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Bungo Tachi era discussion


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It seems to be attributed to Saneyuki 実行, NBTHK often puts the character inside the square when it is not clear to see.

 

Unfortunately I have packed all of my reference books for move (I would have a good book on Bungo swords), so I can't yet give good insight. I'd think 1400's could be a reasonable guess. There are several generations of this smith lineage.

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Just now, Jussi Ekholm said:

It seems to be attributed to Saneyuki 実行, NBTHK often puts the character inside the square when it is not clear to see.

 

Unfortunately I have packed all of my reference books for move (I would have a good book on Bungo swords), so I can't yet give good insight. I'd think 1400's could be a reasonable guess. There are several generations of this smith lineage.

Thanks Jussi

 

there you go I thought it was Kuni 

 

Sane makes sense now. 1400’s also makes sense given shape , nakago age etc 

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Nothing authoritative about my statement, just I guess, but:

I would argue by statistics one almost never sees the works predating Otomo Sorin (i.e. 1550s). There are mumei ones attributable to Bungo of Nambokucho, but then you have a long lull where you find exceptionally few blades. Nijimei ones tend to have very large characters. I am too lazy to look into reference books, but the ones I remember had visible jigane and were not in pure suguha.

The passion for suguha begins later and dominates the works only of post-Hizen Tadayoshi generations. At the same time you start seeing a shift towards denser and better itame-nagare. On the other hand, later into shinto they are seldom nijimei. By default for me a nijimei like this is between Eiroku and Genna.

 

I would ask a few questions - it is pure suguha? If yes, its almost certainly not earlier than Eiroku. If it has norare-midare-gunome-whatever you call it, can be earlier. Does it have hotsure or well defined nie crystals at habuchi? If yes, its late. If no, likely earlier. Is jigane somewhat wide featured in place, possibly with shirake utsuri, with not a lot of hotsure? If yes, likely early. If jigane is bright and itame dominated, with very well defined Rai-Hizen-like dashes in nie - certainly late.

 

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26 minutes ago, Rivkin said:

Nothing authoritative about my statement, just I guess, but:

I would argue by statistics one almost never sees the works predating Otomo Sorin (i.e. 1550s). There are mumei ones attributable to Bungo of Nambokucho, but then you have a long lull where you find exceptionally few blades. Nijimei ones tend to have very large characters. I am too lazy to look into reference books, but the ones I remember had visible jigane and were not in pure suguha.

The passion for suguha begins later and dominates the works only of post-Hizen Tadayoshi generations. At the same time you start seeing a shift towards denser and better itame-nagare. On the other hand, later into shinto they are seldom nijimei. By default for me a nijimei like this is between Eiroku and Genna.

 

I would ask a few questions - it is pure suguha? If yes, its almost certainly not earlier than Eiroku. If it has norare-midare-gunome-whatever you call it, can be earlier. Does it have hotsure or well defined nie crystals at habuchi? If yes, its late. If no, likely earlier. Is jigane somewhat wide featured in place, possibly with shirake utsuri, with not a lot of hotsure? If yes, likely early. If jigane is bright and itame dominated, with very well defined Rai-Hizen-like dashes in nie - certainly late.

 

That is very detailed and useful information indeed. The blade will need careful examination to look for the features you mentioned and may be a bit above my ability. The large gap in time is certainly noticeable and would explain why I can’t find references to this smith if the NBTHK are correct about it being a Takada work. Thank you for the nice contribution. 

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That's a classic Takada signature I would think - bold, large, deep and centered and a classic Takada name.

Not being a specialist:

Their work just varies a lot and thus can be difficult to pointpoint to a specific generation. Nambokucho ones typically have strong Yamato feel, but in ko nie, with lots of variations of hamon which you can probably call gunome or midare, and masame is not particularly strong. In early Muromachi you would expect more of the same, but even a tad less nie(some are pure nioi based with relateively wide and white nioi-guchi) and with somewhat larger featured jigane. Those would not be pure suguha.

The problem is that occasionally they would decide to do Bizen imitation or something else, but here we talk about suguha so it makes things easy.

Then they started to churn out a lot of blades around 1550. To be honest, almost everything signed is actually good quality, unsigned things attributed by NBTHK are absolutely random. The issue is that besides Yamato-Soshu stuff which was their early tradition they started to do full blown Soshu pieces and later also Bizen works, so at this point the style is complicated.

But then the story goes some of their own worked with shodai Tadayoshi and you clearly see the very best examples after that time are all pure suguha and very bright and consistent itame with ji nie, very close to Hizen but tends to have distinctive "scratched appearance". They also made effort to show some nie at habuchi - either as hotsure in which case jigane has nagare or as Rai-like round ko nie foam, in which case the jigane will be pure itame.

 

Hope that helps.

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1 hour ago, Rivkin said:

That's a classic Takada signature I would think - bold, large, deep and centered and a classic Takada name.

Not being a specialist:

Their work just varies a lot and thus can be difficult to pointpoint to a specific generation. Nambokucho ones typically have strong Yamato feel, but in ko nie, with lots of variations of hamon which you can probably call gunome or midare, and masame is not particularly strong. In early Muromachi you would expect more of the same, but even a tad less nie(some are pure nioi based with relateively wide and white nioi-guchi) and with somewhat larger featured jigane. Those would not be pure suguha.

The problem is that occasionally they would decide to do Bizen imitation or something else, but here we talk about suguha so it makes things easy.

Then they started to churn out a lot of blades around 1550. To be honest, almost everything signed is actually good quality, unsigned things attributed by NBTHK are absolutely random. The issue is that besides Yamato-Soshu stuff which was their early tradition they started to do full blown Soshu pieces and later also Bizen works, so at this point the style is complicated.

But then the story goes some of their own worked with shodai Tadayoshi and you clearly see the very best examples after that time are all pure suguha and very bright and consistent itame with ji nie, very close to Hizen but tends to have distinctive "scratched appearance". They also made effort to show some nie at habuchi - either as hotsure in which case jigane has nagare or as Rai-like round ko nie foam, in which case the jigane will be pure itame.

 

Hope that helps.

 

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Just now, Francis Wick said:

 

That is super interesting and helpful information. Clearly you have taken a lot of time to study the school and the subtle differences in productions through different eras and how to identify some of the features that change as time goes on. Thank you very muchThank you very much

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On 10/14/2021 at 3:22 PM, Jussi Ekholm said:

It seems to be attributed to Saneyuki 実行, NBTHK often puts the character inside the square when it is not clear to see.

 

http://www.sho-shin.com/sai12.htm

 

Generally, the term Takada indicates the Koto period, and Fujiwara indicates the Edo period with NBTHK papers. 

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