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Nice Little Tsuba... What Do You Think?


obiwanknabbe

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Hi everyone,

i recently picked up this little tsuba from an online dealer. I likely paid too much ($399) but that's ok... I like it and will find eventually find a nice blade to mate with it.

 

Its in quite nice condition (to my eyes) and I was curious what you, the more educated folks in this area of collecting, thought about it. School, style, quality etc?

 

The material appears to be copper but by the toning im wondering if its blended with something. Could just be an artifact of the patina.  Its about 2.2 x 2.75 inches across and about 3/16 of an inch thick so im thinking it was made for a Tanto though the Ana (Correct term?) seems narrow for one. Boys sword perhaps? Seems an appropriate poem for someone growing up.

 

 

The poem, as i understand it, refers to bonfires on the river and quickly passing days of the 6th month.

 

Anyway, have at it gentleman!   Also if you can help with the Mei, that would be great. I have a real hard time with the script kanji. (I looked under a loop and the mei is definitely chiseled in, not cast)

 

Yama shiro gun kore ?... does not sound right.. 

 

Thanks in advance for the wealth of knowledge you all bring to the table!!!

 

Kurt K 

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Nice little tsuba, probably early XIXth or late XVIIIth century.

Hard to name the exact school at this point...

I would guess that the cormorant fishing scene denotes a specific area known for such activity and the poem in grass script alludes to it as well. More often such allusions are a bit more enigmatic... However it is common association in Japanese Art - specific view, specific dish and specific poem(s) all alluding to a particular location.

Cormorant fishing is still practiced today both in China and Japan, however it is a touristy business. In Japan there are few places to see it (yes, there is a live fire involved); they are often filmed for documentaries and though accomponied with a typical commentary "for thousands of years residents of .... practiced cormorant fishing; today the tradition still lives...", the "fishermen" are simply locals hired to entertain tourists.

 

Regarding boy's swords, the ones I saw were mounted very simply. Even with somewhat expensive kinko fittings, they were still simplistic enough, and probably disposable.

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Thanks for the reply guys.

 

Any thoughts to what school this work resembles? I saw a few other pieces being sold elsewhere  that looked like the same material. In those cases, they were described as Copper gold alloy. Does this look and sound right to you folks?

 

Kurt k

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Kurt, at the risk of causing (again) wast panic, I will have to say - nearly all copper used in Japan is an alloy. Either of gold (0.5-2%) and copper with other elements or of silver (5-10%), copper, arsenic etc. Sometimes one finds other combinations - Copper-Selenium, especially on exports from the Continent etc. It is a typical medieval thing - pure copper was not obtained, nor was there a reason to, instead "naturally occuring" alloys were used. Then depending on patination technique one could get the color gamut ranging from yellow to red to brown and even black, though the latter was complex to say the least. For "complex" colors, the two alloys mentioned above (the second typically coming from silver mines) could be mixed in arbitrary quantities, producing a vast range of copper-based compositions. The specific color would be obtained by emphasizing specific oxides (Cu2O for example), or particles of gold (combined with Cu2O they absorb both blue and red portions of the spectra, giving you black; gold is much easier to control and in general more stable) or silver (similar effect, but silver has oxidation complications; well not everyone is Goto) with specific diameter (up to 10nm?), which one could obtain for very aggressive patination schemes (shakudo). If you were Edo Goto, you did have access to some high quality gold and could enrich such alloys further to 5-10, or even 20% gold if you wanted to. Though chances are 20% gold alloys would not undergo artificial patination and be sold as reddish gold of sorts.

 

This tsuba though is late enough it might not have any gold at all. When they studied the archives of Tokyo Art Institute, where a number of the top Bakumatsu-Meiji tsuba makers resided, they found that by the late Edo they employed much more pure and repeatable compositions, and avoided using gold at all (very expensive). Even black kinko alloys they had were often conventional European-like niello! In some publications it is referred to as "Tokyo Art shakudo" or "Natsuo shakudo".

So chances that this tsuba has much gold in it are very slim.

