Darcy

should make this a bit more open and easy to contribute to. For your image here, 23. Uda Kunimune 24. Kanenaga (Tegai) 25. Naotsuna (I think, 2nd char hard) 26. Nagamitsu 27. Mitsukane 28. Kunimune (not Saburo) 29. Kunitoki (unsure on the Toki, Enju) 30. Sagami Kuni junin Sadamune 31. Kunitoki again? 33. Hisakuni (Awataguchi) 35. Kuniyasu? Maybe implied Awataguchi 36. Bizen Kuni Osafune junin Sakonshogen Nagamitsu Tsukuru 37. Norikuni? 38. Kunimune (Saburo) 39. Rai Kunitoshi 40. Yasutsuna 41. Bizen ju Unju 42. Nobufusa (Ichimonji) 43. Bitchu Kuni yadayada Aoe Sadatsugu I can rattle this stuff off but when you get too much into password protection and registration and paranoia to protect these things, you also give pushback against the community efforts you require in order to make sense from these documents. Your pages have zero info to date so should show you that you're doing it wrong. This: http://hidensho.com/ono-oshigata-scrolls/scroll-two-oshigata/2-image-1/ You're using javascript to try to lock down images, and it's too small in order to see anything useful out of it so nobody can contribute. If the viewer has like a tiny bit of internet knowledge they can display the image properly by circumventing this stupidity meant to lock the images down. It's rather dumb to make me go to a developer console to pull the link so I can read the images so give you the knowledge that you need in order to make these images useful. So relax your control over these things and turn it over to the community. This: http://hidensho.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/2_1_numbered_b.jpg 1. illegible 2. illegible 3. rai kunimitsu 4. bizen kuni tomo___ ? 5. illegible 6. bungo kuni yukihira saku 7. kaneyoshi (mino) 8. nobutsugu 9. nobukuni (yamashiro) 10. masanao? 11. sadazane saku (ko-bizen or ko-ichimonji) 12. illegible 13. illegible 14. yoshifusa (ichimonji, big man) 15. kunimura (enju) 16. __ ju kunimitsu? 17. yasuyoshi (samonji school) 18. masatsune (ko-bizen) 20. norimune (ko-bizen) 21. kunito? kunitsuna? unsure on second I spent a total of about 10 minutes on the two pages so its subject to error. I tried to use your site before and failed at it. I think you're just doing this wrong if you want to get good info and also share it back with the community IMHO.

Kashu Kanewaka This has an off chance to go Juyo. Take good care of it.

Nihontoclub has some online. https://nihontoclub.com/swords/kyoho-meibutsu-cho I don't think it's complete though. Should be listed by maker but it's alpha ordered by name.

Blade is 2.41 (73cm) after machi okuri. Beforehand might have been 76cm? 77? Owner thought it was too long with too stubby nakago. Had the machi moved up to balance the blade for his own comfort and reliability I think is the likely answer. A great many Soshu ko-wakizashi are machi-okuri even though there is no "reason" to make them shorter. Just that Soshu ko-wakizashi tend to have been made with very stubby nakago compared to the length. And a great many people seem to have thought so in later periods so made this adjustment. Why they were made with these stubby nakago I don't know (going to put that on the question list). If choosing a comfortable blade for killing people, punching out the Tokugawa mon is secondary compared to the cost of making a new sword. Not that the owner was going to run around and show people what he did probably. Also consider the bottom part of the nakago and its condition. This blade was not stored properly at some time. The old papers are quite old so I don't think it was a USA find, just that it entered a point in its life where it was neglected and the overall condition of the nakago with the machi okuri and decay gives you some interesting insight into its life.

Different people will have different opinions here. There is a long history. When I send my menuki in I will use the NTHK (Yoshikawa).

