Help Needed - Fake or Genuine Koshirae??

[Curran]

12 hours ago, Marcus Devonport said:

Thank you for the kind words.

I'm grateful that such an opportunity came up, as the sword wasn't openly on the market when it was offered to me- I had about given up on Nihonto hunting, given how infrequent the UK market can be. 

Because of this, even average blades reach astronomical prices. 

 

May look further into the yoshioka tradition, Ill hopefully start seeing some resemblances. 

What leads you in the direction of this particular school, Curran? As a beginner, interested in learning as much as I can

 

One way of looking at it:

 Top level guys doing fittings for the govt Tokugawa types  go to  =      Goto, individually hand tooled stuff

 Higher officials needing work appropriate gear                   go to     =    Yoshioka shop,  good formal. Some minor time saving shortcuts  ex: https://www.aoijapan.com/kozuka-kogatana-yoshioka-inabasuke/

 Other bureaucrats needing a rig, but a bit more cost       go to     =       Yasuda shop,  also pretty good- but maybe more gold plated or lacking in specifics of design.  Example:  https://www.aoijapan.com/kozuka-mumeiyasuda/

 

Or ... Fifth Avenue NYC, vs Off Fifth Avenue, vs Filene's Basement / Century 21.

All decent, but how bespoke is it?

 

You have Tokugawa mon on the kozuka and kogai.  They look very clean yet not too ostentatious in execution.  If you look at the nanako, probably it is very uniform and consistently the same size.

Yoshioka work is often very clean and strongly uniform elements in the execution. Put another way, they had High quality control. 

Often unsigned. When they wanted to, they could kick it up a notch or two- so not all Yoshioka work is the same level.

 

Tokugawa mon+ fairly formal with no signs of gold loss + very precise nanako  =>  first guess is Yoshioka.

 

[Marcus Devonport]

Thanks Curran, appreciate you putting this together 😁 a very well put summary, in what can otherwise be an overwhelming topic of study. 

 

I can definitely see the plausibility of the pair being yoshioka, after looking over the examples.

Given the precise, uniform application of the nanako; I feel that Yoshioka school would be the best possible scenario.