Dumb Question (What Kind Of Papers Do I Have?)

[SwordGuyJoe]

All,

I couple weeks ago, I was flipping through some of my pictures and was looking at my Okimasa.  It has excellent sayagaki by Tanobe San (I think) and it dawned on me that he usually didn't do these for just any sword.  So I looked at the NBTHK papers.  The sword was listed as Hozon, but when I started looking at the papers, the color was certainly different that ALL of my other hozon papers.  It doesn't have the punched dots, so I was a little concerned that the papers were fake.  So I looked at all the other NBTHK papers that I have and all of them were from 2010 and beyond.  These are Heisei 2 and the Hozon papers listed on Danny's site (http://www.nihontocraft.com/japanese_sword_papers.html) are from Heisei 3 and don't have them either.  It sure looks to be put on TH paper vs. Hozon.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[SwordGuyJoe]

Sayagaki:

 

 

 

 

 

[Red Sun]

Kicho Token perhaps

 

Red 

Neil M

[Ray Singer]

Not Kicho. Hozon Token.

 

Best regards,

Ray

[SwordGuyJoe]

Thanks Ray. I wound up finding the kanji for the hozon and I agree (disappointedly), it's a hozon. I got a little excited when I saw the darker brown papers as it was written up as a hozon and I never confirmed or really looked into it.

[Red Sun]

Ah, so "early" Hozon papers are a bit darker and did not have the punched holes - I never realised that before.

Live and learn, thanks.

 

Red

Neil M

[Curran]

Ah, so "early" Hozon papers are a bit darker and did not have the punched holes - I never realised that before.

 

Shades of the past.

[Teimei]

Hi Joe,
 
they used the darker paper till the early 90´s. I have a tsuba with a hozon paper in the same dark color without the punched holes.

 

 

 

best regards,

 

[SwordGuyJoe]

Thanks all. Like I said the darker papers gave me hope that I had a TH blade and didn't even know it. It is lovely but alas I will remain content with 'just' a hozon nod on the sword.

 

Edit to add: In my defense this is one of my swords that will make TH one day...

[paulb]

Hi Joe

Step back a little. As you knowthe paper just confirms the authenticity of the mei (in their opinion). As we have often discussed before we are becoming a little obsessed with the level of paper and all that really influences is the commercial value of the blade when you come to sell it.

The quality of your sword would remain the same whether it has a hozon or Tokubetsu hozon paper and your appreciation of it is the same. So as long as you hold the blade there is little if any need to feel disappointed.

[w.y.chan]

Your sword has kesho yasurimei which Okimasa uses on all his special order swords. In later war and post war in all his special order swords he also changed his character for "Oki" with the lower horizontal stroke longer than the upper.

 

 

Wah

[SwordGuyJoe]

Thanks Wah! I know Okimasa used Kiri and Kesho yasurime, but honestly never looked at when and why he used each to put two and two together. Thanks for the info. I really appreciate it.