from me not looking into something with enough detail and assuming I got something right that was above my limited expertise in that area. Keep it in mind, it's not worthy of this level of praise just yet and it is fallible advice. I am no more than an advanced student. Keep that in mind whenever you read what I write and disagree with me when appropriate. Keep your critical thinking hat on, whether it is me writing or anyone else, keep it firmly on. When you put people on pedestals it gives them extra height to fall. Disclaimer bomb dropped.

Here is the rule about Tokubetsu Hozon from Danny's site d. Muromachi and Edo period mumei blades may not receive a Tokubetsu Hozon paper, as a rule. However, if a blade shows good workmanship, attributable to a famous smith, having ubu-nakago, and in good preservation, it may receive Tokubetsu Hozon paper. Ubu it's not. What this guy's period is, we debate. Good preservation it is. NBTHK indicates it's open to exceptions. Is he famous? What is famous? Are these ands or if you check off a few of them does it get you an exception? How strict are they about Oei? I looked up the Juyo tanto for this guy and they all indicate a start in Nanbokucho end and work into Muromachi. There are no mumei blades Juyo for him and no katana at all. So I think that confirms my thrust that they are saying this is not going to pass and this name on that blade is telling you this story. Or maybe you will be the lucky one to break the last 62 years of precedents and get one through. Given that, we are all talking about the same guy and I side with Fujishiro on his dating in this case for this smith. Anyway I think I am at Aoi overload. 5am again. If someone bravely buys this, send it to Juyo.

Also it's a nice sword. I will put that separately. Just tune out all of the noise channel, accept the papers, look at the worst case scenario of what all this means. If you are OK with all that and this is the one you want, buy it. Hosho is hard to come by and I think Jean's case had a patron that was reliable to give his opinion on that. The guy selling you the blade is not the reliable patron. Honestly I had a blade on my hands that Tanobe sensei said was 50% going to pass as Soshu Sadamune and 100% pass as Juyo if I would just put it in. I sold that blade and I didn't say a word to anyone about that. I sold it as Nanbokucho Soshu because he said it would be Nobukuni if not Sadamune. I could blast that from the top of my roof and market the crap out of it but I didn't because I didn't want someone to rush in and buy it because they would be buying something for nothing and that is not right. I described the base line and no more and someone bought it. And when I did this I had a real expert and a real opinion in writing. No fairy tales. And I didn't use it. After I sent him the letter and told him congratulations. Because the flip side is this, if you buy it as a Hosho based on blah blah, when it comes time for YOU to sell your "Hosho" then everyone is going to laugh at you and tell you it's Tegai. That's the point of the sapphire and ruby story. You can damn well bet that Tsuruta set this price based on sapphire, now he's trying to tell you it's ruby and see if he can get people to scramble and pay ruby price at auction. So you run out there and think this is my chance to buy ruby and pay for sapphire! Get into the bidding, once in, committed. Get that greed impulse out of your head and you may never buy the sword because the most attractive part here is getting something for nothing and you can damn well be sure he knows that too. But when you have it and firmly believe it is a ruby, if you go to someone else to sell it, nobody will touch it. He won't sell it again for you. I would say well it's Sue Tegai so it goes on my site as such. And by the way erase that laughable sayagaki to Santa Claus. And so would a lot of people. You will be unhappy and angry at me then that I won't sell it as a Hosho. You can buy it and sell it as Sue Tegai but you can also believe in your heart it is Kamakura period Hosho. Nobody will ever stop you from doing it. But the last guy I visited who did that, all kinds of dealers sold him junk, like signed Sanjo Munechika and got him to sell his mumei finds to them and they took those and brought them to Japan and got Juyo Rai Kunimitsu and so on for them. So this guy sat on a massive pile of fake crap. He told me they were all papered too and I drove 15 hours to visit this guy once he established they were papered koto blades. I got there all right and he met me in a kimono and he showed me the blades and as I wept over them and their fake signatures, I said, where are the papers (for this mess)? He said right here and handed me all the papers. That he wrote. Because he knows better than the NBTHK. He stamped them and everything. I know so many collectors who have the handful of treasure blades, which are actually gimei or not what they think, but they want hard to believe in those swords. I won't tell them to their face sorry no, it's no good. I just nod and smile. I leave sad.

