Sayagaki Numbers

[Jussi Ekholm]

Well I got an idea for this from another thread that I replied recently. I was mostly wondering if there has ever been mention about how many sayagaki some of the great Japanese sword persons have written, mostly I have Kanzan,Kunzan and Tanobe (maybe Honami in general) in mind. I know many members of this forum have talked lots of things with Tanobe and have sayagaki written by him. I was wondering if someone has ever asked how many sayagaki he has written?

 

I have been trying to keep track of the old swords that have their sayagaki and I have found great numbers of them. However they have of course written sayagaki to swords of all ages and so I have skipped a lot of their sayagaki.

[eternal_newbie]

One thing to be careful of is that some blades were retrofitted into shirasaya with sayagaki for another blade.

[Rivkin]

Hard to estimate because its a non-random selection which tends to cluster around upper TH and Juyo, but one can estimate the ratio between three using just Juyo swords and then guess the number of sayagaki for one of them getting all three. My pure guesstimate would be about 1,200 for Kanzan, 100 for Kunzan and 300 for Tanobe sensei.

[Brano]

Well - I think the number of sayagaki from Tanobe-sensei will be in the thousands rather than hundreds

The number from Dr. Honma ( Kunzan ) will probably be higher too when we look at Markus' Kanto HibiSho books.

 

[Rivkin]

8 hours ago, Brano said:

Well - I think the number of sayagaki from Tanobe-sensei will be in the thousands rather than hundreds

The number from Dr. Honma ( Kunzan ) will probably be higher too when we look at Markus' Kanto HibiSho books.

 

I think you are right. 

I scanned the sword descriptions pdfs I stored away and got roughly the ratio 12:1:3.5... With a caveat that my pdfs are obviously not representative and if anything they probably over-represent Kunzan and potentially Kanzan. If I take Tanobe-sensei's sayagaki at 3000 that would be 600-1,000 for Kunzan and 25-36,000 for Kanzan.

[Jussi Ekholm]

Well I admit years ago I used to think that in order for one of the great sword teachers to write a sayagaki the sword would have to be absolutely spectacular. Now with more years under my belt I've understood that is not the correct view as there are blades of varying quality that have their sayagaki. Well of course the top and higher class swords are better represented as they are the swords people most likely would want to show to the teachers.

 

Few years ago I started putting a note if the sword has a sayagaki for my data. However that is just for swords until roughly to mid-Muromachi. So everything that is Middle Muromachi period or later I have skipped, which means a lot of sayagaki that I have seen for example in very good late Muromachi and Edo period swords. Still I am bit surprised the numbers I have even gotten so far, as I think I have just small amount of their sayagaki and they have written so many more (I am just scratching the surface of Kunzans Kantō Hibishō series and I do think the series has 2,500+ swords in total).

 

Tanobe - 481 sayagaki

Kunzan - 439 sayagaki

Kanzan - 167 sayagaki

 

While there was really not a specific point for the thread I am just curious if for example someone would have asked from Tanobe or if he even knows how many sayagaki he has written, as it must be quite large number. I do think having sayagaki from them would be extremely valuable addon to the sword. Of course that value aspect can also introduce some shenanigans like Rohan said fitting a different sword to the shirasaya, or then faking the sayagaki, and other stuff too like alterations. In Kantō Hibishō Kunzan writes in 1969 for a Tegai Kanenaga tachi that last year he wrote a sayagaki for it and in it mentioned it was saiha but seeing it again someone had erased those letters from sayagaki. 

[eternal_newbie]

1 hour ago, Jussi Ekholm said:

Now with more years under my belt I've understood that is not the correct view as there are blades of varying quality that have their sayagaki.

 

Tanobe-sensei is somewhat of an outlier compared to historical appraisers in that his sayagaki, when he approves of the blade or finds it interesting in some way, have essentially a setsumei with some thoughts that almost count as a classification level on their own (see past arguments over what "chin chin, cho cho" means compared to swords that don't have it); Kunzan and Kanzan tended to be much more of an attribution/authentication than a commentary. So in a sense there's a value-add in getting a sayagaki done by him because in addition to being a second opinion, often you'll find insights in there that aren't in the Juyo setsumei, or even (if you're lucky) an implication that the NBTHK's attribution was a bit too conservative.

[Sukaira]

Yeah I am not sure what the standard is for Tanzan/Tanobe to do a sayagaki, but just as an example...I  currently have 5 blades (2 Koto, 1 Shinto, 2 Shinshinto) in Japan right now getting sayagaki from Tanobe, plus 1 already here with me...so I would have to go with the higher numbers in the thousand(s)

Edited Wednesday at 01:55 AM by Sukaira