New sword

[Bencld]

Hi all. After a really really crappy year, I bought myself another sword. O-tanto in decent polish signed AKIHIRO. I know it won’t be THE akihiro but it is in decent what appears to be Matching mounts and decent condition. I am happy with it. Any suggestions on age or school?

Thanks.

[Surfson]

Congrats Chris on some successful sword therapy!   Do you think that the work is Soshu?  The shape is reminiscent, but the tang and the hamon could be many schools. Do you have come closeup photos of the mounts and mei?

[paulb]

I was looking at something very similar a few weeks ago. It had Soshu characteristics but also some Muramasa den traits. When I asked some people who know much more than I do they came back independently but unanimously quoting Shimada school. As did many others this school was trying really hard to reproduce Soshu and in the words of Koza while they did not reach the standard of early Soshu work they were often better than later examples.

I have attached images of the one I was looking at for comparison (unfortunately neither the polish nor images show as much detail as I would like.  

[Bencld]

13 hours ago, Surfson said:

Congrats Chris on some successful sword therapy!   Do you think that the work is Soshu?  The shape is reminiscent, but the tang and the hamon could be many schools. Do you have come closeup photos of the mounts and mei?

Hi Robert, mounts.

[Bencld]

Some more better pictures I think ! Akihiro was a Sosho smith sonif they were going to gimei a blade, they may have selected something along thise lines, Soshu features to try and validate the mei. 

[Rivkin]

Appears a bit like Soshu-"light" from about 1510-1540. During the Edo period Akihiro was accepted by many as a multi-generational line lasting through much of Muromachi and there were oshigata of Muromachi period Akihiros.

But with the new age it was decided that these late Akihiro examples do not show continuity, i.e. you basically have this signature sporadically appearing just when Soshu style gets popular, mostly towards the end of Muromachi, and thus Muromachi Soshu Akihiro were declared gimei. Its not an uncommon re-evaluation, as late as 1980s the end of green paper era marked also discontinuation of any attributions to Hosho Sadamune, for similar reasons.

There were a few legitimate non-Sagami Akihiro, but I would feel a tad paranoid here and suspect the signature is not real. Shimada tends to be the absolute default attribution for anything late Muromachi Soshu like these days, save things which bear clear evidence of Sengo, or Mino or Tsunahiro and related lineages.

But there is an interesting tid-bit is that since the decision to gimei Muromachi Akihiro is a recent one, and there are examples with legitimate Honami papers, it is possible, for example, to paper something with kimpun mei to Akihiro with another attribution, i.e. without the blade being rejected outwards (personal experience). I don't know if this careful approach goes towards papering signed Akihiro as "signed as", however I don't think such attributions are common at all with Muromachi works. Were it Hasebe with Muromachi period's gimei Akihiro then maybe.

I don't think its a stellar example, hada is a bit rough, nie in hamon is not that sparkly, there is no mitsu-mune etc. etc.

 

Kirill R.

[PNSSHOGUN]

The Tsuka looks to be of good quality.