For The Ko-Mihara Fans

[Ray Singer]

For anyone who enjoys Bingo Ko-Mihara work (as I do), there are a large number of examples for sale at Aoi Bijyutsu at the moment. Two have been attributed specifically to Mihara Masahiro and the others have simply been papered to Ko-Mihara. Most exhibit some amount of utsuri (shirake utsuri is typical for this school), except for the two which only received Hozon. The Masahiro examples' jitetsu seems one-level tighter, I do not know if they received the smith-specific attribution due to that point. It is also interesting to see that three have Kanzan sayagaki, two of which place the swords with other schools (Tegai and Aoe).

 

Ko-Mihara

http://www.aoijapan.com/katana-mumei-ko-mihara-3 (67.4 cm Hozon)

http://www.aoijapan.com/katana-mumei-attributed-ko-mihara (69.5 cm Hozon)

http://www.aoijapan.com/katana-mumei-ko-mihara-4 (69.69 cm Tokubetsu Hozon)

http://www.aoijapan.com/katana-mumei-unsigned-attributed-to-komihara (71.2 cm Tokubetsu Hozon)

http://www.aoijapan.com/16181 (71.8  cm Tokubetsu Hozon)

 

Mihara Masahiro

http://www.aoijapan.com/katana-mumei-attributed-as-mihara-masahiro (63.6 cm Tokubetsu Hozon)

http://www.aoijapan.com/katana-mumei-mihara-masahiro24th-nbthk-juyo-paper (72.72 cm Juyo)

 

Best regards,

Ray

[Ray Singer]

For reference, when the links expire.

[Jim P]

Hi Ray, I also enjoy Bingo Ko-Mihara work, it’s one of those schools that are a bit of a drop box for suguha blades so we get some variation  and IMHO a lot depends on the condition of the polish some of them would have a good chance of a new attribution to some of the others and a lot of the ones we see are a bit on the tired side. The Sword of Asano Yukinaga thats Juyo Bunkazai is a good example of one in good condition ( http://www.sho-shin.com/sanyo13.htm) a very nice blade that gives you a better idea of what they looked like.The last one on the page is my blade whose condition is not too bad that blade will have a touch up polish at some point so it will be interesting to see if the attribution will stay the same as  Ko-Mihara work has a lot in common with Tegai and Aoe and even some of the other schools like the Rai school their jigane can also be a bit hard to see if not in good polish but when you can they come to life