If that is referring to the other Kanenaga, that horimono was not added after shortening. That would have been above the original machi and the original mekugiana has since been lost. This is a normal thing to do and Chogi and his school often end up with bits and pieces of interesting horimono in the newly finished nakago. I'm a bit uncertain about the quality of what is shown though. But the placement is ok for it being original. The nakago in that case has been filed extensively on one side, and not so much on the other with the tsume. But it has been filed a bit on the side with the tsume, and more in the shinogi area, as well the mune has been extensively filed to straighten some of the curvature. Overall the new dimensions of the nakago cause the horimono in the new nakago to look like it is floating a bit oddly in terms of its relationships to the borders, but that is just because the borders have moved by the creation of the new nakago. I think anyway. I could be wrong. I think it is also a nice sword though. See example Kencho. Markus' translation is a lot better and better explains what the part is of the sayagaki we were trying to tease out above. With this language Tanobe sensei is allowing for some wiggle room within the Chogi group but has no better proposal than Kencho is what this means. So Kencho it is. We have to be satisfied with the best answer available sometimes and this is an example of how DEN would be used in the current days, to establish some of that wiggle room. Omiya was what I brought up as my reaction to it. I of course completely defer I'm just saying if I picked it up that's what my kantei answer would have been. And then sensei would tell me: no. Both of these linked here are fine examples of the smith and you are better off with either of these than the lowest category Juyo Chogi in my opinion. I don't think there is that much breathing room as the authors have written in the past between these smiths based on what work is out there. About 10% of his Juyo work passed Tokuju and he has Jubi work. He is a fine smith and these are good works.

Ha, I've been eyeballing that one for a couple of months thinking the same thing.

It looks to me like Muromachi Mino.

I can immediately think of two reasons. I have seen many blades modified between Juyo and Tokuju. From the innocent but hubris filled getting kinzogan mei done, to the downright profane that bothers me. Of course the modification we don't even think about is repolishing. I posted one here of a blade that the owner cut the mei off himself but preserved the mei. He cut it off because some expert told him it was gimei on the "internet of 1950" or whenever he did it. When it passed Juyo the NBTHK accepted the mei as a detached piece of steel that he had preserved maybe out of guilt. When the blade passed Tokuju it was now inset as gakumei. Which may also have been done out of guilt. Or out of preservation. The question is: was that wrong to do? I am not sure. Why is it wrong to do gakumei now once the damage is done vs. doing it in 1600? Well we don't like to modify things so maybe it would be better to just make a nice tosogu style box to house the mei in and have it remain as a lesson to everyone to be careful about the damage one single opinion can cause. Whomever buys the sword now and doesn't do the level of digging that I like to do, just even basic digging, is going to assume it was done in the 1600s, that's the problem with modifying it now. That modification, it's hard to know if it was done to upgrade the sword or not. I have seen others that were absolutely attempts to upgrade the sword. For those that passed by like this there are others that were not successful. Japanese and western interpretations of health I find to be different. If you want a healthy Tokuju you need a bright hamon and flawed jihada is OK. A westerner will tell you the blade is tired and won't buy it because of the flaws. The same guy might buy an intact jihada blade though the hamon is dim, submit to Tokuju and it fails and he won't understand why. Japanese interpretation is that the blade is tired because the hamon is no longer vivid. So therein one can find the answer to one reason why it might happen. As well a blade that might be able to pass for ubu could indeed pass for ubu after retemper. What's the other reason? Pretty simple actually. Same reason as always. Your house caught on fire. Sounds rare but my house caught on fire once. Well my apartment building anyway, nothing so energizing as waking up in the dead of winter to finding out the floor above you is ablaze. Within a couple of years I went out for beers once with a friend. When we were done our beers I walked her home but she was now homeless as her building had burned down while we were out. The other weird mod I posted here some time ago was a completely healthy and original looking Hiromitsu that I saw once that had a nakago filed over and a kinzogan mei and date put in place. I found the blade later in the Jubi books and it had the original mei. I couldn't fathom what had happened and so looked it up in the Juyo and got Markus to translate it, wherein the truth was revealed: someone stole the blade and pounded out the mei and date to hide its origin. Because it had passed Jubi before they could reconstruct the mei with kinzogan so again, modified an old blade to try to repair in a way the modification carried out by the thief. The reason became very obvious once you heard the story. The problem is, none of us are thinking in a way required in any of the above circumstances to imagine why someone would do these things. Why would you take a hacksaw to a signed Enju Kunitoki to cut the mei off? I mean... at least why are you cutting the end off the blade? Do it yourselfing to the worst level. So it can be hard to fathom why exactly some of these things are done. Some are obvious right off the bat, like making a bohi that was an add-on look original by grinding out the groove into the nakago. I have seen that too. I also was told by a western collector that he had a togishi change bohi because he didn't like the aesthetic. He got pissed at me when I got pissed at him for altering a kantei point (I forget the name of this type, where the top end of the bohi finishes well before the yokote, said to be done as a Nanbokucho period thing, he had it adjusted to look like the standard style and killed some of the value of his blade...) Devils can predict what angels will do, but angels can't properly understand the mind of devils so can't predict or fathom why they do what they do or what they are capable of.