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Edo period copper was in fact the purest in the world prior to the late 19th century.  Typical analyses of copper from the start of the Edo period reveal a remarkably pure metal with only traces of lead, generally under 0.5%. This is a residue from the various refining processes used from the mid 16th century, the so called 'namban buki' or cuppelation process.

 

Metallic copper, that could simply be melted as found, was never discovered in Japan. This is one of the reasons Japanese metalworking culture started so much later than Korea's.

When metalworking technology was introduced to Japan in the 6th century from Korea it was sufficiently advanced as to allow the reducing and smelting of copper ores.

 

 

 

Principle copper ores used in copper smelting in Japan during the Edo period.

Chalcopyrite or Copper Pyrites, CuFeS2 - O-riu-dō-kō is the most important ore, according to Geerts. He reports an average copper content of 2 ~ 14 % but up to 24% in fine samples. Although it is a poor copper baring ore it was plentiful and found in almost every province of Japan. In pre-modern times the ore was called Dō-kō-seki or Haku-ishi (alternatively Akagane no Aragane).

Chalcocite, Cu2S - Ki-dō-kō occurs with Copper Pyrites and was smelted together with that ore. Japanese miners and refiners recognised that Chalcocite was the much richer copper ore.

Bornite, 2Cu2S·CuS·FeS - Han-dō-kō was less common than the previous two ores but where it does occur it is often in association with Copper Pyrites.

Grey copper ore, Yu do Ko, a compound mineral of copper sulphides, iron, arsenic, antimony lead and typically silver.

Tennantite:            
Iron      3.80 %  Fe
       Copper   47.51 %  Cu
       Arsenic  20.37 %  As
       Sulfur   28.33 %  S

 

 

 

The tsuba in question may be copper, although a variety of bronze and brass type alloys were in use in the late Edo period. If it is copper my bet would be that it's pretty pure and contains as little as 0.3% lead and not much else.

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Since outside personal collecting, I specialize on Asia more than Japan, so I might be missing something, but...

How large a percentage of copper alloys in say genroku Japan came from copper ores per se? How large a percentage was imported? How large a percentage was produced as a byproduct when processing product of silver mines, and most importantly - Sado gold mine? Which one of these should be taken as Japanese copper?

My take would be that the only place where I can see more or less substantially refined copper is Sado. Every bit of gold was taken out, leaving a combination of copper with some iron. Since much of coinage was done locally, we can monitor different copper alloys from different sources. With caveats that there was no such thing as "Standard Japanese copper", and in fittings one tends to find wider range of compositions than in late Edo coins.

So I took a few random books/preprints and looked at the analysis of Edo period copper items.

One of the more common ones: Nagasaki coinage, 23.5% Cu, 3.53 % Pb, 0.75% Fe etc. etc. Kitada "Beauty of Arts".

Just for the heck of it, a Korean Haedong Tong-bo coin 6.1% Cu, 1.4% Sn, 0.5% P

Very typical medieval alloys.

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Rivkin

 

How large a percentage of copper alloys in say genroku Japan came from copper ores per se? How large a percentage was imported? How large a percentage was produced as a byproduct when processing product of silver mines, and most importantly - Sado gold mine? Which one of these should be taken as Japanese copper?

 

 

As I explained before; "Metallic copper, that could simply be melted as found, was never discovered in Japan. This is one of the reasons Japanese metalworking culture started so much later than Korea's.

When metalworking technology was introduced to Japan in the 6th century from Korea it was sufficiently advanced as to allow the reducing and smelting of copper ores."

 

All copper produced in Japan came from copper ores. The formation of the earth and the science of  geology explain why this is so.

 

No copper was imported post 7th century, we don't actually know if any ever was. Iron imports are attested to but not copper. Certainly the more than 400 tonnes used to cast the Great Buddha in Nara in 752 came solely from Japanese mines, predominantly Naganobori.

 Rather, Japan was a major global exporter of copper. In fact the largest exporter of copper in the world in the 17th century.

 

Japanese copper is often argetiferous, yes, but the amount of copper extracted in the refining of the silver was generally quite minimal, certainly not a significant addition to the overall copper production.

