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Taniguchi yoshikane


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Hi everyone I started a thread about this smith and after getting different answers I wanted to confirm by other’s Is this a Gendai  or traditional made sword? He did make 5th seat in the 1941 exhibition held in Japan so again here are pictures 

 

steve

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Hi everyone I wanted to confirm that this sword is in fact Gentai or traditional made as indicated in description Also if this sword was in fact a

in the 1941 exhibition or another one made by this smith?  Since these swords were probably mass produced for the army did others use his signature or were they made by the same smith smith 

 

steve 

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Yes I appreciate your feedback I wanted to be sure and you answered all my questions

I had another that said it wasn’t gendaito and needed more confirmation that it was

Also I found this in book of John slough under the star stamped smiths 

stating there were 200 SEKI smiths making swords for the army and his name was one of them it also said most produced low quality swords and were not considered to be Gendaito 

This was my concern

 


 

thanks Steve 

 

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Yes I appreciate your feedback I wanted to be sure and you answered all my questions

I had another that said it wasn’t gendaito and needed more confirmation it was 

 yoshikane is on the list is he the same Taniguchi yoshikane

 


 

thanks Steve 

 

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Hi I don’t want to keep repeating my self but wanted to verify if ,

yoshikane is mentioned as one of the smiths on list of 200 smiths according to the book of John slough is he the same Taniguchi yoshikane? My concern is that he made Gendtaito or traditional swords however it is mentioned that most of theses smiths produced low grade Showato and were considered  not to be Gendaito ?? So to me that contradicts him making traditional swords Also low grade  can anyone shed some light on this??

 

Thanks Steve 
I

 

 


 

thanks Steve 

 

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Hi Brian Thanks for your help! I agree with you how ever how can they say most were not considered to be Gendaito , isn’t that contradictory  ? as far as the list of 200 smiths were there more than one yoshikane using this name?

 

steve

 

 

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Hello Steve.

 

I hope you don’t mind me saying that you are over-thinking this. It is actually pretty straight forward if you step back and look at the situation. Your swordsmith Yoshikane was one of a large number of swordsmiths producing swords for military officers during the war. Officers were required to have swords, but the swords had to be paid for by the officers themselves; they were not issued by the government. For your average, low wage junior officer it was a large expense to purchase this required but generally useless object. There were numerous forges in Japan producing these swords, most of them in Seki. The swords were produced in varying degrees of quality, as were their mounts. Depending on what you could afford you could get a very basic one to meet your uniform requirements, or a better constructed one for more money. Either one would have passed government inspection. To produce large numbers of swords, the steel used and the production methods used would be “modern.” These are the Showa-to.

 

Now, if you wanted a more traditional blade, and you had the money to pay for it, you could have a trained swordsmith use Tamahagane steel, which is the traditional steel used to make ancient Japanese swords. This steel was of course expensive to produce, both in time and resources, and therefor difficult to obtain during a war time situation. The tamahagane that was provided by the government was only given to suitably qualified swordsmiths to use; not your low end assembly line metal pounder. So if you requested a traditionally made sword, a suitably skilled swordsmith would use the good material, and take the time needed to make what we these days would call a Gendai-to. When that particular smith was not being paid to invest a lot of time on a more quality piece, then he would be banging out the mass produced stuff like everyone else because that was his job, and he probably had a quota to meet for production volume.

 

The description you included with your photos says the swordsmith had a sword judged as 5th seat. This 5th seat does not mean he came in 5th in the competition. It means the competition split the entrants into 5 categories of workmanship. Fifth seat rating means good enough to have your name put on the list as a professional level swordsmith. It was not a participation trophy in that there were participants that did not make the cut. That is all it really means. It is highly unlikely the sword in your possession is the sword submitted for the competition, and your seller made no such claim that it was.

 

As far as whether the sword is one of the smith’s Showa-to or one of his Gendai-to, that would require evaluation of the sword itself. If the sword does not have a Showa stamp or a Seki stamp, then it is not automatically lumped into the Showa-to category, so that is a good thing. You need to physically put that sword into the hands of someone with experience to have him or her look at it. You can only do so much with photographs.

 

Enjoy your sword, and do not fret about it too much. Show it to someone with experience for their evaluation. If you keep showing photos to masses of people with differing levels of experience on an internet forum you are going to get a wide variety of opinions and you don’t get to pick which one is correct.

 

Bob Gilmore

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Very nicely said great information thanks for that dr bob..,as far as it being a Gendaito that was in the description from the seller who I have to believe is honest and much more 

knowledgeable than I will ever be !

So I would have to believe that part is true! Yes the seller didn’t state in the description that this sword was the same one in the exhibition but that’s a story for another day 

As far as the nie and hataraki, I don’t feel confident to determine if  it  has tiny crystals or not  But now it’s in the hands of a known polisher And should get all th answers I was looking for!  So you can understand my concerns other wise I wasted a bunch of  money!  
 

Steve

 

 

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