Ouch. That is a well aimed dart. Not even sure what to say because your criticisms are very valid. I think though the parts of the agent handling, this is well and good because the NBTHK doesn't want to specialize in import/export and the problems it has, plus not many people even know how to do it right for Japan or other countries and many people with swords don't want to do it right. For the NBTHK to want nothing to do with that is fair, that is something for the marketplace to serve. But it would be nice if there were more international options for language and it would grow the hobby if it were more available to everyone. This is a process that we hope can improve over time and I am myself on my other projects dealing with the same issues. My own feeling is that where Japan is concerned, patience and politeness and positivity will generate results over the long haul. It is frustrating to not have things instantly how we want them (or even over a decade) but there is a lot of momentum especially in the sword world to do it how things have always been done. I would like to see the NBTHK move into the digital world and am making my own efforts there and I think that they will all bear fruit but it is just going to take time. As long as they have the best expertise they won't be obsolete but I 100% agree with you in that I feel as if I am asking Moses to go up the mountain and bring me down some stone tablets, and when Moses arrives empty handed with no explanation all I can do is shake my fist at the uncaring God who gave me no guidance. There are probably reasons for that I don't know. I don't know what swords you got rejected and that's important for anyone to know. My own tosogu submission I can see no reasonable reason for it to not come back with Kyo-Kinko so I will just deal with that by asking the NTHK myself. For the deadlines, NBTHK for my experience has not been late. Stuff is slow, you submit and wait a few months and get it back but I haven't had stuff held for no reason. It can be overwhelming for them due to volume and the limits of human abilities, that I can sympathize with.

Worthy topic to start a new thread.

If they were ever in Ginza it was before my time. They have a small shop near the old NBTHK... with the NBTHK moving, maybe they intend on moving too.

When they say very small (the shop) it is literally too small for you and a friend to show up and stand in. There are two to three clerks working on processing stuff for the website. But there is no room to take a sword out for more than one person without getting stabby.

OK, I found it: https://www.aoijapan.com/img/sword/2017/17046-3.jpg I think he's probably just allowing for Nagamori and the others. Kencho slam dunk they want to be a bit more imposing like Chogi and it is not as active as most of the blades attributed to Kencho. I would have thought Omiya for my first answer. There are no solid grounds to say not-Kencho though. There are some that look like this and also some Nagamori and it would be a challenge to try to sort them out from oshigata. Nice sword. Worth a shot at Juyo. Never assume that the previous guy tried because he may have assumed that the previous guy tried too.

Yeah it is what I figured, I thought maybe he was referring back to the aforementioned smith rather than the aforementioned group. The subtlety of the translation though is important is what I was getting at. In English when they write that it has the characteristics of the group it sounds more dismissive of being attributable to a specific smith than saying it is reasonable for a smith within this group which sounds more like accepting the call with some reservation. I think where I was getting to is about the same, that he's accepted Kencho but he may have had someone else on his mind for his own call. It would be nice to see the blade or their oshigata as it might help illustrate where he was going with this sayagaki.

No blades for me, just frustrating results (horyu = reserved = we are not going to give an answer = two stubborn guys arguing and not able to compromise on an answer) on some tosogu I have had in the drawer for a long time. Which I gather is par for the course for a lot of people lately.

