Two Questions

[James]

These are probably elementary level questions, but I feel the need to ask them.

 

1) What is the terminology / properties / traditions / etc. of the different way the shinogiji is made as seen in the following diagram. I would like to know as much about that as possible since it's been on my mind for some time.

 

 

 

2) Is a high or low shinogi determined by the distance between the shinogi on the ura and shinogi on the omote, or the distance between the shinogi and the mune?

 

Thank you

[Darcy]

"High shinogi" is usually talking about the width in cross section, the diamond-like shape on the left is associated with the Yamato den.

 

Talking about the shinogi relative to the mihaba, one would usually call it narrow or wide and speak of the shinogi-ji.

[James]

"High shinogi" is usually talking about the width in cross section, the diamond-like shape on the left is associated with the Yamato den.

 

Talking about the shinogi relative to the mihaba, one would usually call it narrow or wide and speak of the shinogi-ji.

 

Thanks for your reply Darcy but I'm a bit confused - you said "...the diamond-like shape on the left is associated with the Yamato den." Did you mean to say the diamond-like shape on the right?

And you say that it's associated with the Yamato-den, so is that diamond shape construction exclusive to the Yamato-den? I honestly was under the impression that most Nihonto were tapered from the shinogi to the mune.

Can anyone shed some light on this? It seems to me that it would be really quite a big deal in terms of cutting properties whether a sword had this tapering or not since there is a significant amount of steel difference in the back portion of the blade.

[Guest reinhard]

Typical features of old Yamato-school swords are a wide shinogi-ji (average distance between mune and shinogi) and a high shinogi (high in comparison to the width of the mune and the width of the blade in general). This is only a hint and does not work as a general rule. On the other hand: coming across a sword with a broad mune, narrow shinogi-ji and flat niku, you can almost certainly tell, it is a Shin-ShinTo (picture on the left). This is why Japanese swords should never go to polishers unfamiliar with basics. Once the geometry is destroyed, it's all f...up.

 

reinhard

[James]

Please bare with me here, but if you could take a look at the following diagram and tell me if I've got it right.

[Eric H]

The diagram is accurate. Darcy's hint is due to a mistake in writing.

 

Eric

[Guest reinhard]

As Eric said, the diagramm is basically correct, although differences in general are not as obvious as they are drawn here. You have chosen to draw the upper two with flat niku and the other two below with full niku (convex surface from shinogi to cutting edge). Niku is an important factor in Kantei and unfortunately neglected when talking about pics of swords. In most cases pics remain two-dimensional and don't give this valuable information.

 

reinhard