 

Sado was predominantly a gold mine, probably the most famous/productive gold mine in Japan.

 

If we're talking about copper the big mine that starts it all would be Naganobori, producing the greatest amount of Japan's copper since at least the 7th century.

 

I don't know where you get the idea copper and gold were mined/extracted together....they don't occur together in nature.

 


As for the rest of what you've thrown into your post... :dunno: If you want to cite random alloys you're actually undermining your own original idea. To make alloys you need to start with reasonably well defined ingredients...or it's all just a matter of random mixtures and not really controlled alloying. Coinage, by definition, must be fairly well defined in terms of composition, so your examples are irrelevant.

 

But out of interest, what else was in that Nagasaki coin?

 

Nagasaki coinage, 23.5% Cu, 3.53 % Pb, 0.75% Fe etc. etc.

 

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Regarding the import of Chinese copper, much of it was done in terms of coin. There are number of articles, including those  referring to sword trade of Japanese in China.

For example, the book "Fountain of Fortune: Money and Monetary Policy in China, 1000-1700". While export of copper coin was in general banned by China, a special exemption was given to Japanese; it is hard to ascertain exact magnitude of the export (because various commodities were sometimes counted in equivalent "strings" of copper coin), but we are talking about 100-200 tonns per mission (as per data from 1433, 1477 etc.).

Much of Edo coinage and utensils from westernmost Japan has W - which is considered to be absent from Japanese sources and therefore it is often proposed that such items were made from Chinese or Korean copper.

Regarding the wide variety of Japanese alloys, I don't think they smelted pure iron with pure copper with pure arsenic. Just like in the rest of the World, they probably smelted different alloys from different sources, producing even larger range of alloys. I never said those were completely random. You have a specific technological process, specific source, you'll get certain alloy. But diversity of sources, and different technologies were driving diversity of copper alloys. None of which was purely random, nor copper with just 0.5% Pb (or the best copper in the World). And only part of it came from copper mines per se. Much was imported; quite a few alloys came as a byproduct of silver and gold production.

 

Sado was the source of substantial percentage of copper in Japan (silver and gold mines were often combined with copper production). It was also a source of much copper coinage in Japan after genroku.

 

There is a world of nihonto collectors and martial artists, and it has its own experts, books, postulates. There is a world of metallurgists, which is separate, and there is a world of historians, yet another one. 

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I don't know where you get the idea copper and gold were mined/extracted together....they don't occur together in nature.

 

 

 

I can't argue with anything you have said except this.....which is patently wrong. Black Hills gold for example has a high copper percentage, as do many other mines in the world.

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Kurt, at the risk of causing (again) wast panic, I will have to say - nearly all copper used in Japan is an alloy. Either of gold (0.5-2%) and copper with other elements or of silver (5-10%), copper, arsenic etc. Sometimes one finds other combinations - Copper-Selenium, especially on exports from the Continent etc. It is a typical medieval thing - pure copper was not obtained, nor was there a reason to, instead "naturally occuring" alloys were used. Then depending on patination technique one could get the color gamut ranging from yellow to red to brown and even black, though the latter was complex to say the least. For "complex" colors, the two alloys mentioned above (the second typically coming from silver mines) could be mixed in arbitrary quantities, producing a vast range of copper-based compositions. The specific color would be obtained by emphasizing specific oxides (Cu2O for example), or particles of gold (combined with Cu2O they absorb both blue and red portions of the spectra, giving you black; gold is much easier to control and in general more stable) or silver (similar effect, but silver has oxidation complications; well not everyone is Goto) with specific diameter (up to 10nm?), which one could obtain for very aggressive patination schemes (shakudo). If you were Edo Goto, you did have access to some high quality gold and could enrich such alloys further to 5-10, or even 20% gold if you wanted to. Though chances are 20% gold alloys would not undergo artificial patination and be sold as reddish gold of sorts.

