Jūyō 68 Results

[Jussi Ekholm]

NBTHK released the results of 68th Jūyō session 12.12. and can be found here: https://www.touken.or.jp/Portals/0/第68回重要刀剣等指定品発表.pdf

 

I have always so much fun going through the results and like usual I wrote them out in western alphabet similar to the index I have made. Largest change to me was changing the format of whole index to Yu Mincho font (some very rare kanji are still in various fonts), as I got annoyed that there was continuous mix up of fonts. I will attach the 68th session PDF to here.

 

Some very interesting items passed this time as usual, in general this seems to have been very picky session again as only 94 items passed from the 1097 items sent in. As I am not a fittings guy I am not 100% sure on reading of few of the rare signatures as I couldn't find any references online to them.

Jūyō 68.pdf

[Promo]

Jussi,

 

since you made that great job on translating the Juyo 68 Shinsa with mentioning how many items were submitted compared to how many were neglected - do you also have these numbers for previous years? To me this is statistically extremely interesting that this year they only granted Juyo to 8,57% (94/1097) of the items submitted. would be keen to know if this is anyway a general rule, or if they were less strict in earlier years, or if this might be a result to much more items submitted compared to earlier sessions.

[John C]

3 hours ago, Promo said:

To me this is statistically extremely interesting

Georg: I think you would have to control for 1) the same panel doing the judging, and 2) the quality of items being submitted to that panel. Higher quality would obviously mean higher acceptance rate, regardless of the number submitted. Unfortunately, the quality of submissions is probably not known. But looking at the acceptance rate for the same panel over time may give you an indication of overall quality of items submitted. In this case, the acceptance rate is the dependent variable and the panel of same judges the independent variable. Quality of items would be a control variable, if you could figure out how to measure that. 

 

John C.

[Gakusee]

The short answer is that this year they passed fewer items proportionately (less than 10%) while from memory the pass rate previously was 10-12% more recently. This excludes the notorious 1970s when the pass rate was much higher. 

[Promo]

@John C I do know this is not mathematics where the panel is sitting and thinking "we still have to pick additional four items to reach our ratio", yet IMHO these numbers are very interesting if looked at a longer time, not picking one single year and making judges from this.

[John C]

Another interesting idea that may affect the ratio of the accepted swords was discussed on another thread, though I cannot remember where. But essentially, the discussion centered on whether or not acceptance rate was more subjective than it should be; meaning swords were not compared to a set standard but rather to other swords submitted in that particular shinsa. I might be misremembering, however. 

John C.

[Jussi Ekholm]

Here are the last 6 Jūyō & 3 TJ sessions. As I have the magazines to way back, I could go back quite far in history. While these numbers don't actually tell much by themselves it is fun little thing to have. I guess many of us are trying to figure out mystic and logic in Jūyō shinsa. I do think it is fun to put heads together and try to figure out things.

 

68

Total – 1097 sent – 94 passed = 8,6%

Swords – 817 sent – 66 passed = 8,1%

Koshirae – 39 sent – 6 passed = 15,4%

Tosogu – 241 sent – 22 passed = 9,1%

 

67

Total – 1163 sent – 167 passed = 14,4%

Swords – 852 sent – 111 passed = 13,0%

Koshirae – 50 sent – 11 passed = 22,0%

Tosogu – 261 sent – 45 passed = 17,2%

 

66

Total – 1131 sent – 164 passed = 14,5%

Swords – 805 sent – 119 passed = 14,8%

Koshirae – 58 sent – 8 passed = 13,8%

Tosogu – 268 sent – 37 passed = 13,8%

 

65

Total – 1341 sent – 138 passed = 10,3%

Swords – 1003 sent – 101 passed = 10,1%

Koshirae – 45 sent – 8 passed = 17,8%

Tosogu – 293 sent – 29 passed = 9,9%

 

64

Total – 1287 sent – 168 passed = 13,1%

Swords – 923 sent – 135 passed = 14,6%

Koshirae – 64 sent – 8 passed = 12,5%

Tosogu – 300 sent – 25 passed = 8,3%

 

63

Total – 1079 sent – 184 passed = 17,1%

Swords – 760 sent – 140 passed = 18,4%

Koshirae – 35 sent – 8 passed = 22,9%

Tosogu – 284 sent – 36 passed = 12,7%

 

TJ 27

Total – 456 sent – 42 passed = 9,2%

Swords – 378 sent – 35 passed = 9,3%

Koshirae – 19 sent – 1 passed = 5,3%

Tosogu – 59 sent – 6 passed = 10,2%

 

TJ 26

Total – 412 sent – 51 passed = 12,4%

Swords – 364 sent – 41 passed = 11,3%

Koshirae – 14 sent – 4 passed = 28,6%

Tosogu – 34 sent – 6 passed = 17,6%

 

TJ 25

Total – 404 sent – 77 passed = 19,1%

Swords – 343 sent – 70 passed = 20,4%

Koshirae – 19 sent – 3 passed = 15,8%

Tosogu – 42 sent – 4 passed = 9,5%

[John C]

On 12/28/2022 at 2:41 PM, Gakusee said:

The short answer is that this year they passed fewer items proportionately (less than 10%) while from memory the pass rate previously was 10-12% more recently.

