Dummies Guide To Hyaku Ren...

[Peter Bleed]

Friends,

Please allow me to beg the help of the Board for an EASY answer to a simple question.

This afternoon a freind showed me a sword he had just bought. It is an early War shin-gunto that is unsigned but...

right at the end of the nakago is a hot stamp that is the top part of a "hyaku ren.." stamp. the bottom of the jiri lookslike it was reshaped.

The blade is a wretched little dung-ball (albeit it pretty good polish) with several straight masame kizu, It has all the charm of a Seki blade, but it also has evidence of lamination.

So, is this collectible?

Peter

[cabowen]

They say there is a collector for everything....

[NihontoSeeker]

Chris you crack me up.

[Peter Bleed]

Well, okay. I giess I got the information I was looking for. I'll tell my friend that he has a bit of militaria that gets no respect from the polite Japanese sword collecting community.

Beyond seeing this sword as potential "merch" (hey, I hang around with the  militaria crowd) I have to also admit that this sword raised some questions in my mind - from a historical perspective. I wondered about who was making these swords. I also wondered how these swords were being marketed to IJA officers. And I even wondered if they were somehow out the offical sword production pipeline and if that might reveal something about WWII sword history. No such luck.

This instance shows that there are swords that aren't any good and don't deserve collecting - even if they must somehow have been related to the history of swords. If that was the case during WWII, I'll bet it was the case during the Kamakura era too.

Peter

[Brian]

Peter,

I suspect you wouldn't get any real replies unless there were pics presented.

Everything is collectible, as said. Some people collect coffee mugs or teaspoons. I suspect the question is, is it collectible as Nihonto, or just as militaria. And to say which it is..we need pics.

 

Brian

[Shamsy]

Good evening all,

 

Raising the dead here...

 

Not the same sword but the same smith. Brians last post made me wonder so I've done my best to get some photos. I would have discounted the sword as showato and still have that option, but having installed new lighting (2,000 lumen LED!) I'm seeing a couple of differences between the hamon on this sword and other showato I have.

 

Where it all looked like a single, dull white hamon before, I can easily see that it is actually two distinct parts. A duller lower half of nioi, then a sharper, whiter line running along the crest of the hamon. I can't really make out individual particles so I'd go with nioi demi.

 

The photos were really hard to take, but I had a go. It is far easierto see the distinct patterns in hand of course. So since this is the only site and thread discussing the smith I could find, what do you think?