 

This tsuba though is late enough it might not have any gold at all. When they studied the archives of Tokyo Art Institute, where a number of the top Bakumatsu-Meiji tsuba makers resided, they found that by the late Edo they employed much more pure and repeatable compositions, and avoided using gold at all (very expensive). Even black kinko alloys they had were often conventional European-like niello! In some publications it is referred to as "Tokyo Art shakudo" or "Natsuo shakudo".

So chances that this tsuba has much gold in it are very slim.

 

I can see various bits in the first section of this post (about copper compositions and patina) that I can guess at in terms of what is being referenced but it's all a bit jumbled so I'll leave it alone.

There are a few other points I must address though.

 

If you were Edo Goto, you did have access to some high quality gold and could enrich such alloys further to 5-10, or even 20% gold if you wanted to. Though chances are 20% gold alloys would not undergo artificial patination and be sold as reddish gold of sorts.

 

Gold was available to all kinko workers in the Edo period. In the form of coinage it was debased with copper and silver, around 20% but it varied depending on the economy. Having said that countless analyses of Edo period gold on tosogu reveal a sophisticated expertise in terms of gold refining. An extensive series of tests carried out only last Monday at the V&A on Yokoya school pieces revealed a range of gold alloys from about 20% up to virtually pure gold. Gold with around 20% silver is generally described as Ao-kin. Green gold.

A copper alloy with 20% gold looks just like copper when un-patinated but after patination (or even handling over time) in the regular rokusho based solution used on Edo kinko iro-e pieces it colours to a deep grey, but it requires a bit of imagination to see much purple in the patina. Never the less various texts claim a purple tint for this alloy and it's thus  called Murasaki-gane/kin (Purple gold/metal) The expense of all that gold to merely produce a dark grey/black makes this alloy very rare. I've not yet found an Edo period example (nor Meiji for that matter) in any of the many analyses I've done myself. I don't think I've ever seen it shown in any other research work either.

 

When they studied the archives of Tokyo Art Institute, where a number of the top Bakumatsu-Meiji tsuba makers resided, they found that by the late Edo they employed much more pure and repeatable compositions, and avoided using gold at all (very expensive). Even black kinko alloys they had were often conventional European-like niello! In some publications it is referred to as "Tokyo Art shakudo" or "Natsuo shakudo".

 

 

Bakamatsu period alloys of both shakudo and shibuichi contain gold. Literally dozens of analyses of pieces made at this time suggest there was no shortage of gold being added to alloys.

 

No black alloy I've ever analysed looked anything like niello nor is there any record in the literature of any such niello-like alloys used in Japan in any period that I know of.

Note: Niello is essentially a low melting point infill alloy. Sulphur and lead are two of the major elements, along with copper and silver. The alloy is very friable and is ground to form a powder that is used like enamel by melting it into prepared cavities. It can't be used to make actual objects on it's own because it lacks any strength, as it's ability to be ground into a powder demonstrates.

 

The only alloy I know of that has any link specifically to Natsuo is an artificial yamagane he is said to have created at the Geidai. This was made up of copper with 2% zinc, 1% tin, 2% lead and 2% silver. It patinates to a pleasing chocolate brown in the standard rokusho based solution.  I'm intrigued to learn of which publications refer to a niello-like Natsuo shakudo though as his own workshop notes don't mention any such alloys.

 

There is one pseudo-shakudo that was developed in the Meiji period as a casting alloy. It can't be forged at all due to it's specific composition but was patinated to a very deep and clean black that actually looks like black lacquer. This seems to have been developed by a Mr Koga at the Imperial mint at the time Prof Gowland was working in Japan. It was frequently used when casting 'bronze' models of crows and ravens but is rare beyond that particular application.

I have some analyses of this alloy. It's around 80% copper and contains 11% lead along with zinc, iron, tin, antimony. Compositions of niello are shown below, I can't see any similarities.  The patination procedure is as yet unclear but I'm on the case. :thumbsup:

 

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When it comes to metals and Japan...I tend to defer to Ford. Having been at his house, and seeing some of his references on the subject,and knowing the amount of time he spends on not just practice but also theory, trying to out-metallury him is time wasted imho. But people are welcome to try.... :)

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I'll have to apologize before the topic starter - instead of a simple answer to his question, he got himself into God knows what.