優品 is yuhin and is one of the several praisewords on higher level swords and means it is a superior item. They I think decided to translate this as "well-made" which doesn't have the same impact that it otherwise should. "Nagayoshi" should not be used, you should instead say "Chogi." You can call Kanenaga "Kencho" and it is probably better to do so. If the condition is superior you can think about submitting it to Juyo. Kencho is more than sufficient as an attribution to pass and any good Kencho you find you should be able to think about that. He has a Jo-saku rating but I have seen many Kencho that were better than Chogi attributed blades. Some are quite stunning. The reason for this is that Fujishiro seems to have judged him a bit lower than he is otherwise judged. In terms of how he is handled at Juyo and Tokuju he is more like Jo-jo saku. That allows for his best work to surpass the weakest work of Chogi which is fact by looking at the blades. The sayagaki is ambiguous, in the reference to the Chogi group and I don't think they translated the last part of it as there is a reference to "naka doku" (middle / this smith) coming after "Chogi group". I would pay Markus Sesko to properly translate it. I think he is saying that the hamon is representative for this smith and the Chogi group. What that means is ambiguous as it could mean that he feels it is a work of Chogi or that it could be Yoshikage or Nagamori. So it may mean a bit up or a bit down from Kencho. The fact that it has Honami Koson shumei on it is not necessarily helpful. If Koson has expressed an opinion which is acceptable without major argument it will be accepted even if a judge has his own opinions. This is OK since there is no known correct answer to the question "Who made this sword?" Acceptable answers may be any of the smiths that I just named. Any two experts could agree that there are pros and cons to each of the answers. When one is established then it can be accepted as the same arguments could be raised about any of the other answers. The main criteria is quality, does the attribution match the quality of the blade. If Koson thought it was better he'd have said Chogi. If Tanobe sensei thought it was definitely Chogi he wouldn't have done the sayagaki, instead he'd have written back that the shumei should be removed and the blade submitted to Juyo and reassessed. So you can probably draw a line through Chogi as an appropriate answer, but you could laugh to your friends and say maybeeeee Chogi. But also maybe Nagamori or someone else in the group. All of that making Kencho an acceptable answer. Note that once a shumei is on something they never put DEN on it but DEN can be an appropriate thing to add otherwise. Like if you wiped the shumei it might go Juyo as DEN Kencho but with the shumei it would pass Juyo as Kencho even if they think DEN. This is one of the peeves I have about how they use DEN. Having a look at the sayagaki he didn't do backflips on the blade but he has confirmed it is a very good sword and if I received this I would consider Juyo submission myself. But I don't know how the blade looks. Bizen remember gets a bonus point always so you really need to show it to someone locally who has Juyo examples and try to compare against other Juyo works.

"Tokubetsu Juyo" is a Japanese phrase and getting it wrong from the source kanji is a transliteration error that should have little to do with English speaking ability. It is everything about them doing this stuff fast and loose, and is habitual. There is no long winded explanation for it other than "bone headed mistake". What bothers me is that people extrapolate from these things. Already I have an email from a collector stating major concern about the entire sword market based on the price of this "Tokubetsu Juyo" sword. When they do this, because so many eyeballs are on the site, they cause a lot of damage via people who won't tune in but take it at face value. Even though it is documented time and again on this website in discussions. Anyway, Unji and Unju are between 2nd and 3rd tier makers and not anything anyone should be mentally associating by default with Tokuju anyway, unless signed and in great condition. If someone leaps out to buy their Tokuju bargain or leaps out to sell their entire collection because the sky is falling, probably they should study more before doing anything with money. Jean and others hit the nail on the head. Also people are under the impression that Tsuruta san is making these listings and they are discussing things with him, and they are not. They are dealing with his staff. When his staff are making multiple listings per day, every day, on an ongoing basis, and aiming for volume, this problem is going to happen. Over and over again. Edit: the theory above that it had something to do with Tokubetsu Hozon is probably right, as the old photos show no sayagaki and the new ones do, sayagaki done after Juyo and probably they had listed it as Tokubetsu Hozon in the past. The blade itself is decent and I actually like it. It's still a bone headed mistake. Edit again: "Mr. Tabobe" sayagaki... just keep that in mind when you read these descriptions. I'm not immune to mistakes and typos either, but I will admit I feel dumb when I find them and I try not to screw up to this level.

