Barn Find or Fake - Inoue Shinkai

[Matt68]

Today I thought I had found the Barn Find of Swords - Inoue Shinkai that the owner was willing to entertain offers on. Please note I am not a dealer just a small time collector who may have stumbled onto something special.

 

It was purchased by the current owner 30 years ago not polished. When I went to view the sword is still not in polish and is in average condition.

 

My immediate concerns with this sword are:

 

The is a knick in the blade towards the top, to repair may take to much off the blade

the Hamon does not seem to be consistent with other Shinkai swords (when compared to other images on the net) and it changes mid length up the sword.

The Mei is not crisp

The blade is short about 63cm for this maker (this may be a wrong assumption)

The blade is rather thin (approx 6mm)

The Mekugi ana looks to elliptical for a maker of this quality

Poor quality Kiku Mon.

 

I am aware that this maker is an important sword smith and to date I have not had the opportunity to view a genuine Shinkai for real (only on the net). I have my suspicions about this blade but would like the opinion of those that are more knowledgeable than myself.

 

I am interested to know if this is a barn find or is it just another gimei.

[cabowen]

I agree, the hamon looks atypical....

[1tallsword]

I agree the mei is not smooth flowing or crisp. look at the vertical stroke in Kai. also the horizontal stoke in second kanji is off in my eyes,compared to several legit examples this one just doesn't feel right to me,

[Matt68]

As it has been the Christmas break I was doing some research into this type of Hamon and I came across this this link to a sword that was listed with AIO Japan http://www.aoijapan.com/katana-yokoyama-kaga-suke-ason-sukenaga. My question is would you take the punt and remove the fake signature and submit the sword for assessment given the similarities in the hamon?

[paulb]

Matt

While I agree with others here that the signature is unlikley to be correct please dont been in too much of a hurry to have it removed. You need to get more opinions from people seeing the sword in hand, preferably at a shinsa (or even two)  before undertaking any irreversible action.

I realise this adds expense but imagine how you would feel if having had the mei removed it then papered to the named smith. (not to mention the considerable drop in value)

[KarlPeterSmith]

An old priest... holding a chisel is writing 'grass-script'. Am I one year too late in saying this?

 

Just my opinion... your signature is perfectly-inconsistent.

 

Does that make sense?

 

It shows the signs of old age (from an artist/swordmaker's point of view... one who is still signing his own swords)

 

If i had to be really picky... I would say that I'm not happy with the 'chrysanthemum' not being totally central in regards to either side of the blade... BUT... yet again... this is an age thing and consistent... with old age...

 

Add odd thing to look at would be the signature of Charlie Chaplin... and see how his writing changes as his years role by.  

 

 

[SteveM]

I would be really interested to know what happened to this sword. There is nothing in the signature that screams fake to me. But that might just mean some clever scribe really knew how to fake a Shinkai signature (which, given the brevity and the simplicity of the kanji, is probably easy to do). Moving beyond the signature and the deplorable state of polish, I am really intrigued by the hamon. If I'm not mistaken, the hamon is Osaka Yakidashi, which is associated with Shinkai. Actually the hamon on the opposite side to the Osaka Yakidashi looks almost completely suguha. The boshi looks OK for Shinkai. Unfortunately the lousy condition of the polish makes everything look rather lifeless. Would love to see what kind of jihada is hiding under the crappy polish.  

[Greg F]

Interesting sword . I would like to see it with a polish too.

 

Greg

[MikeSD]

Old topic but I found this interesting since I had an old sword that had the Inoue Shinkai signature.  I just decided to try and translate the name and found this site.

 

 

 

Sword isn't good quality so I never suspected it was anything but a fake, but still it's interesting with that name on it.  And the other name too, whatever that is, Yamaguchi Isamu.

 

 

 

[Stephen]

Chinese repo

[TheGermanBastard]

Absolutely.

 

My personal luck has not blessed me with a honest Shinkei. I have had some pretty well done Gimei Shinkei and a Hankei. Hankei is fewer. Gimei Shinkei are rather numberous.

[vajo]

That Kanji looks like from outer space.

[SAS]

The first sword offered to me for sale was a gimei Shinkai; I spent hours in the library trying to translate the signature (this was before i had begun collecting books) and ultimately concluded the sword was gimei and did not buy it. I think it has been said that there are more gimei Inoue Shinkai than real ones.

[MikeSD]

Absolutely.

 

My personal luck has not blessed me with a honest Shinkei. I have had some pretty well done Gimei Shinkei and a Hankei. Hankei is fewer. Gimei Shinkei are rather numberous.

Even repro swords with forged signatures is interesting. I got the one above in a pile of stuff a number of years ago. Dont think I paid mor than $50 for everything. I didnt even know what it said till recently.

 

But I'm still interested in why the other name might have been added. "Yamaguchi Isamu". Forged is forged but they pick names for a reason.

[TheGermanBastard]

Mike, I do not intend to insult you in anyway but your sword is simply JUNK. It is a modern made chinese knock off with a random fake signature added that has no sense to it and I think it is not even worth 50 bucks. The reason they pick some random name is because they hope that somebody will buy into it. There is NO reason behind it.

[SteveM]

Isamu would be 勇. 

 

The kanji in the above sword is 男, and so the inscription is a rather unusual Yamaguchi Otoko.