Kacchushi tsuba: questions about mimi

[OceanoNox]

I have found recently some old articles on the National Diet Library (I had to register, but it took less than a week).

One article was published in 1954 in the journal "Museum" from the National Museum of Tokyo, by a Mr. Sato (Museum, 東京国立博物館編, 通号36, 1954-03, 佐藤貫一).

He writes that most kacchushi tsuba have a dotemimi (土手耳) and the other prominent style is uchikaeshimimi (打返耳). From my understanding, the uchikaeshi is like a mushroom in cross-section, and the dotemimi looks like thickness was left on the tsuba mimi.

My questions are:

➀ Is my understanding of the shape correct?

② How were they produced? Just by the shape and name, it seems the uchikaeshimimi was made simply by hitting the mimi towards the center of the tsuba until it flared. But I am not sure about the dotemimi: Did they carve the center of the tsuba to make the center thinner and leave the thicker mimi? Did they forge the center until it was uniform and thinner than the mimi? Or was a process similar to the uchikaeshi but with some heating and possibly carving involved to obtain the resulting shape?

 

※ The amount of old documents available for free after registration was mind boggling. I also found a book from 1963 (鐔集成 by 中村鉄青) where they did hardness testing on over 50 tsuba (the Vickers hardness varied wildly from about 77HV to more than 200HV, which is in line with some of the data gathered by Savage and Smith, implying that the material ranged from relatively pure and annealed iron to heavily worked iron or mild steel).

[Spartancrest]

Hi  Arnaud, from what I have seen and done myself many rims were hammered up and sometimes turned  over to give the uchikaeshi effect. Dote-mimi are sometimes hollow to reduce the weight and must have been put on in a similar way as some fukurins [like odawara etc.] Some tsuba get their raised rim by carving away the plate either towards the seppa-dai or away from it. The study of rims could be a study in itself!

 Some images to show the styles.

[OceanoNox]

Hi Dale, thank you for the reply.

This is indeed very interesting, and a deeper subject than I expected. I had, naively perhaps, thought that kacchushi tsuba would not have such complex processing method as fukurin (I actually expected, conversely to what the article states, that uchikaeshimimi was the dominant style).

 

[ROKUJURO]

In my limited experience, the MIMI in KO-KACHUSHI TSUBA was never produced by carving out material on the plate, but by techniques that were used in armour making as well. Just to add for information.