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Strange kinsuji


Veli

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I encountered a blade with bright, long kinsuji running outside of the hamon. I thought I'd share a picture, since this was something I hadn't seen before. Kinsuji inside the hamon, yes, but so clearly outside... no. Any educational comments?

 

post-1060-14196955999455_thumb.jpg

 

BR, Veli

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My understanding is the activity in your picture is considered kinsuji when inside the hamon, outside or above hamon it's identified as inazuma.

 

This part's making alot of assumption from one picture but here goes :dunno: :

It looks to be a very old sword (Kamakura-Nambokucho) possibly, the hamon may have been higher in that area, and the kinsuji was within the hamon.

After repeated polishes the "regular" part of the hamon didn't go through the blade with the same strength as the knisuji, and it was left behind to become inazuma.

 

Regards,

Lance

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This is nijuba. Second line of hamon running above the first. Whether this was intentional or not is a different story. You see it in Gojo, Enju and in Awataguchi and some others. The nijuba can take various shapes or just parallel the hamon. So these schools are basically working in suguba forms or with ko-choji embedded in the suguba.

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This is nijuba. Second line of hamon running above the first. Whether this was intentional or not is a different story. You see it in Gojo, Enju and in Awataguchi and some others. The nijuba can take various shapes or just parallel the hamon. So these schools are basically working in suguba forms or with ko-choji embedded in the suguba.

 

 

Thank you for this. It was a term I rarely come across.

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Hello,

 

If memory serves am pretty sure in was Sato sensei (NBTHK Journals; English), who said the 2nd step in kantei, which is too often skipped over, is to determine the quality of the sword.

If one takes that advice and combines it with what and how the nijuba should look like for those schools where it is found, and I would definitely add Mihara to Darcy's list here, then one can look at "nijuba" and better come to a determination about its presence and execution. Hope this makes sense.

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There is also sanjuba for a tripled line of hamon.

 

It's seen in Yamato schools too. What it seems to boil down to is that it is an old/classical thing and probably the Yamato smiths and the schools they influenced preserved it longer than in other traditions.

 

Quoting Han Bing Siong:

 

"Those sources, however, are unanymous as regards the Kogarasu Maru by Amakuni, presently in the Imperial collection, being the oldest curved Japanese sword. They are also unanymous on the point that Amakuni was a swordsmith of Yamato province. So why mentioning Yamashiro first rather than Yamato ? Moreover, as the book Shosoin no Token (p.xiii) points out the Yamashiro den must have its origin in Yamato, because swords of sanjo Munechika and Awataguchi Kuniyoshi, both prominent early swordsmiths of Yamashiro province, have niju ba. Nijuba is a typical Yamato feature which in turn was inherited from the swordsmiths of the Nara period who made the still uncurved jokoto which are preserved in the Shosoin, the Imperial Repository of ancient relics in Nara."

 

This is a photo of his Hosho Sadakiyo (not my best photo but you can see nijuba forming here).

 

14.jpg

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Thank you all, and special thanks to Darcy for excellent additional pics and enlightening explanation of nijuba. Should you wish, I can later provide a full set of photos of the blade as well as the NBTHK attribution, but I need to wait until the latter half of January before I can publish the pictures.

 

BR, Veli

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Hello:

I do not know if it is relevant for this particular thread, but sometimes those lines which don't seem to fit any particular term, but are squeezed into nijuba or some such term, might be evidence of the use of metals in the forging process which are themselves not capable of being made entirely homogenous with the primary tanahagane. I have wondered if that is because of some yotetsu process using foreign steel, which might not be soley ferrous, prevents full amalgamation, or something like that. I once had a Jo saku level smith's blade that had a substantial chip at the kissaki, and a chunk of gold could be seen clearly at the break joint. I believe that gold and silver was once added to produce more vivid hataraki, and perhaps that chunk just didn't meld in. Something like that might have happened in the subject blade, as it doesn't look like nijuba to me.

Arnold F.

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This thread is quite old. Please consider starting a new thread rather than reviving this one, unless your post is really relevant and adds to the topic..

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