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Advice on koto katana


Pincheck

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Hi, new guy hoping for some help and advice on this one. It needs a polish and a shirasaya but I'm wondering if it's good enough to warrant a lot of expense. I think it looks fairly good but probably not shinsa worthy as it appears to have a patch of shintetsu.

 

27" nagassa, 1/2" of koshi sori, O suriage, mumei, shinogi zukuri, suguha with ko maru boshi, the polish is poor and hada is difficult to see, might be ko-itame.

 

My kantei skill are not great and all I can come up with is probably koto, maybe yamato related.  Any ideas?

 

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KONICA-MINOLTA-DIGITAL-CAMERA.jpg
KONICA-MINOLTA-DIGITAL-CAMERA.jpg
KONICA-MINOLTA-DIGITAL-CAMERA.jpg

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Hi Pinchbeck, 

Welcome to NMB. 

Honestly it’s hard to tell from the photos. There’s not a lot of sori and a fairly tight hada, verging on muji hada,  and that would push my guessing towards later than koto at this point and maybe into the shinshinto period. 
 

If you can post some detail photos I’m sure you’ll get some better answers. 

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Hi Jack.

 

Welcome to NMB.  You have clearly done some research and learning and as this is your first sword then you have done a great deal better than most.  (I see John has just replied.)  I assume that you know enough to look after this one sensibly in the short term. 

As it is not in pristine polish I suspect that it is going to be really hard to get much better photographs at the moment.  Depending on whereabouts in the country you are there are some members who would be happy to look at it in hand, when we can do such things again, and give you an opinion but in the meantime I would keep this one under advisement as regards polishing and so forth. 

I assume you know about the Token Society?

 

All the best.

 

 

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This isn't my first sword, I've been interested in nihonto for a long time, but this is my first non-gunto so I've never had the opportunity to do any kantei other than Aoi Arts appraisal quiz (which I am just about good enough to discern koto from shinto or shin shinto), I definitely have a lot to learn.

I'm aware of the Token society and have applied to join. I certainly won't be doing anything except cleaning and oiling this one until I know a lot more about it. It came in Gunto mounts, but had a silver foil habaki and a family mon on the tsuka so I'm inclined to believe that whoever had it during the war thought it wasn't junk.

 

It's been polished with a brillo pad but what hada I might have been able to spot looks like this

KONICA-MINOLTA-DIGITAL-CAMERA.jpg

KONICA-MINOLTA-DIGITAL-CAMERA.jpg

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Its hard to be certain, but I doubt its koto. 

Sugata is consistent with late Muromachi to early Edo. Its similar to late Kamakura, but kissaki does not scream Kamakura.

Its suguha in nioi, which for koto means substantial hada effort. Here everything is very uniform and very subdued. There is utsuri, which is nice. If it had bright ji nie, I would say Enju (there are very few schools which worked with wide suguha and really dense itame-only execution), but as is I would go with some early shinto maker. But 10% chance its Enju which is really out of polish.

 

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1 hour ago, Pincheck said:

If I am correct in thinking this is O suriage, it could have had a 33" nagassa at one time. I may be wildly wrong, but that seems awfully long for a shinto katana. Did shinto smiths generally make katanas that long? I assume some must have done.

There were many later blades that were made to hark back older style blades, including looking like being o suriage so it may be shaped to look like an earlier blade. Certainly, there’s more to see in the second set of photos than the before but I can’t see Rivkin’s utsuri though his eye is sharper than mine.... 

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8 hours ago, Pincheck said:

If I am correct in thinking this is O suriage, it could have had a 33" nagassa at one time. I may be wildly wrong, but that seems awfully long for a shinto katana. Did shinto smiths generally make katanas that long? I assume some must have done.

 

I can only say that very personally even with hi I seldom can guess what exactly it was before suriage, especially with more or less uniform sori blades. I hate "facts and fundamentals" book for many reasons, one of which is that places strong accent on techniques and observations which are arcane at the best of times. There are smiths who gradually tapered hamon into nakago, those who did not, and the blades where hadori by itself gives appearance as if they did not, that sort of thing.

The blade is clearly in some polish, as a relatively wide nioi-guchi is very clearly seen. 

With this sugata it can be late Muromachi, but there were almost no smiths doing ko-itame at the time.

It can be the end of Kamakura, but some things are wrong, and purely ko-itame smiths at the time generally were very few in number, very high class and with very bright jigane. You can say wide nioi-guchi maybe its lesser school like Nio, but then it would not be as uniformly forged and you expect to see clear nagare and substantial variation in jigane.

 

I am sorry to say it looks very uniform and kind of featureless. I very personally think its shinto.

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Well, thanks for your help, I do appreciate it. Maybe you’re right, maybe it is Shinto. In some ways that may be a good thing, it means I’m less inclined to send it to Japan for polishing which would be a head ache removed. I mainly wanted to be sure I wasn’t sending a rare and special blade to the wrong person. If it isn’t very special it gives me more scope.
 