"1st gen Tegai Kanetoshi （包俊）was active Eitoku- Oei 1381-1428" via Markus We get into "What does it mean to be a Nanbokucho smith" and it means to me that you are not working in Oei. Having one toe in the swimming pool does not mean you are swimming. None of the Nanbokucho great smiths cross into Oei. Furthermore, according to Fujishiro, Oei is not in the conversation. Fujishiro says this man is 1452 and then on this entry goes on to say all Yamato dates are exaggerated. Elsewhere he said that a lot of second generations were invented for this same reason, to move shodai back in time. This smith will be considered to be Muromachi now. Same way as old books disagree with modern considerations on Ayanokoji Sadatoshi and other big name smiths, starting to move them around based on work styles so that the evidence dictates what the time periods should be, rather than trying to get the evidence to match what sensei said. Old books that form the basis of some of these period estimates have to be taken with a grain of salt. A member of the Tegai Ha, said to be of the Kaneyuki Mon. He made only tantô and made a lot of them. Hamon is suguba nado. (Wazamono) Signature: KANETOSHI Plate I: KANETOSHI Because few of the Yamato kaji entered nengo in the same manner as the Minô kaji, the estimated eras are approximate, and have become older. I think that this is probably because, from time immemorial, the conviction that "The older something is, the more it is esteemed" has been largely in control. The note that he made only tanto is because Fujishiro is reporting that he has only seen signed tanto from this maker. No signed tachi or katana. Anyway, his words, not mine. The NBTHK is saying that this is this guy's work here and it is Muromachi period. We can allow +/- 10 years though as in my post on that big Muromachi piece as we will never know. But Fujishiro didn't buy it for what that's worth. There are no blades by Kanetoshi that are Juyo and mumei other than the signed tanto of which there are three. If someone wants to challenge that they are welcome to an opinion. I am going based on what I see from the NBTHK when they add these notes. In this situation if this was mine I would take it to Tanobe sensei and ask him to tell me what he thinks and then I would ask for sayagaki and it would explain it explicitly and nobody would be confused. Whether or not it becomes an argument about a smith who never dated his work being plus or minus 10 years in front of or behind the Oei period is not what this is about and is going about it backwards. Feel free to say it looks like Hosho to yourself and go compare against the good Hosho you have owned and viewed and if you can buy this and compare it, go for it. But this isn't Hosho just because there is a bit of Masame in it. There are two poles one of which (usually the owner) wants to have his blade papered as Hosho because it has some masame in it, then there are the people who are issuing papers saying just because your blade has some masame in it doesn't mean it's Hosho. There is tension in the middle but this is not one of those cases. If that had Honami Kochu papers saying Hosho then it would be Hosho now. But it doesn't. There is no tension other than the guy who wants to sell it and there is NO EXPERT JUDGE lined up to agree with him. Find that judge, get a Honami sayagaki now and see. But nobody in their right mind would right Hosho Sadamune on this blade, they would be laughed at. Hosho Sadamune as a sayagaki should be laughed at -or- understood that he was just saying nice quality but even so, that was then and this is now. A lot of people in Japan would just wipe that sayagaki. But it's there to try to do exactly what it is doing. A papered Sue Tegai and people running around saying buy buy buy this Hosho. That is not good advice. You like it, the price is right, buy it as Sue Tegai, but it's suriage muromachi and that means something too. But if you are OK with that do that. What I am reacting to is the decision that this is Hosho and now we are throwing out the NBTHK (I am getting this via email as well) or sayagaki when they are in disagreement with Mr. Tsuruta. That, I think is all misguided. And that the frequency of disagreements going up means the NBTHK is getting worse. It's just marketing and a decision he's making to market his stuff. If you buy stuff that is ambiguous you can play off the ambiguity. I had a way of doing this to the tune of $100k on one of my swords and I did not and I had real grounds for it, not these imaginary grounds to try to get people to buy things that they are not buying. The paper and attribution means something it's why we get them. We want to rely on them but we don't get to toss them out just because we want something better on our swords than what they have said. I mean man, I'm going to start calling every Shizu a Masamune I encounter, and say surely they are wrong. Will everyone give me the same credit and start saying that all these Shizu are Masamune and everyone should buy my Shizu now because they're really Masamune? First I wouldn't do that. And if I did do that you all would make fun of me until the end of time. And that is exactly what you should do, if I ever do do that. So please, keep your skeptic hat on a bit. If there was no background painting going on every single day about the gimei and other things going up on that site, there would not be any grounds to say guys.... stop.... think about it a bit, for the love of god stop the rush to the cheerleading. It's fine to like a blade but not fine to throw the NBTHK under the bus just because Tsuruta wants to sell a sword higher than he can get with the paper they gave him.