If the blade was submitted and failed he will have a notice from the NBTHK that he can give you. Along with the bill. March 2017 results should be out as of a couple of days ago. I know because I am angry.

The end goal is an ultimate educational tool for everyone. But it is going to take a few more years to get there. It can so far answer more questions than questions I can think of for it.

The smith is appreciated for his ability to render blades in Ichimonji style. Always put the blade before the papers with the papers serving in an advisory role. There are a lot of Juyo and Tokuju papered blades that are difficult to separate from their brethren one level below. An Aoe wakizashi passed Tokuju in this last session that I would dare any of you, including me, to separate from a table of Tokubetsu Hozon wakizashi from this school. Consider if you have swords A and B, where A is mind blowing and B is pedestrian. If you sell them, A will get max price because it is mind blowing even if it has Hozon papers, and B will end up selling based on the strength of the papers. Anyone looking at A will know it will paper to the highest level where B people assume that it is maxed out where it is. In this situation if you paper A to top level and leave B where it is, you will spend money and time on papers and get the same revenue as the status quo. If however you leave A where it is and work hard to paper B higher then you will get more revenue from the sale of both papers if you're successful in papering up B. If you own both, and submit both, you will compete against yourself and create more pressure for B to paper in light of the A submission. Keep this in mind then that there are blades that squeak over the line while blades below them may be much more worthy. I'm including a chart of the relative breakdowns for tradition in Juyo and Tokuju. It is obviously dominated by Koto and Bizen. There are a lot of good observations you can make from this. Reading the chart, at the end of the bars is a count and a percentage. If the percentage goes up at Tokuju it tells you this tradition becomes more dominant at higher levels. Bizen, Yamashiro and Soshu go up, Shinto and Shinshinto go down. Shinshinto there is actually only one Tokuju, a daisho by Kiyomaro. If we adjust this further by eliminating Muromachi and younger works you can get a better idea of the various core Koto traditions and how they stack up (second chart set). This said, it's very difficult for any Shinto work to get to Tokuju but there are still Tokuju works of all traditions that make me scratch my head. Especially in the last few shinsa. Where if you crack open the book and look at sessions 1 through 3 there is no doubt whatsoever about any of them. I hesitate to isolate individual swords because I never know if I will be talking about a member's piece by accident, I have in the past picked stuff that was interesting to me and posted it here and had a member contact me after and say that was his piece (luckily it was positive). But there are a couple in this last Tokuju session and in the previous that I believe were not good enough for Juyo let alone Tokuju. I am relatively sure if those were my submissions then it would not have gone through. Some take-homes from this are that Bizen dominates everything. It does this by being excellent, most long lived, with the most pieces kept in original condition, and with a lot of extant examples. Core Soshu by comparison basically has only 100 years to compete with 400 years of core Bizen works. Shinto having a couple of centuries and many smiths has a lot of Juyo, but you can see the fall-off at Tokuju. One metric to get a handle on as mentioned above is the difference in percentage (call it a footprint) at the two levels. If your footprint expands as the criteria get higher, it implies a higher appreciation for the tradition (or smith). The rate at which the footprint expands indicates then the relative importance of a tradition. Subtracting the Muromachi works, Soshu expands the most, followed by Yamashiro then Bizen. Normalizing all of this by works extant I think would further separate those three in this regard. But I don't have those numbers so I can't do the calculation... we can hope though that the Juyo counts represent a best guess for their relative abundance. Another thing to note is that age does play a factor and because of this Shinto and Shinshinto will always be behind the 8 ball in terms of papering higher and it shouldn't necessarily denigrate a particular work. We see that in the pricing of Juyo Shinto blades in the marketplace, where a great work by a great Shinto master which may not achieve Tokuju ever can easily outpace mumei Juyo works by great old schools. Paper does not imply price necessarily. And of course the poster child for this is Kiyomaro who has extremely high prices on average but at the same time makes for a very poor Tokuju candidate. The summary is that paper is not everything and is another nail in the coffin of the "pricing ladder theory." This is hand counting so there are a couple of discrepancies I need to look into in the numbers below. Full Juyo / Tokuju breakdown: By percentages only: Subtracting the Muromachi period koto works and all younger works to get an idea of the relative appreciation of the schools at their heights: Full Juyo / Tokuju: By percentages:

