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Fine Tanto With Dragon And Bonji Horimono

Ed Hicks

By Ed Hicks
in Nihonto

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Lance Proficient

Lance

Posted
Posted

Congratulations Ed,

Wide horimono inset into large bohi does seem to be a Umetada trait of sorts (a couple examples in Nihonto Koza Shinto volume as well as the one I linked to)  Some of the wear on the high points  threw me off but I'm glad for you  the Shinsa agreed with the attribution on nakago   :beer:

Sword in the link below looks like your tanto?

https://www.bonhams.com/auctions/17513/lot/3158/

 

Regards,

Lance

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  • 3 weeks later...
Darcy Mentor

Darcy

Posted
Posted

I like it a lot. That action estimate was unusually low, and with papers this is a desirable little tanto. Congrats!

 

 

Who papered this one? I don't see it on the auction site. Looks to me like they are just echoing the fact that someone put Umetada into the nakago. 

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Darcy Mentor

Darcy

Posted
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I ran this tanto through the Tampa shinsa and it came out Tensho Yamashiro Umetada bori. Ed

 

 

Ah I just saw this one. 

 

This is more than just Umetada, this is putting it in the wheelhouse of Umetada Myoju because they specified Tensho. It's a way of saying likely Myoju but having safe harbor to fall back into. There is not much else Umetada going as he's just getting started in Tensho. 

 

Also the bori part, this is referring to the engravings I think... curious if there is another statement about the tanto or if it's intended then to embrace both (probably the latter). 

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KarlPeterSmith Contributor

KarlPeterSmith

Posted
Posted

Hi Ed... I'm the controversial one... so again I'll just stick to the visual facts.

 

Firstly... Nice TANTO! < I say this because size is everything when someone signs a blade... and I have noted the UMETADA drilling mekugi-ana & signing consistently according to the size of the space provided... i.e. DAMBIRA gives one more room etc

 

Yours is signed down the middle (which shouts out before 1615 which is Horikawa Kunihiro style) ... my opinion.

 

Secondly.... Gold zogan. Cool... which is a 'shout-out' for UMETADA JUSAI working for the Hon'ami family.

 

...but even though i say this... I'll shout out... UMETADA SHIGEYOSHI (Myoju's son) due to comparisons made (SEE ATTACHMENT)

 

... this SHIGEYOSHI seems to have signed at least one sword MUSASHI DAIJO FUJIAWARA for Tadayoshi it seems ( I speculate on this... but the evidence seems to state that this is true.)

 

I'm surprised your PAPER wasn't more specific as UMETADA is a very generic classification (covers everyone) and covers half a millennia of possibilities. I could give you more info.

post-2842-0-51287500-1462634873_thumb.jpg

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Darcy Mentor

Darcy

Posted
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I'm surprised your PAPER wasn't more specific as UMETADA is a very generic classification (covers everyone) and covers half a millennia of possibilities

 

How can you be surprised?

 

They didn't see anything more to go on than to confirm a school attribution. So that's what they did.

 

It is a safe call.

 

Sometimes you need a time machine to get more detail.

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KarlPeterSmith Contributor

KarlPeterSmith

Posted
Posted

If they THINK it is a certain 'someone' they should attribute it to that certain someone.

 

If one files off the horimono and signature on this TANTO... would they say that it was even an UMETADA blade at all??? (or more likely label it Umetada Gimei and not touch it at all)  So in a sense judging swords by the sheer weight-of-the-blade alone (it's characteristics) is out there in the Twilight Zone and pure guesswork by all judging panels <<<But let me add to this...

 

Of course they'll compare like-with-like... and there are enough signed examples from the UMETADA school to make a leap of faith and to be more specific as to who they think this 'work' resembles. It's even signed!

 

So... without the horimono and without the 'Umetada' zogan (which is how most swords are judged)... they would not be making a 'safe call' by saying Umetada at all?

 

Luckily I'm currently into the Umetada School - and how it's 'works' splice into the Tadayoshi school... and Myoju's son [i.e. Myoshin/Shigeyoshi/Ietaka/kitchen sink] (until proven incorrect) fashioned this Tanto.

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Darcy Mentor

Darcy

Posted
Posted

 

 

If they THINK it is a certain 'someone' they should attribute it to that certain someone.

 

If they're sure, they will do so. That they didn't means they were not sure. I'm failing to understand the disconnect here. School attributions happen all the time. Ichimonji, Enju, Shimada, Awataguchi, Gojo, Goto, and so on. 

 

 

 

If one files off the horimono and signature on this TANTO... would they say that it was even an UMETADA blade at all??

 

If I took a Masamune, broke it in half, and filed off the hamon, would they still attribute it to Masamune?