But predictable "God knows" - friendly vulgarities, which evolved into discussion of who is the annointed expert.

I have to say it is definitely not me.

I was at one time asked to produce a review article "Metallurgy in the Orient in the XVI-XIXth centuries" in two parts, first for steel and armaments, and second for fittings and decorative techniques. I felt inadequate to such monumental undertaking, but did produce a long writeup as a result, to emphasize some points regarding the Middle Eastern weaponry. I have to admit there were still quite a few obvious errors in the resulting work, some of which I tried to correct in consequent books, and the subject of Japan per se was purposely diluted there, since there are very good works specializing on it, and my contribution there is quite negligible. So I am not surprised it did not make into the esteemed private libraries. Apparently, works of my colleagues or papers and books which I consider fundamental to the subject did not make it either. A surprising fact, but again my knowledge of Japanese historical metallurgy is rather rudimental, so there might be other, more fundamental works out there. I can even see that some of my statements made here are kind of hasty - ofcoarse they used gold in late Edo, but also learned to imitate it well, whether in fittings or in makie. In fact it was much more widely available then during the early Edo and Goto supremacy, which is discussed substantially, especially in publications on lacquer.

What surprises me still is that the questions being addressed here are not that subjective. If there was a relatively pure copper used in early Edo (obviously it was available in Meiji), not gold or iron, but copper - there should be a publication backing it up with chemical analysis, with just 0.3% of lead I assume? I am not aware of such fact, but as was said, I am not an expert. I can even imagine that a few such items, for whatever reason, could have been produced and denying theoretical possibility of such fact is impssoble; however to say that such production was widespread is something that I think has to be backed with extensive direct confirmation. Again, I am sure that for some communities a sayagaki will suffice instead.

It is even harder to dispute away the use of Sado copper, or copper obtained from China by means of trade, or even related circulation and re-processing of Chinese coin in Japan - both China and Japan had decent beaurocracy, the paper trail left regarding these phenomena is  substantial, and has been studied extensively. The materials involved were analyzed in the publications I mentioned. And so on, and so on, and so on. But again, I concede my total and utter defeat in the face of the expert credentials of people present and very thankful for the learning.

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What surprises me still is that the questions being addressed here are not that subjective. If there was a relatively pure copper used in early Edo (obviously it was available in Meiji), not gold or iron, but copper - there should be a publication backing it up with chemical analysis, with just 0.3% of lead I assume?

 

Metal Supply for the Metropolitan Coinage of the Kangxi Period (1662 - 1721). Michael Cowell and Helen Wang. Appendix 2. 1998.

I can't reproduce the table of analyses here but the analyses are of a number of copper export bars (saodo) that were recovered from a ship wreck of 1697 in Table Bay. The copper came from the Besshi mine in Japan (established by lead isotope examination).

Copper purity of 99.9 to 99,2% is recorded on six bars. Lead ranges around 1 and 1.5%. Iron, Antimony, Arsenic, nickel, Silver and bismuth are all present as traces below 100th of a percent.

 

Archaeological work at the site of the Sumitomo copper refining company in Kyoto reveals similar results on bars found below a fire level from 1724 and are recorded in " The Sumitomo Copper Refinery site: Copper production in the Kodo Zuroku and in archaeological excavation." Murakami Ryu.  These copper bars, called saodo, were analysed to reveal degrees of purity ranging from 97.44 to 99.01% copper with lead ranging from 0.089 to 0.68%. Other types of copper were also produced at this refinery revealing a differing degrees of refining and different degrees of purity being offered for sale.

Marudo was recorded as 99.33% copper with 0.0016% lead and Chodo (trade copper) 99.76 % copper with 0.0021 lead.

 

Similar degrees of purity and trace elements in copper have been recorded in analyses of tosogu of the early 18th century by myself at the V&A in London only last week. These results will be published in the Autumn.