Not only co-students but Masao (Saneo) is his brother. I would like to point out a couple of subtle things like NBTHK Koshu Tokubetsu Kicho Paper. And also that if you want to fake a guy this is a good target as it is hard to find his source material. It is 2017. 37 YEARS SINCE THESE PAPERS BECAME ABSOLUTE GARBAGE For anyone who is sending $30,000 on a blade already in Japan that has green papers and has been sitting there for 37 years while everyone knows green papers are garbage and it was a valuable thing that everyone would doubt because of the green papers you have two choices, either try to sell to Japanese with green papers or new papers and Kiyomaro connection Or else... SELL TO A FOREIGNER!!!! Left and right examples are Juyo. They represent some style change in the bottom character. This middle example is horse s**t that doesn't match the Sane on either and is confused rather than confident like the one on the right. The bottom character is different on the rightmost, this is I think his intermediate and the left is the final. But the middle character is just lost, and the bottom looks hard to execute and does not match. Big name + Green papers + In Japan 37 years of opportunities to fix the papers + mei doesn't match published examples + You want a lot of money = ___________________________________ ? Put a modern paper on it and it becomes a reference work. Also, note that the most beauty in this one is in the oshigata. This smith was excellent.

Add 30% buyer's premium. Reduce by crappy photos so I can't tell how good this is or not. Reduce by cost of papers and polish and any other restoration fee. Reduce by general fudge factor of these might be the fake ones and someone picked over the good ones before it went to auction. Reduce by crap, I thought the auction was next week.

When you buy a fake Rolex on the street in Bangkok you pay about $10 and it is a lovely gimei watch as well. But you paid ten bucks for it.