So is there an "unwritten" pass ratio or is this a reflection of what is typically sent to the panel?

John C. 

[Wim V]

Dear all,

 

I started this juyo and tokuju "pass rate exercise" already a while ago, based on the results published in Token Bijutsu, and you can find my overview in attachment.  For Juyo the table is not complete as my collection of Token Bijutsu only goes back to 1968, for some years the results are not listed in the magazine (for example juyo sessions 21 and 22) and I don't have the Zufu books.

 

As some already have mentioned, you can see that until juyo 28 the pass rate was indeed quite high (sometimes over 50%).  From juyo 29 on the pass rate seems to be more around 10 - 15%.

 

Wim

NBTHK_Juyo_Shinsa.pdf

[Jussi Ekholm]

That is amazing Wim

[Rivkin]

I will be shooting myself in a foot since my current ownership is skewed towards the early sessions...

But everytime somebody big on a shinsa dies the appraisals and customs do change a lot. Sometimes not right away, but within couple of years they do. You suddenly see different names being used and specific judgements leaning more on a conservative or liberal side. These institutions are very persona based, unfortunately, and each generation tends to have its own scenario. Comparing Juyo received today to the one received 50 years ago is difficult.

[Promo]

These numbers are very interesting. It seems that the submissions to the last Shinsa (speaking of totals) were way less than the previous five sessions, as well as even the pass ratio was much less than previous - for any type of submission.

On 12/30/2022 at 8:46 PM, John C said:

meaning swords were not compared to a set standard but rather to other swords submitted in that particular shinsa. I might be misremembering, however.

If this was the case, then the approximate percentage should stay the same. What it didn't. Not saying they are not compared, but it simply cannot be the only thing they consider.

 

So this just leaves the conclusion they either got stricter, or the panel changed and the current jury has higher quality levels than previously (also kind of stricter), or the submissions are getting of less quality (theoretically spoken, the older items are not getting more, many have been already submitted in earlier years, so quite likely the submissions are of less quality than probably 20 years ago). Or a mixture of all of that.

 

PS: It seems Juyo 63 was also with less swords passing, whereas the years prior and post had higher acceptance rates. Very isolated view, but it seems two years with higher acceptance rates are followed by one strict year. At least this applied twice in the last six years. Keen to see for the next three years if this is just statistics, or more :).

[John C]

6 hours ago, Promo said:

So this just leaves the conclusion they either got stricter, or the panel changed and the current jury has higher quality levels than previously (also kind of stricter),

It could be. I know in terms of college class grading, there is always a certain percentage of students who get A's, B's, F's etc. If a particular teacher (let's say the shinsa judge in this case), has a higher percentage of either A's or F's than other teachers, the class is sometimes audited to find out why because these percentages are fairly consistent over time, irrespective of class size (number of swords submitted in this case). 

Since I know absolutely nothing about how a shinsa works, I am speaking purely hypothetically. Just speaking about how a certain percentage of passed swords may be derived.

John C.

[DRDave]

The 

On 1/1/2023 at 9:16 AM, Wim V said:

Dear all,

 

I started this juyo and tokuju "pass rate exercise" already a while ago, based on the results published in Token Bijutsu, and you can find my overview in attachment.  For Juyo the table is not complete as my collection of Token Bijutsu only goes back to 1968, for some years the results are not listed in the magazine (for example juyo sessions 21 and 22) and I don't have the Zufu books.

 

As some already have mentioned, you can see that until juyo 28 the pass rate was indeed quite high (sometimes over 50%).  From juyo 29 on the pass rate seems to be more around 10 - 15%.

 

Wim

NBTHK_Juyo_Shinsa.pdf 221.76 kB · 25 downloads

Thanks for the info!  Yes, the difference between Juyo 28 and 29 is remarkable, both in quantity submitted and percentage accepted.  Looking at your data with those two sessions as a diving point; and presuming I haven't made an error, results in the following:

10 sessions up to and including 28 - Average number submitted = 886   Average passed = 396  Average % passed = 44.7

40 sessions starting at 29 and up -  Average number submitted = 1373  Average passed = 194  Average % passed =  14.13

 

 

[John C]

On 1/4/2023 at 7:18 AM, Promo said:

(theoretically spoken, the older items are not getting more, many have been already submitted in earlier years, so quite likely the submissions are of less quality than probably 20 years ago)

This could be the explanation when looking at David D.'s breakdown above. But it is important to remember that there were more blades made before 1868 than after. So much of what is being submitted should come from roughly the same time period. It is true, however, that there may be blades of less quality submitted over time as the "good" blades pass shinsa and "bad" ones continue to get re-submitted. I suspect, however, that would not account for much of the discrepancy. I think the answer lies elsewhere.

John C.

[Tom Darling]

Jussi,  thank you for the follow up on the updated list.

 

Tom