 

Developments in Japanese Copper metallurgy by Izawa Eiji provides a very detailed history of Japanese copper mining , processing and export trade. Ming Dynasty China was dependant of Japanese copper around half of it's copper requirements as is shown through reference to actual period trade documents.

 

Kobata Atsushi references a government document dated 1686 that records 200 000 miners and 100 000 charcoal producers at 50 copper mines in central Japan, and 10 000 workers at refineries. As an example, the Besshi mine was opened in 1691 and produced 102 045 tons of crude copper between 1691 and 1867.

 

Japan's copper export trade is documented in a number of publications.

 

The Intra-Asian Trade in Japanese Copper by the Dutch East India Company ...

By Ryūto Shimada.

 

The Economic Aspects of the History of the Civilization of Japan, 3 volumes. Yosoburo Takekoshi.

 

Mining, Monies and Culture in Early Modern Societies (Monies, Markets and Finance in East Asia 1600 -1900). A series of scholarly essays  by Nanny Kim and Keiko Nagase-Riemer et al.

 

For analyses of copper, shibuichi and shakudo used in tosogu during the Edo period see Alloys of Japanese Patinated Metalwork, La Niece, Harris and Uchida. 2014

 

The subject of copper production and export in Japan is now extensively researched and well published. I could go on to to cite literally dozens of research papers and books at this point but hope the few references I've provided will satisfy curious minds until I can complete my own publication in which everything will be meticulously documented and described.

 

And just to provide a little relief from all the text this is the back of a copper kozuka I recently analysed at the V&A. I think it may be  early 18th century. The mei suggests it's by the 3nd generation Yokoya master, who's civilian name was Tomosada. I haven't had a chance to verify the mei though as we moved house last week and my library is presently a mountain. If the mei is right this was probably made before 1734, according to Markus' Sesko's genealogies, when he changed his mei to Soyo.

The results:

Copper 99.89%

Lead 0.062%

Iron 0.035%

if there were any other elements present they were below the detection limit of 3 decimal places. I'll be publishing many such examples shortly.

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Rivkin, with reference to this statement;

 

ofcoarse they used gold in late Edo, but also learned to imitate it well, whether in fittings or in makie

 

 

Can you point me to some books or references/analyses that illustrate these gold substitutes that you seem to referring to here, please. I'm aware of the European varieties like pinchbeck but haven't encountered any similar faux gold alloys in tosogu.

Obviously brass alloys were extensively used in the Edo period but these inevitably appear to have been deliberately patinated.

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It is even harder to dispute away the use of Sado copper,

 

 

"The Sado complex of heritage mines, primarily gold mines (hereinafter referred to as “the Sado Mines”), is located on the island of Sado in the sea between the Japanese archipelago and the Eurasian continent. Over the course of more than four hundred years, gold and silver mining techniques and methods were constantly being introduced here from both home and abroad and then further developed at the Sado Mines."

"The history of gold and silver mining on Sado can be traced back to ancient times; placer mining at the Nishimikawa alluvial gold deposits is considered to be the oldest production method."

 

http://whc.unesco.org/en/tentativelists/5572/

 

Not so hard to dispense with the notion that copper came from Sado island in any appreciable amount.

 

or copper obtained from China by means of trade, or even related circulation and re-processing of Chinese coin in Japan - both China and Japan had decent beaurocracy, the paper trail left regarding these phenomena is  substantial, and has been studied extensively

 

 

Let me quote Izawa Eiji from his paper I cited earlier.

 

"The newly established Qing dynasty (China) also had a large demand for copper. From 1645 to 1699, the Imperial mints used over 1300 tons of copper annually. Before the development of rich copper resources in Yunnan, the main source of copper was Japan.

Although Chinese ships were allowed to export silver again from 1671, on their return from Japan they mainly carried copper. In the late 17th century, old Chinese coins and Kan'ei tsuho flowed from Japan to China and circulated there. Counterfeit Song coins such as the Yuanfeng tongbao were cast from 1659 to 1685 at Nagasaki as export goods."

edit to add: the same article by Eiji gives typical analyses of these old Chinese coins as being around 80% copper with lead and tin, essentially a bronze alloy. If these coins were the source of much copper used in tosogu production ( as Mr Rivkin claims) these compositions would be easy to spot in analyses of Edo period fittings. We may yet find some but I have my doubts because an alloy like that won't be very malleable so would only be of use as  a casting alloy.