OK.... stop for a moment and think about this. Hosho Sadamune does not exist in practice. There are no NBTHK attributions to him. There is one Jubi but the Jubi have many issues in them. This is why Jubi no longer exists. Now, this blade has an old sayagaki to a mythical maker, and a guy who sells gimei blades who sticks his neck out to make big pronouncements only when he ends his opinion with "no returns, no guarantees" is going to be taken as the authority over an issued paper from a good authority with no financial horse in the race? Just.... guys.... stop and look at the situation. Occam's razor tells you that this is exactly what the papers say it is. When the NBTHK ventures out and puts a Muromachi smith's name on a mumei blade, they are doing the equivalent of smacking you in the face with a chicken Monty Python style. If they just said Tegai or Sue Tegai you might get some thoughts into your head about it being some kind of master smith or maybe it is really Nanbokucho and Juyo sufficient. So they are winding the hell up and smacking you in the face with a Muromachi name that you can flip open a book and read about so that you will know this is a Muromachi blade in their opinion and you can look up on their website that it won't go Juyo and it is a suriage Muromachi sword and so the value is low. That's what they are doing. Attribution is the first word for quality assessment. They are spelling this out in black and white. People need to take all of the information that they have and put together the big picture and to not try to hammer these square pegs into round holes. There are perfectly round holes that they already fit into. Bear in mind as well... Old Honami sometimes used stuff like with Aoe, they would make an attribution to Sadatsugu to tell you that the blade was basically Tokubetsu Juyo. They may in their life have never seen a signed Aoe Sadatsugu. There are a handful that exist now. But that guy still knows quality and his Tokuju paper was an attribution to Sadatsugu. This is a nice looking sword made by a skilled man and this Honami slapped a mythical name on it to send you a message, this was his personal stamp of approval. Why that was given, I can tell you another story, which is this. A daimyo sends his sword to Honami and asks for polish and attribution. My lord after much thought and consideration, this is a sword by the Naoe Shizu school and we have polished it, here is your bill. Daimyo sends the blade back, I am sorry Honami sama that you did not have enough time previously to extensively study my sword. I hope that your schedule is more open now and you can take some time to pass through your references handed to you by your masters and further research my sword and come to a correct attribution. Honami sends the sword back, thank you my lord, we have further researched your sword, after much discussion with my peers and my students we have looked at oshigata and compared it and decided that this is a sword by Shizu Kaneuji, here is your bill for our further work and appraisal services. Daimyo sends the blade back, with a note, I am very pleased at your attribution and in your wisdom of making this judgment, this is a smith of fine skill and because the blade is so good and attributed to such a fine maker, I think it is worth further consideration and research. Please leave no stone unturned in your search and carefully consider your answers as if the blade is fine enough quality I will present it to the Shogun. I am instructing my servant to pay you your fee in advance. Please spare no efforts in researching my sword but be sure it is correctly attributed. Honami sends the sword back, thank you my lord for your support and for giving us enough time to further study the blade. We are happy to tell you that the blade is a masterpiece by Soshu Masamune and is of the highest quality. We trust that the Shogun will enjoy your gift.

Back when I started to collect gemstones (I was doing goldsmithing as a hobby) I was buying some pink sapphires. Sapphire and Ruby are the same mineral, corundum, which is a fancy way of saying burnt aluminum, but the impurities lead to different colors. Ruby is far more valuable than sapphire. So the question is, what do you do with a pink sapphire? Well if it is red enough it's a ruby but if it's not red enough it's a pink sapphire. The price is about 10x different. The joke in gem dealing circles then is that it's a ruby if I'm selling it and it's a pink sapphire if I'm buying it. Comedy is also strongly related to tragedy, which are bad things that happen to good people because of foolish reasons. If anyone thought this was a legit Kamakura Hosho blade they would fight for it. Tsuruta would buy it himself and resolve the papers. Attributions can be overturned. Not always, especially if the attribution is correct and just you're not happy with it. I don't know why people want to jump in the corner with the guy listing Inoue Shinkai with green papers and saying he thinks that one is legitimate as well but "no guarantee." These are all no returns, no guarantee types of opinions. I still have some rubies left over if anyone needs anything.

Thanks for the kind words. It's just a week old, some stuff may not work right. Maybe comments not working is a feature lol. Probably you will have heard a lot of it here on stuff I posted as the first few posts were mostly developed themes from things that came up here in the past. But as I go forward I am going to start dipping more into original research and back it up with photos and charts and so forth. Every day there are chats with friends which are seed ground for nice articles.

Because it's absolutely and without question a fake, and not even a good one at that. If a guy in Rome was posting a Da Vinci on ebay it would be as real as a guy in Japan posting a Tokubetsu Kicho Kiyomaro on Yahoo Japan.

Two part suggestion. 1. Sticky the reading list, it is very valuable. 2. Get on the Amazon associates program and use referrals to fund the board and put Amazon links in there where possible. I have been too busy to update my own books page since they changed the associates program but I would just change mine to link over here if you would put up referral links.

