A Kunikane Oddity

[Peter Bleed]

Dear Friends,

Please allow me to show a sword that I hope some on NMB may find of interest.

This is a 26.5” (67.3cm) katana that I bought at Tampa several years ago. Two other collectors told me about it as I walked into the show. It was waiting there for me and I got it. At that point, it was mounted in nonregulation gunto mounts.

The katana-mei says Yamashiro Kami Kunikane. This is the signature of the second Kunikane. Frankly this signature looks okay. It is well cut and the penmanship seems pretty good, although the placement might seem challenging, and there is no question that the machi have been moved  up substantially. The sword is still a daito – if just barely.

On the other side is an inscription saying Raised/Shortened  (I need help with the first kanji - thank you) Genjiro Kunikane. Genjiro was the third KK and the son of the number 2.This signature, also, looks very well cut altho the Genjiro section may be a bit inconsistent. These kanji also seem just a bit small than those on the other side.

I sent it to Japan for a polish and shinsa. After paying a lot of money and waiting a long time. It came back with nice new habaki and shirasaya, but NO PAPER! I was disappointed and asked my agent. He said the shinsa team (it was not from the NBTHK) judged it a very good sword but  they would not verify the mei. They could not even informally suggest who made the sword or why it had this interesting inscription.  Given that the blade was fully visible when it arrived I expressed disappointment that it had not been submitted to shinsa before polish. Getting bad news early would have been an advantage. Obviously, there was no recourse so I chalked this up as another “shinsa story.”

There is no question that this IS a good sword, but it wasn’t the good sword I was hoping for. I did not wish to peddle it as a fake. And I certainly did not want to pay to have both meis removed. So it has languished in my collection. I hate when that happens!

In looking at this sword again, however, I have become convinced that it deserves a closer look. It has a coarse gonome hamon with a couple of flat sections. It is nie rich and there is ample ji-nie.  This may not look like “Kunikane style”, BUT in the Sendai Meikan there is a sword just like this one the second KK. And Markus Sessko even shows a very similar blade by KK2 in his Shinto overview.  KK2 did make swords this way.  Likewise, if you are expecting masame hada, this sword is a challenge. A fast moving shinsa team would see itame. Looking closely, however, it is apparent that this sword has a masame structure. It has some hari-gane and sunagashi, both of which a features of straight grain.

I’m still disappointed with the shinsa results, but this case leads me to an observation and a question.

First, this sword may have presented the shinsa team with a problem that was outside their expertise.  Shinsa teams deal with the categories and smiths that they consider valuable. The Kunikanes  have not been a hot topic. I’m sure that if I could show this sword to fellows up in Sendai, they could tell me for about it and how/why swords were being shortened in Sendai. I think experts in the Kunikane line could make some interesting speculations about this sword. As I said, both signatures look “good” to me, but I am sure that KK3 was working closely with KK2 and in that case, you have to wonder if KK3 may have signed the blade with his father’s signature when he shortened it. The fact that the KK3 mei is just slightly smaller than the KK2 katana-mei may have been appropriately modest.

Second, I’m coming to believe that masame hada requires special polish. This sword looks good, but does not advertise its masame.

Thanks for listening.

Peter

[Vermithrax16]

Not well versed in Kunikane works (they rarely come up for sale or study it seems) so I would defer to your judgement. The mei pics are a bit hard to make out so I can't help much with a comparison work set.

 

I agree masame, unless it's very pronounced, can be hard to see in anything but an excellent polish.

[mywei]

It may have been worth to send to the nbthk for shinsa since it was already in Japan.

[Brian]

I would think that if someone was doing a fake mei, they would go for something more typical and not add something that was unusual and sure to provoke discussion.
That's a big point in its favour imho.