I still have a hard time buying it’s Shinto though, but that may be wishful thinking.  The steel is quite blue which suggests to me older rather than newer, O suriage which maybe isn’t definitive either way and where you see a wide nioi guchi, I see poor photography as on the blade itself it looks narrow and nie to me. I’m not sure I see utsuri either, just poor photography. But it does look uniform and featureless, (which is one of the reasons I like it), although a lot of that could be the poor polish, it looks like some of it was done with 80 grit. I can’t say I’ve ever seen a Shinto blade that looks like this, but I have seen various koto blades that are reminiscent. My current wishful thinking favourite is mihara although I am probably wrong. Who knows, I could probably convince myself of anything right now.

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Jack,

What are the dimensions of the blade in terms of width and thickness at the machi and at the yokote?

 

There's no rush to come to a conclusion - use it as an opportunity to learn. As Geraint says, once things start opening up more in the UK maybe someone can have a look at it for you. The tight itame hada is certainly more of a shinto thing though there were koto schools that forged in this way but they tended to be schools in Yamashiro or linked to them- see Rivkin's comments above. Here's an example of the hada on a Mihara blade:

 

 

IMG_0164.JPG

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Jack,

 

I will be frank and totally honest, it's impossible to say something relevant about this sword based on those pictures.  suriage ot not ? impossible to see with the habaki  

Measurements are needed : nagasa, sori, motohaba, sakihaba, motokasane, sakikasane, kissaki lenght (which must be put in regard with the motohaba to determine its type)

 

That's could help you

 

 

Gorges.jpg

nagago jiri.jpg

UBU SURIAGE.jpg

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I know this is an almost impossible ask, it’s hard enough with the blade in hand, let alone on some vague description and a few blurry photos over the internet. I’ll take some measurements when I get home. Unfortunately removing the habaki will probably mean destroying it which I would rather not do until I know more about it he thing, it’s pretty battered and won’t budge.

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Dimensions as requested

 

Shinogi zukuri 
O suriage (3 menugi ana)
Mumei

686mm nagassa
12mm torii sori 
Chu kissaki 33mm, with ko maru kaeri boshi
28.5mm motohaba
21mm sakihaba

kassane across shonogi ji: 7mm at machi, 5.5mm at yokote
Kassane accros mune: 6.6mm at machi, 4.9mm at yokote
high shinogi

Ryo chiri bo hi (0.9mm deep)

Iori mune 
Suguha with nie guchi? 
Hada - not clearly discernible, could be ko-itame?

 

For what it's worth, my sword is eerily similar to this:

https://nihontofrance.com/nihonto-2/katana-ko-mihara-masahiro-2/?lang=en

 

Similar shape, dimensions, similar bo hi, same boshi. Mine is slightly thicker in the motohaba but has slightly wider hamon. If I polished mine, I bet it would be within spitting distance there too. If I were a betting man, I'd be tempted

 

QD photoshop side by side

Mihara-Vs-Mine.jpg

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Agree with Rivkin here. Likely dressed-up Shinto to look Koto, or some offshoot Koto Yamashiro if you're very lucky. 

 

It's the king of sword where faking O-suriage gives the seller a chance at pitching Rai kunimitsu to the unsuspecting buyer. 

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1 hour ago, Brano said:

Why is there a horizontal shift of the shinoji at the suriage blade?
I assume that the cross-sectional image of the blade represents a place near nakago

Ubu vs.Suriage 2.jpg

Because the nakago is reshaped after being cut and to preserve the mei, one files only the other side what produces a dissimetry in the shinogi-ji 

 

 Image represents the nakago-jiri seen from behind

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2 hours ago, Brano said:

Why is there a horizontal shift of the shinoji at the suriage blade?
I assume that the cross-sectional image of the blade represents a place near nakago

Ubu vs.Suriage 2.jpg

I think the reason for that is that in most cases only the side without the signature was grind down to preserve the mei, then they make it straight again.

 

EDIT: Jacques was faster.

 

 

Mihara-Vs-Mine.thumb.jpg.392f7653bc096bf0b44ee8b233c1c596.jpg

(The lines are not really acurate)

Check the kissaki and if you want to find out more you have to put down that Habaki*. Try to hit it carefully down with 2 pieces of wood, their are  other ways to losen the habaki maybe you can find something with the search funktion.

I would also say its shinshinto tryin to look like a awataguchi.

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Well, FWIW I think it is a Shinshinto blade, but have no clue as to what it is "dressed up" as.  The main indicator for me is that the mune flares out where it meets the koshinogi.  Not so easy to perceive, but it seems so to me.

 

Jack, the habaki is knackered beyond repair and not worth any effort to try and preserve it.  My suggestion would be to run boiling water over it (use rags around the blade to prevent your hand burning) and tap (heavily?) with pieces of wood to drift it off.

 

BaZZa.

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