Interesting Old Tanto

[Jussi Ekholm]

Well I thought I'd post an interesting item here and I hope it will be of intrest to some. At first I thought I'd post this with something like multiple submissions etc. as that is probably what caught my attention the first time. However now that I've looked more into it I feel it is much more interesting than just chat about multiple NBTHK submissions / results.

 

Unforunately with my limited Japanese I cannot fully read the entries from Jūyō books but I will include some info I can see there.

 

At first I just saw this in Jūyō 24 book, and thought it was nice dated Bitchū tanto. The signature has been cut off and it was attributed to Suketsugu (助次). This has interesting mei on mune too which I will come to shortly. At the moment on first encountering it I did not think too much about it. However as fellow NMB member sent me PDF of index for Jūyō 32 book as I was still missing that session results. There I noticed that this same tanto had been sent again as was in the back as I believe these reissued items are not in actual item count as they were already Jūyō, and this time it had been attributed to Yasuie (安家). Interesting but still I didn't think too much about it as it can easily happen with part of the signature missing. Now I just spent bit more time researching this, as it appears again in in the back of Jūyō 48 book, and this time the book has lot more detailed information.

 

First the mei is very interesting. 備中国妹尾住刑部尉安 (Cut off) / 文保二年二月廿日 / (棟に) 生年七十一作 [安家] Bitchū no Kuni Senoo jū Gyōbu no Jō (Cut off but is attributed to Yasuie, in 48th they have included the Yasu to it as previously it was also missing) / Bunpō 2nd year, 2nd month 20th day (1318) / An on the mune - at the age of 71.

 

This very rare signature gives awesome information about the smith. Now what makes this really interesting is that the Jūyō book entry mentions another similarily signed sword, a tachi with the following mei. 備中国妹尾刑部尉安家 / 生年六十九 / 正和五年二月十七日 Bitchū no Kuni Senoo Gyōbu no Jō Yasuie / at the age of 69 / Shōwa 5th year 2nd month 17th day (1316). The Jūyō entry states the source being [光山押形] which is an old oshigata book, that can be accessed in National Diet Library database: https://dl.ndl.go.jp/info:ndljp/pid/1183687 and I was able to search and find it, see the leftmost sword in the oshigata picture. Unfortunately I have not seen this tachi anywhere in modern world.

 

Now it seems that there is another signed tachi by Yasuie from (1316) 備中国妹尾刑部丞安家 / 正和五年十二月十日 that passed in Jūyō 60 but unfortunately I don't have the book for session 60 yet.

 

This might be bit complicated topic and maybe not suited for beginners as it can be bit overwhelming. I have had just so much fun tracking the info down today so I thought I'd share this here.

[Bruce Pennington]

This is way out of my cup-'O-tea, but I appreciate seeing the writing on the nakago mune.  If they were doing it way back then, it sort of normalizes the stuff I find on WWII military nakago mune.

 

Now back to the regular programming!