 

If I took a Goto Sojo menuki and smashed them with a hammer and submitted them, would they still attribute to Sojo? 

 

If you remove the identifying features of a blade and then submit it, then of course you are less likely to receive the answer that you're anticipating. There is no way to know if any answer is correct, it's just an opinion and a judgment. In their opinion, considering the blade as a whole, they felt Umetada school was reasonable and they thought the kinzogan was done in good faith. So they papered it as such. If they thought Myoju then they'd have said so. Lacking features to call it as Myoju and with work that could be any Umetada smith of sufficient skill for the rest of it, in their opinion, they agreed with what was on the nakago.

 

It is really a simple and straight forward process to understand what they did. 

 

 

 

 (or more likely label it Umetada Gimei and not touch it at all)

 

It wouldn't ever be gimei because it was a mumei tanto to which an attribution was attached. Kinzoganmei is done like that purposefully to show that it is not an attempt to fake a signature. That's why the gold is there. Gold I believe is an indication of the seriousness of the appraisal since you wouldn't be doing that in the back yard for the hell of it. 

 

 

 

So in a sense judging swords by the sheer weight-of-the-blade alone (it's characteristics) is out there in the Twilight Zone and pure guesswork by all judging panels <<<But let me add to this...

 

That shows a complete lack of understanding as to what they're doing.

 

They're looking at the condition and structure and deciding if that is consistent with the time period. This is not random and pulled out of thin air. If that is consistent then they're looking at the style of manufacture, and that includes the horimono and deciding if this also is consistent with the school. If there is no objective reason to disagree with the judgment, and there is enough information to agree with it, they will confirm it. Because it seems like black magic to you doesn't mean it is. You can go into the doctor's office and get an MRI, because you don't understand the physics or the equations behind it, doesn't mean that there is no scientific process there that leads up to a useful result. 

 

You can certainly question the validity of the paper, but you need to have a reasonable argument. The fact that they failed to put it to an individual smith is not a reasonable argument. In fact it's a completely unreasonable argument, one that experts like Kanzan specifically wrote about, that at times they had a necessity to put things to a school and he felt it was a shame that collectors were not prepared to accept such judgments. And that to go further than a school in some cases was to make a judgment call based on very small bits of information that may not be consistent with the judgment being accurate. What you're asking for is exactly what Kanzan was lamenting. 

 

 


Of course they'll compare like-with-like... and there are enough signed examples from the UMETADA school to make a leap of faith 

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Darcy Mentor

Darcy

Posted
Posted

God damn this quote bug. Eating half my posts. 

 

The rest of my post was:

 

Nobody wants papers that are leaps of faith. Nobody. And nobody should be advocating for papers that are leaps of faith. That defeats the point of papers if the judges can just throw crap down that they're not accountable for with a logical path that gets there. No faith should be involved in a judgment. 

 

The safeness of the call is based on what the observable facts are about the blade. You keep coming to some kind of oddball point that if you remove observable evidence that a judge should still be able to come to the "correct" conclusion, and no, it doesn't work like that. Every fact you erase is going to make it less likely to get there.

 

And there is no correct answer. The best Shizu you can answer Masamune and it's a good answer. You get there by logic and knowledge and observing all the right things. And you have to understand historically that there is overlap, some Masamune became Shizu and vice versa over the years. Where the exact line is is not clear. These two smiths work in styles that are closer to each other than anyone else so we don't know exactly where one begins and one ends. We can just look at these on the far left and say those are definitely Masamune, and on the far right these are definitely Shizu. And if the quality is not as good as the best Masamune but the style is right, then that is probably Shizu based on the assumption that Masamune was a better smith. 

 

But all of this can be logicked out. 

 

 


It's even signed!

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Darcy Mentor

Darcy

Posted
Posted

Oh for _____' sake everything deleted again after a quiote is used.

 

Please, please look into this bug.

 

I'm not rewriting all that again. Grr.

 

The last statement is that this blade is not signed. It has an attribution mei added by a later unknown expert. If you can't tell who that expert is then the judgment carries no weight. Confirming that judgment, if anything, is a bit more stressful than judging a mumei. Because you're agreeing with a guy who never bothered to sign his name. So you need to be sure about what you're saying.

 

School work is a safe call vs. making it a specific smith. But it's less safe than saying it's just a tradition. The committee wants to make a call that all its members can support, as specific as possible before the judges start dropping out. That's all. They made the right call here if they think it is anything.