About green papers, once upon a time there were many green papers and most were fine but enough were bad that they were withdrawn entirely as a status. So that should tell you something. People were encouraged to exchange their old green papers for new Hozon and Tokubetsu Hozon papers. Many people did that to show their blades were above worry. Bad papers of course could never be exchanged. So, over time, the percentage of bad papers within the overall pool of existing green papers can only increase. Now it is quite a large percentage, I would say in fact the majority. Last year I believe it was, maybe the year before, that the NBTHK finally disavowed what was left. This means so few were coming in any more and/or that so few that did come in passed, that they could conservatively make such a statement on the remaining body. That is not to say that all out there are no good: some surely are. But basically the status is no longer recognized at all and that should be the attitude one should take when regarding them. For Muramasa, the state of the signature is the most important factor. A couple years ago even an unsigned katana sold at Aoi for something like 6 million yen. 15 years ago I saw a beautiful Tokubetsu Hozon tanto for $28k at Ginza Choshuya which seemed expensive to me then because I was thinking like most people, that the paper implied the price. That blade most likely passed Juyo since then and at the Dai Token Ichi you can see a few every year, usually not so good condition, and the prices are in the 2.8 to 4.5 million yen range. Condition wise, these are not good condition blades. Those that tend to show up online have no signature often, or one character obliterated, or so polished down the horimono are damaged considerably, or the hamon is made very thin by polish, or have green papers, or some combination of all of these. Sometimes a mumei Muramasa has passed Juyo but this won't happen again. This is not to say they are no good, but it is to say that there is a night and day difference in value between a mumei one and a signed one. The mumei ones nobody will ever know if they are Masazane or Masashige or were indeed disguised Muramasa. Either way, the most important element is now lost. Signed healthy ones are not often on the market or available at any price. As one can imagine, they are very popular inside Japan and outside of Japan, being one of two names that even non-sword collectors can become very familiar with. I knew who Muramasa was when I was 18 and I didn't get my first sword for more than a decade after that so I knew him well before I even knew who Masamune was. I know of one fellow (hello) who had a fine Muramasa katana that has since passed Tokubetsu Juyo and is the only one. Past that I don't know anyone who has owned a Muramasa katana and I have seen only one. I have had more than ten Masamune katana in my hands and many of those famous. But I never touched a Muramasa katana. Tracking price and then establishing price as a fact based on what one sees on the internet is covered very well in a good parable: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_men_and_an_elephant There are a lot of currents under the surface so you can't mistake what is on the surface for what is everything. This katana that I saw sold at the DTI for 11 million a few years ago when the yen was more like 90 to the dollar and went pretty fast. It hasn't resurfaced. If anyone has a non-fake one to sell, you have my email address.

I don't see the conundrum so much. Person A marries person B, if person B is on their first marriage then person A is their original mate. Person A may be on their 10th marriage and person B is not their original mate, though the converse is true. It depends on what perspective you're taking. I don't think anyone is going to have a logic failure on trying to think a suriage blade is in its original koshirae, it is a contradiction in terms unless you want to believe the blade spent a few centuries and never got put into anything. Koshirae made in the Edo period for older blades are sufficient to be noted on Juyo papers and often photographed and put on the explanation sheet. "To be made for the sword" is original to the sword, that is, original sword from the perspective of the koshirae. Original koshirae from the perspective of the sword are very few and far between for something so old as Nanbokucho, both requiring the blade to be ubu and unaltered, and the koshirae to have survived as well as accompanying the blade through many centuries. In those cases that can happen if it went into a shrine but otherwise, extremely rarely. I don't think anyone was looking at this tsuba and thought for a moment it was a Nanbokucho tsuba and any use of the word original I would assume would be obvious. Most koshirae that are accompanying swords now are, by my belief, mix and match specials via the hands of sword dealers who cater to a market that demands koshirae to "complete" a sword. At the same time the market has no desire to pay for matching level of quality for koshirae and sword together as a pair. As such dealers often swap koshirae. Original situation: mediocre sword + mediocre koshirae, and high level sword with high level koshirae. Now, to meet the demands of the market, the dealer switches things around so that the mediocre sword has no koshirae, the high level sword obtains the koshirae from the mediocre sword, and the high level koshirae stands on its own. From two products, the dealer creates three. There is little to no impact to the ultimate sales price of the high level sword and its marketability remains high since it is "complete." Significantly, the sum of the value of the three products on the market is higher than the two that preceded it and the marketability is much higher on average than before since each item can now go to a specific segment who is willing to pay for it. The mediocre sword is still what it is and finds someone who can at most, afford a mediocre sword. The high level sword is now "complete" which satisfies a buyer who wants a great sword, "complete" but will not pay for say the Goto Ichijo koshirae it may have been in before. The high level koshirae finds a specialist collector who pays top dollar for it, but not a penny more for something he considers to be a tsunagi whether it was important work or not. In this way then many swords lose their original koshirae, and not meaning the first koshirae that the sword ever went in, but the koshirae that was purpose made or assembled for it. What I refer to is not wanting to introduce such a situation if I suspect that this koshirae was assembled for the sword in the historical period in which we're mostly concerned (Meiji and earlier).

