A Question

[paulb]

I am not sure this can ever be answered in a satisfactory way but I would appreciate some opinions and ideas. Some time ago I wrote about a small tanto which was variously attribute to kamakura period Hosho Sadakiyo, a late koto copy of Hosho and a Sadakazu forgery. The jury remains out on this piece but the one thing that prevents it from being Hosho, assuming it is unaltered, is the nakago which shape-wise does not conform to what you expect from a Hosho Tanto.

A few days ago in a very speedy sale Marius posted a blade signed Norishige. This made no claim to be right and once again it was suggested that it may be a Gassan SadaKazu/Sadakatsu forgery.

Both of these swords look to be good quality work. They exhibit exactly what you would expect and hope to see from the respective smiths. To recreate the masame of Hosho and the Nagare/itame of Norishige is no mean feat and would require great skill and research. Again in both cases the mei was close enough to the original smith to give pause for thought, in other words it wasn't an obvious fake.

Now we come to the crunch and question. The shape of the Norishige, while acceptable for late kamakura and Nambokucho is nothing like any authenticated Norishige I can find. It is too big has sori and from what I can see is not mitsumune.

So for both of these blades which may be Gassan copies we have workmanship in the hada and hamon that shows great skill and understanding of the original smiths technique. This being the case why would they produce a blade with such basic errors in the shape.

If they are gassan work I don't believe they were  intended as homages or copies they were outright fakes intended to deceive. Having done the hard bit recreating hada and hamon they must be equally aware of the shape of blades produced by these smiths so why would they produce something so blatantly wrong in the simplest feature to recreate?

Of course the other possibility is that both of these blades are what they claim to be and by the smith whose mei is on the nakago. Whether the shape is a result of a special order or later modification.

As said I don't think there is an answer but I would welcome some ideas

 

 

[Kronos]

Is the quality up to the standard of Sadakiyo/Norishige? I ask because at the end of the day if it is, does it matter who made it?

 

I may be being influenced by one of Darcy's superb recent posts but from what I took from that is if the quality of the Norishige is of near top level soshu then it should be attributed to that. If the quality is the same then why isn't a Sadakazu worth the $50k+ of a Norishige as after all this is why Norishige is so famed because of his skill...

 

The alternative is we're saying that Norishige is just a brand no different from any other and many of the other smiths making copies are equally as skilled and you could pick one up for a fraction of the price.

 

If we wanted to test this then as all the differences can be modified you'd erase the signature, shorten it and convert to mitsu-mune then submit to the NBTHK.It would cost less than the $750 pricetag. If it comes back Norishige then it breaks the entire concept of appraisal. Either this or the books need to be rewritten to show Norishige made works with these features.

 

If it were the former then chances are there's already someone out there commissioning Shinsakuto to the specifications of top level smiths and passing them off as originals to make a substantial profit. With the level of knowledge on signatures we have now I'd be surprised if there wasn't craftsmen capable of creating gimei's indistinguishable from the real thing as historically gimei's are mostly bad and/or rushed as they just didn't have access to countless examples available now not to mention the knowledge built up; particularly over the last half century on the genuine works by smiths.

 

I feel it is much more likely in these cases that the likes of Gassan Sadakazu even if attempting to make something to pass off as genuine wasn't aware of things we take for granted today such as all the shape differences throughout different periods. That and hopefully shinsa judges are capable of telling the difference in quality and minute differences in hada/hamon that most on this forum aren't capable of to weed out any forgeries that are "close".

 

BTW, you never mentioned from who did you get the 3rd attribution on the Sadakiyo?

[Kronos]

Having read your Hosho Tanto article again to refresh my memory If there's not enough left to say "this is a hosho work" then even if it was made by a hosho smith in the mid-kamakura is it still a hosho work? What I'm trying to say is these things can be a real headscratcher and with time it makes it almost impossible to ever really know who made what and why unless it's signed and typical. We can only get the most informed opinions. It's both one of the gifts and curses about this hobby especially when getting items out of the woodwork that they don't make sense without a time machine which can be fascinating and infuriating at the same time.