 

And it's easier to upgrade later and be more specific with more information. You don't make a leap of faith to Rai Kunitoshi and then downgrade it later to enju school. It is appropriate if you suspect it is Rai Kunitoshi but not sure, to say Enju school and make sure you are safe. In later years your suspicion can be studied and then upgraded if it holds water and you have a happy owner. Once you say Rai Kunitoshi because you did a leap of faith, now you're hung on it and people will use your leap of faith as evidence that their Enju is also Rai Kunitoshi. Now the whole thing implodes quite quickly as it's not a functional system to use faith in making attributions.

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KarlPeterSmith Contributor

KarlPeterSmith

Posted
Posted

Here's more on why they should have papered this TANTO more than simply UMETADA ...

 

It takes me a morning with a cup of tea and breakfast to see it's NISHIJIN (two-same-sized Mekugi-ana) a character's amount of spacing apart and almost in line (when compared to larger and smaller holes much farther apart)

 

and... MASTER MYOJU's son signing the TANTO... see 1620+ reason for this deduction in attachment.

 

and ...the mekugi-ana are in the same ball-park as 'Atakagiri' (1604) in the Fukuoka Museum... but straighter... like Myoshin's work... which makes me think Myoshin for 'Atakagiri' (wow controversial eh)

 

...but this Tanto it's not a DAMBIRA (wide blade)....just a slim tanto.... so Myoshin is still a safe bet.

 

They'd not be unsafe by saying it's him - as it has all the hallmarks of his work. Hell - he's even signed it x

 

[My comments are based soley on the work presented in this blog compared with 'dated work(s)' from the Umetada School]    

post-2842-0-08422500-1462793178_thumb.jpg

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Darcy Mentor

Darcy

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Posted

Ah Darcy.

 

Truly it is said, "He who converses with  tengu speaks to the breeze". 

 

(But thank you for trying.)

 

All the best.

 

It's important to treat it at least at face value to some degree because it is uninformed at the very best, and at the worst it is deliberately misleading noise being injected into the messageboard.

 

We know the quality of what is being presented, but someone new coming in won't know the difference. 

 

Answering the points is important because these posts will exist long past our deaths. As has happened already to some members who posted here, they are gone but their thoughts live on. 

 

On kinzogan:

 

I've never seen anyone try to consider kinzogan mei as an authentic signature of a smith, and without being able to examine the chisel strokes and the depth of the strokes it's not possible to authenticate. If you took a Kanemitsu and filled the signature with gold it would obliterate half the information needed to determine who made it. 

 

Swordsmiths didn't sign in kinzogan (willing to see a counterexample), no Umetada smiths signed blades in two characters (willing to see a counter example). 

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Fuuten Mentor

Fuuten

Posted
Posted

As Ken M., the most epic troll on the internet, put it: “There are more cells in the human brain than there are brains in the human body!”

 

I saw that video and disagree. He's not even close to be one of the real trolls out there.

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KarlPeterSmith Contributor

KarlPeterSmith

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[Logic derived from Post#24 ..."Because Darcy has not seen it - it does not exist?"]  You have just seen one. Your personal issue resolved.  Even if it is unique... you just saw one. And you deny seeing it?? "Heavenly Dogs can see such things" - TENGU ref... which will satisfy your friend's lust for mythological beasts with wisdom.

 

Graphologists would label the sword Myoshin/Shigeyoshi by the niji-mei. 

 

Think of the contemporary scenario (the actual day it was signed)....If you are the only UMETADA making swords and other family members are doing fittings. It's simpler to put UMETADA. It's a Hormono'd TANTO. Yup I'm gonna use GOLD too so the number of characters COSTS (a commision cost is per character + that horimono was pricey) I've already signed it (that's his thought) that's my horimono with no equal in the school. I have no equal. I'm me. The boss. I could add one of my MANY names<<< he had many.  No need for confusion here. Simply UMETADA will suffice. The client requested it as such. 

 

NOTE: HORIKAWA KUNIHIRO Up until 1615 was also uses their services... (see attachment)

 

Go see "Atakigiri" in the Fukuoka Museum. You may just have to get out and see more blades. Expand your knowledge.

 

DARCY...You do love "quotes" and semantics and I agree that you do have a vast knowledge (compliment<<). BUT please talk about the blade in question as you've talked a lot about what 'I have actually said' (flattering) and totally ignored identifying the blade in this blog. You have the larger entourage on here. 

 

Next to him...Umetada Jusai is polishing a Masamune (for real) and doing gold inlay (on the Masamune) for the Hon-ami family. How freaky can this scenario get? But it's real. Oh that reminds me... that poilished Masamune... and how it was signed has similarities too... but i digress.

 

ONE OTHER THING... you didn't spot that is ALSO looks like a disguised 'cursed' MURAMASA... but maybe like you say... you haven't seen one. So there's a gazillion quotes to keep you busy. I'll be out looking at real swords (I call it research) while you talk about what I'm talking about.

 

 

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