Thanks guys, very interesting and good learning experience. I'll reference the thread when I list the sword so you all can have credit. I can't keep it as it's part of a koshirae for a Juyo sword that seems like it is original gear, so I have to keep it together. Nice bonus though when the tsuba is well over the ignore range as so many Japanese sources will swap out anything interesting and box it to max profit.

What do you think I am looking at (genuine question, I am novice for iron fittings). I thought Heianjo Zogan. Quality seems very nice to me. The blade is a Rai Kuninaga Juyo and has a heavy gold habaki with one of the Tokugawa branch mon on it. Overall koshirae looks kitted out for a high level retainer. Tsuba is not papered so have to ask what you all think...

Well someone damaged the nakago badly "fixing" it up. Whole thing has doubt as a result, just because it becomes that much harder to judge. Send it to Benson and let him inspect the whole thing and tell you what to do from here. Parts are not high grade and I think you can view them as not material to figuring out if you have a Nanki Shigekuni. It has to go to someone who knows first hand what it should be like and I think Benson is your choice here.

For me when I look at a blade I look at the jihada first because that tells me the quality of the smith who made it. Hamon can be simple in which case your average US buyer goes bleeehhhhhhhhhh be better if it had more activity but that was not the smith's thoughts when he made it, and many smiths can have a wide range of what they can do (c.f. Aoe Tsugunao, and Shintogo Kunimitsu). Jihada quality though reflects the ability of the smith to make good steel so I start here and I can weed out the also-rans by gray dead steel, and I can enter the top guys by highly refined, beautiful, clear jigane and/or with chikei or ji nie. I don't rely on the patterns because the books promote patterns that are only in archetypes and 90% of swords do not meet archetypes. Quality though is quality. After that, I go to hamon and the quality and patterns of hamon will further point the finger. I don't involve sugata unless it is an archetype. Super wide blade with massive kissaki yes, we all know it's Nanbokucho but if it is an average looking blade for dimensions I don't get bent out of shape with sori and assigning to a period or school. Usually if you just focus on quality and can absorb the style impression you can go right to the maker or pretty close. Jihada though is the easiest way of separating the best from the worst so if you can eliminate 90% of choices by glancing at the jihada that is the thing to do. I think the Naoe Shizu was misjudged above and it is a Kinju but I wouldn't fight long and hard about it because they are close in rank and identical in time period and two ways of saying the same thing. But Naoe Shizu should be thinking of a degraded Shizu for quality, and a more quiet Shizu you should think Kinju. In my opinion. Some Shizu are a bit quiet but I'm not sure if those are misjudged as well and should be Kinju. Rabbit hole is deep.

I am behind, wish I was in front. Fill with chikei it is easy to go to Soshu and related schools. My instant thought was Shizu but the hamon is not doing much enough. I disagree with Naoe Shizu in spite of it being right in the context of matching the papers. I don't find Naoe Shizu goes more quiet and with this low hamon but there is a related smith who does, which is Kinju. That's where I went with it. He also made big bodied blades. Good sword for whoever has it. Kinju reference to see where I'm getting at. The oshigata compared to the photo of the sword has exaggerated the ups and downs in the Naoe Shizu. Something to always remember about oshigata is it's always an interpretation.