 

Getting back to your original question I've been doing a lot of reading on the Mino tradition as of late as well as Shodai Yasutsugu who was prolific at both retempering and making blades "in the style of" famous smiths, the latter the sue mino school did much of as well. I believe this to be the most plausible explanation whereby they weren't making out and out fakes and maybe Sadakazu wasn't either, rather they were copying earlier works but had a habit of putting in some contemporary traits, the boshi being a prime example along with the sugata running the full gambit from very close to original to contemporary but with hada/hamon the only discernable difference. Maybe it's a Sadakazu work but he wasn't the one who attempted to pass it off as gimei?

[paulb]

Hi James

thanks for your thoughts

I agree with you 100% that if the quality is good then the maker doesn't matter, if you look back at historical posts it's a drum I have been beating for a very long time. So the important factor is is it a good sword,and to be honest both of these sold at prices below what you might expect to pay for mid end mumei work. So the "value" isnt the issue.

Where I dont agree with you is that the Gassan smihs would be unware of the shape of Norishige or Hosho work. They had studied them enough to  ake convincing copies of jugane and hamon, yasurimei and mei. Shape in relation to period is seen in earliest documents and oshigata so I would find it hard to believe that this was a case of ignorance.

Do I believe Gassan were as good as Norishige? No I dont based on the very few original Norishige I have seen. However they were extremely skilled and could, within the limitations of the material available to them make very convincing copies.

Modifying the blade and submitting it for shinsa would not solve the major discrepancy. It is long and has sori which is not what you typically see in Norishige Tanto (for typically read ever)

Regarding the attributions they came from the Hosho blade they came from the original Japanese dealer (a man of long standing reputation) The NTHK and the final polisher.

 

Edit The above was written before your second post. please take a look at your pms

Answering some of your later questions

If there is not sufficient detail to confirm beyond doubt that it is by a certain school then I would not expect it to be judged as authentic (even if it was)

The boshi point is interesting. I was sent a copy of letter after writing the article. the writer, who was a very respected UK collector, pointed out that there was muneyaki on the blade (which is also atypical BTW) and at first glance this made the boshi appear to have a long turn-back. On closer examination it can be seen there is a gap between the boshi ant the muneyaki so the boshi is in fact inline with what you would see in Hosho work.

It is starting to sound as though I am clutching at straws, I am not because I have no strong opinion one way or the other I simply regard it as an interesting work and have been trying to understand why people came to the conclusions they did.

[Kronos]

I would like to agree with you that Gassan smiths knew enough to make gimei that weren't blindingly obvious but the shear amount of dreadful gimei on the market not to mention honami sayagaki that are patently wrong I feel shows the leaps and bounds knowledge has come on thanks to some of the great scholars and organisations of the 20th/21st century. I don't know much about Sadakazu so maybe I'm mistaken but I'm hopeful my second hypothesis that the smiths were simply making work "in the style of" and it was other nefarious characters that got their hands on them after the fact that were trying to pass them off as koto is more preferable.

 

It's a very interesting question none the less and gives pause for thought. I'd be interested to hear what others have to add.

[nagamaki - Franco]

Good morning, 

 

What if, what if I was a person living at the time of Sadakazu, with the way and means to commision Sadakazu, a swordsmith I greatly admired, to make me a Norishige or Sadakiyo, which he was capable of doing and I could not otherwise own. Besides, most people who would look at the blade wouldn't know it wasn't an original, and those who did would be too polite to say otherwise. These are thoughts previously discussed over coffee of some our study group members which I happen to share and agree with as a possibility. Not everything like this was necessarily done in malice.

 

Additionally, having seen Shinsinto Gassan nihonto, they were definitely capable of and knew how to make excellent copies of earlier swords, enough to fool even collectors.

Edited November 6, 2016 by nagamaki

[paulb]

Thank you Franco, I can agree with your view. I remember a long time ago someone (sorry I forget who) at a lecture explaining that the idea of forgery or fake didn't enter in to the thinking of the time. For example it was fashionable or expected that Daimyo should have a Masamune tanto. There weren't sufficent to go round and of those that did exist, most if not all, were beyond the means of many. It was therefore normal to ask a good quality smith to make you a Masamune.