This one was actually Fukuoka Ichimonji Sukemune on Tsuruginoya and a good quality blade. There are only three works by him Juyo and higher with the other two being signed tachi. The NBTHK won't attribute a mumei blade straight to him. There are two more Juyo Bunkazai. So it's a sad situation, the blade was very rare and should have been snapped up. Whomever got it got something very special and impossible to replicate (the others all being zaimei tachi means $$$$). But people probably just passed it over because it was a wakizashi.

Ko-Bizen is a huge net that lasts 250 years. On the early part, it basically is everything going on in Bizen. On the late part, it is stuff that is not fitting in with the new developments in Bizen. So in Heian, it is everything, and in Kamakura they are outliers and stragglers. Not to say the quality may be bad, this is to say that in Kamakura things started changing and anyone being labeled Ko-Bizen is basically in a lineage that stayed with old style production. With the new things happening with Ichimonji and Osafune. I think a chance to get a good condition Ko-Bizen anything is a nice opportunity and the price is cheap for what it is including the koshirae. I just think buyers need to understand what they are entering into. "Juyo Ko-Bizen wakizashi" as mentioned spans 250 years of production, so are we looking at a thousand year old blade or this one? What is its condition and quality? Does the setsumei say Kamakura or does it say "Looks very close to Masatsune or Tomonari." while calling it Ko-Bizen? There is a huge range of options that you can end up with here. I think if the condition is good to excellent and the period is Heian then you are talking about prices from 2.5 to 3.5 million yen. If they are lesser examples especially of the type that won't pass Juyo now, then less. Personally I just think that old blades are rather underappreciated outside of Japan but these are precisely the things people need to study if they want to understand the center points of nihonto. You won't get the center points of nihonto studying a Chu-saku Shinshinto wakizashi. You will by studying Ko-Bizen. For the kind of guy who can never buy a Juyo katana, this is the kind of thing to get. Again just be aware of the couple of asterisks. There is a pattern in these listings. Trying to show it's not first rank Ko-Bizen, but second rank Ko-Bizen is still far more important and worth study than 90% of everything else. Juyo is a large portion luck and timing so who knows, I just look at what the results are so I can predict what they will do on any particular thing. I don't look at a blade and say it's nice so it should pass. The NBTHK doesn't do that. So if you look at the results you can start to understand what kinds of blades they like for Juyo. Send in an 80cm Chogi or Kanemitsu and you will get Juyo 100% of the time. Sugata is a huge deal, if you cut a blade in half which is basically what some of these wakizashi are close to, you erase a big part of what would otherwise help make it Juyo (preserving the original shape of a sword). So I think if the appetite were to be high for these things we would see more having passed. Status quo for Ko-Bizen is that there are 411 items Juyo and Tokuju from the school. This includes signed pieces by various smiths and those just attributed as mumei for Ko-Bizen. Of those 19 are wakizashi length (and of those 19 many are gakumei signed and so they raise a bit higher in priority to pass because of this). So we're talking about 5% wak and 95% daito and that means wakizashi are really hard to pass. There are another 112 Jubi, 75 Jubun and 16 Kokuho from everyone combined. The buffer to get up to 800 or so then includes blades like this one. But just remember there is Heian and there is Kamakura Ko-Bizen. When you call it Kamakura and later you're deliberately drawing a line through the best smiths of Ko-Bizen and saying it's not one of them.