 

Copper production in Yunnan picks up dramatically around 1690.

 

He continues...

 

" Choson Korea also needed copper for coinage, and imported more than 100 tons annually from Japan in the late 17th century."

 

"Annual copper exports (from Japan) during the years 1676 to 1714 ranged between 2000 and 5900 tons annually. In addition, between 1693 and 1700 smelters in Osaka sold on average 948 tons of copper annually for domestic use. Hence by the late 1670's Japan had become the largest copper producing and exporting country in the world."

 

QED :beer:

 

hmm, I see I've written quite a bit here, perhaps I should put it all in a book :rotfl:

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One last update. As a consequence of this discussion I went back to some materials I studied last year while working on the brass and zinc question and their arrival in Japan.

 

Two major analysis surveys of Chinese coinage from the very earliest times until the end of the 19th century have been carried out by the British Museum  and Professors Dai Zhiqiang, Zhou Weirong of the Chinese Numismatic Museum.

 

"Chinese Coins: Alloy Composition and Metallurgical Research is a new book by Zhou Weirong, published in Beijing (Zhongguo gudai qianbi hejin chengfen yanjiu, Beijing: Zhongghua shuju, 2004, ISBN 7-101-04089-6/H.195). It brings together the results of the metallurgical and numismatic research on Chinese coins undertaken by Zhou Weirong since 1985. In the largest metallurgical project on coins ever undertaken in China, he applied classical methods of chemical analysis (wet method) to over 2,000 Chinese coins from the 6th century bc to the early 20th century. "

 

Metallurgical Analysis of Chinese Coins at the British Museum. Edited by Helen Wang, Michael Cowell, Joe Cribb and Sheridan Bowman. 2005. Over 550 coins were analysed in the BM survey.

 

Drawing on these corroborating sets of data we can now fairly confidently know what Chinese coins were made of in particular periods.

So with reference to the dates Mr Rivkin refers to for copper coin importation to Japan.
 

While export of copper coin was in general banned by China, a special exemption was given to Japanese; it is hard to ascertain exact magnitude of the export (because various commodities were sometimes counted in equivalent "strings" of copper coin), but we are talking about 100-200 tonns per mission (as per data from 1433, 1477 etc.).

 

There were 5 trade mission from Japan to China in the period quoted.

1433 - 5 ships

1435 - 6 ships

1453 - 9 ships

1468 - 3 ships

1477 - 3 ships

"Japan in the Muromachi Period, John Whitney Hall, Takeshi Toyoda"

Payment for trade goods with Chinese 'copper' coin is noted. Only, they weren't copper at all...

 

This would be a little earlier than the middle of the Ming Dynasty (1368 to 1644).

Coins actually minted in 1433 contain 70 - 77% copper, between 1.5 and 0.1 % zinc, 8 to 9% tin, 18 to 23% lead and very small traces of iron, arsenic, antimony, etc. These results from 6 samples analysed.

 

Coins issued before 1503-05 (Hongzhi reign) contain quite a narrow range of copper between 70 to 78% with the balance being lead and tin.

 

Again, these are bronze coins and not any use if you wanted to remelt it and forge in into workable plate for kinko work.

My bet would be all those Chinese bronze coins ended up in giant bronze Buddhas when the Shogunate outlawed them in the mid 17th century (1652). :glee:

 

There do exist some very early, almost pure, copper coins c.25 to 220 AD (late Han period) but these appear to be an exception to the rule. Up until the 16th century Chinese coins are bronze composition, ie; copper with tin and lead. then there's a transition to a bronze/brass alloy starting in 1503. But all the way to 1736 these zinc containing coins also still contain significant amounts of lead and tin also. Obviously I'm ignoring the cast iron coins in my comments.

 



 

 

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