These were not considered forgeries or deceitful just fullfilling a requirement. It could well be a similar story for these pieces. As said I didn't expect or want to reach a concrete conclusion just speculate and throw some possibilities around.

I appreciate your time and thoughts

Regards

Paul

[Darcy]

I don't think Sadakazu was in the habit of making fakes. He had the relationship with the imperial house and probably his business was most safe of all swordsmiths. And no reason to destabilize what he did have by selling fakes out the back door.

 

Ed has a great Sadakazu utsushi of a real Norishige tanto. Sadakazu made no real attempt to copy the hada or the hamon but copied the sugata and horimono perfectly. The source Norishige came in from the dark about 2 years ago and passed Juyo. The sugata a bang on copy but he really respectfully took a pass on the intense activities of Norishige. This states that he did not feel he could make a sincere effort to copy those structures of Norishige that basically nobody could ever copy. So the existence of an utsushi like this and the reappearance of the target blade as a Juyo just two years ago I think pop the balloon that the Shinshinto smiths were copying koto masterworks so well that they would fool people. Probably the hardest smith to copy is Norishige as many tried and everyone failed. It's different from copying Rai, which has been done reasonably well through the ages. 

 

Yasutsugu from what I have been looking at time and again, he seems to have made copies of the koto works that he retempered before he retempered them. Looking at the various ones that are out there (there was a good opportunity about 3 years ago at the Dai Token Ichi as someone had the Shishi Sadamune meibutsu tanto out, and he had one of Yasutsugu's utsushi of this blade, side by side and for sale at the same time... the Shishi Sadamune is a retemper by Yasutsugu and there are five or six of Yasutsugu's copies of this blade that are now Juyo and one of them is Tokubetsu Juyo. The hamon varies on all of these blades and so I think it tells a story. 

 

That story would be Yasutsugu assigned the job of fixing this important old sword. So he first analyzes the construction and attempts to remake it from scratch. He puts a hamon on the blade, then sets it aside and starts again. He repeats this process trying to refine his work. He continues from first principles until he arrives at a conclusion that he feels is going to be appropriate for the final work. It's like one of the top diamond cutters being given a massive diamond. These guys will spend years analyzing the stone, looking at its internals, mapping it out and developing a plan for how to cut it. Then when the time comes, they pick up their tools and in one strike make the single cut that cannot be undone.

 

 

That by the way is Asscher cleaving the Cullinan which would go on to form the main diamonds of the Crown Jewels of England. That is one shot, one try, have to do it right the first time. 

 

Yasutsugu would know he had one good chance to put a new hamon on this blade and would not want to do it without a real game plan set. That's what the many utsushi of the blade tell me as the story.

 

The hamon that Yasutsugu was able to put on these old blades was generally better than the hamon he was able to put on his blades. This is an indication then that he did not have access to the material that the old Yamashiro and Soshu smiths had. And it also pops the bubble again on Shinto and Shinshinto smiths faking old works to the point of people not being able to tell so well. Because the main problem comes back to the lack of the correct raw materials to get the job done, and Yasutsugu's experience with retempering Yoshimitsu and Sadamune shows everyone the exact problem of trying to make a modern day fake. No doubt he tried with utmost sincerity to copy the Sadamune note for note before he retempered it. But the steel always failed him when it came to the hamon, but only compared to the old treasure. As standalone works they are Juyo and Tokubetsu Juyo and masterpieces. They just do not elevate to the level of the work he was trying to copy. 

 

If they could do it, if they could make those blades so well that they could fool people into thinking that they were Masamune and Go, and so on, then they would make these blades every day and sign their own names to them proudly. But they didn't, which means they couldn't.

 

Honestly if you could paint every bit as good as Da Vinci, would you hold back on the works you made in your own name? Or would you go all out and challenge the great old master for supremacy and go down in history as one of the greatest artists in the history of the world? 

 

So... unless we see their name signed to a work that stands with the best of all time, they couldn't do it.