Yes Fujishiro's rankings correlate with the ease of passing higher papers. Because Fujishiro's rankings are good predictor's of a smith's quality of work and historical importance, which is what Juyo is about. Fujishiro rankings always need to be adjusted for time period and school... Jo-jo saku Ko-Bizen is a much higher ranking than Jo-jo saku Shinshinto. So factor in the context first and it gives you an approximation of what you can expect. It also shows there is a flaw when some people decide they want to shop for a "Sai-jo" sword because it means something different in every period and school. Mei: 1. Presence of a mei or date is critical in passing higher papers... if we're talking Muromachi and up it is essential, Nanbokucho and below, gives bonus points. This is because the mei itself makes a blade important due to having lost so many. 2. For the koto masters at Juyo and sometimes at Tokuju we will see mint condition o-suriage mumei blades and then some signed tachi that is otherwise worn down. I've asked about what's happened to the ones that were signed and mint condition and I was told "Kokuho or Jubi" which is about what can be expected. 3. Given a signed badly beaten blade with signature and a mint condition suriage mumei blade, the mint condition blade probably has the upper hand if they are competing for the same slot. The prices though will be opposite, where the signed one carries a premium because there isn't much subjective judgment that goes into it and there are more good condition mumei swords than there are zaimei masterworks by old smiths. So you can get a situation where the Tokuju mumei piece is less expensive than a Juyo signed piece and the Juyo signed piece may not easily pass Tokuju because of condition. Papers are just a guideline for the bottom end of the range. 4. "there are no signed Masamune of daito length" There is one but it is saiha and in a bit of dispute. The Kinoshita Masamune and it is Jubi. 5. "what is the weight of the presence of a mei judged to be genuine" I'm not 100% clear on what that question is... I think the mei is what builds the book of work so determining the authenticity of the mei and condition of the nakago is the first step to any classification. If the mei is considered genuine then the upper has to be by definition. Even if it doesn't agree with the books, means the books need updating. 6. "As an extension from this issue we all have heard of very convincing and deceptive utsushi done of old famous name smiths by otherwise more or less unemployed early Meiji smiths. I suppose some went unmasked for a while and wonder what eventually tripped them up: did the jigane/jihada/yakiba finally give them away or was the mei ultimately seen as unconvincing?" I think more that for those fakers like Kajihei they are always just good enough to fool 50% of the people in favorable conditions for the scam. Just like people come here and post Chinese blades and ask us if they are good and it's obvious to us, there is always some level of knowledge which can be obtained and is enough to shoot yourself in the foot. To sell these what you need is: a. half-assed attempt to mimic the school b. half-assed signature c. greedy and somewhat uneducated buyer who wants something with a "best" name on it but is trying to beat the market and buy it for 10% -or- d. someone who wants a fake for another purpose There is no money I think for them to try to expend 1,000 times the effort it would take to fool a high level expert. So most of these fakes are not so convincing. It will break down somewhere, I think on a case by case basis. Looking at Omori work online is a great way to see it in action. If you never saw a real one then these fakes can be confusing to you. Once you see a real one the fakes are no longer confusing. Once you accept there are maybe 100 fake Omori for every real one, you need to be starting from the standpoint that the piece has to convince you. If you fall into the mindset of "well the signature is no good but it's still an Omori school piece" then you are doing the exact thought pattern that the Meiji fakers require in order to make a sale.

Just be careful as usual, it's a Kamakura blade though he is hinting it as Heian. Papers explicitly state it as Kamakura. 2 times in the last 30 years a Ko-Bizen wakizashi got elevated to Juyo. There is no common Ko-Bizen work, but at the same time, wakizashi are not ideal candidates for Juyo. A lot of the time people will report a gut reaction on Juyo candidacy without actually examining what the Juyo output looks like. Wakizashi is basically a condition issue that is a lot worse than katana shortening. That of course is really bad compared to ubu nakago but beggars can't be choosers. The point being that a wakizashi has got extra hurdles to overcome at Juyo because of the significant loss of sugata. Blade would be nice for someone who wants to make a Ko-Bizen daisho though. And this kind of thing has very high learner points as a first sword. This is the kind of wakizashi to get when following the wakizashi advice for first time buyers (which I don't agree with in general). I think if you can start out though and study stuff like this, you will have a lot of trouble to find equivalent quality examples sitting around as katana. So it really represents good value for someone who wants to study.