Popular Post Hoshi Posted February 18 Popular Post Report Posted February 18 Hello everyone, TLDR: Interested in Japanese swords and fittings? I made this to help the field. Open nihontowatch.com on your phone browser, and add to home screen (Share → Add to Home Screen). Thank me later. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I have been thinking for quite some time about the future of our field. I have been blessed with incredible mentors and opportunities, most notably the late Darcy Brockbank, who was so generous in sharing his knowledge. Since his tragic passing, I have felt a responsibility to carry that work forward. What I am about to present, I built as an homage to his memory. Our field has problems. We operate in a field of extraordinary depth without being equipped with the knowledge and tools to understand what we're looking at when we browse the market. Refreshing dozens of dealer websites every week, most in Japanese, copy-pasting listings into translation apps, pinching to zoom on sites built twenty years ago — market awareness is just painful and you miss things constantly. You spend an hour and walk away unsure you have seen everything. And this is just the market experience. The deeper problem is access to knowledge. There are no catalogues raisonnés for artists. Yuhindo would have grown into it — it was planned. But alas, Yuhindo is no more. No way to know, with any confidence, whether a price is reasonable without decades of experience or tens of thousands of dollars invested in published references. No way to know why something costs what it does. Communication with Japanese dealers remains daunting for most. No easy way to know who is a reputable dealer. The barrier to entry is simply too high, and this friction keeps our field artificially small. Fine art has Artnet. Watches have Chrono24. Antiquarian books have AbeBooks — markets with comparable depth and comparable opacity, served by platforms that bring transparency and accessibility. These fields have benefited immensely: they have enabled new entrants in droves to collect in confidence. Our field needs more knowledge and transparency to build interest and trust.Japanese swords and fittings. Eight hundred years of collecting history at the highest levels. The category that contains the most national treasures in Japan. The indefatigable search for perfection of an entire civilization. And yet, we have nothing. This had to change. As I write this, there are 3,021 Nihonto and 1,607 Tosogu items for sale across 44 dealers, Japanese and international, in a single searchable interface. Every listing is structured with attribution, certification, measurements, and artist intelligence data. NihontoWatch is on track to follow 100% of the online market for genuine items with NBTHK papers. Refreshed 12 times a day. Everything is translated and structured, as it trickles in live. But what is this worth, if it's so hard to know what you're looking at? Especially for newcomers, it is so hard to tell what you're looking at. This is where the magic is. I am nostalgic of reading through Yuhindo's artist descriptions. It made me deeply appreciate the field. It got me in. NihontoWatch scales this experience and creates something approaching a living catalogue raisonné for every Tosogu and Nihonto artist. It matches every listing against a database combining the complete Juyo, Tokubetsu Juyo, Juyo bunkazai, Kokuho, and Gyobutsu designation data — over 23,000 items at the highest level, with rich text in classical Japanese. This data is then processed, synthesized, and presented into NihontoWatch's artist directory in a way that is respectful of the NBTHK's copyright. With this, you'll be able to discover a maker's historical reputation through quantitative analysis of exhaustive provenance records, in ways never seen before. Over time, all of these artist pages will come alive, forming an ever-expanding knowledge base. - How rare is it? - How many Tokuju? - How many designated works ranked Juyo and above? - Why is this important? - Where does it rank relative to other works? - What is for sale right now? - What was for sale recently? All the answers are in. These are questions that come up constantly in our community, and until now, answering them required years of collecting published references worth tens of thousands of dollars, and patiently indexing them with post-its or one-by-one in a spreadsheet. Only professional dealers or major collectors could afford to do this. This is a BETA, so there are errors. The more obscure the artist, the higher the error rate, and there are still basic errors I need to fix with some famous artists. A lot of algorithmic tinkering and curation ahead. It will keep getting better with your feedback. See the results for yourselves: - Soshu Masamune: https://nihontowatch.com/artists/masamune-MAS590 - Ichimonji school: https://nihontowatch.com/artists/NS-Ichimonji - Yasuchika (tosogu): https://nihontowatch.com/artists/yasuchika-TSU001 - Goto school: https://nihontowatch.com/artists/NS-Goto Click one and explore the designations, the provenance abalysis, the measurement distributions. This is just a first shot — over time this data will grow. Here is one where I have published an item I studied for my Substack article on Mitsutada: - Osafune Mitsutada: https://nihontowatch.com/artists/mitsutada-MIT281 Imagine Yuhindo, but with a page for every artist and every piece ever captured on camera. Saw a national treasure at an exhibition in Japan? Share your photos on NihontoWatch's artist catalogue. In the future, owners of particular works will be able to publish them to the artist's catalogue. Think of it as a growing, community-curated knowledge base for every artist in the field. And so much more Browse and filter: Designation, dealer, item type, school, province — all filterable, all instant. Prices display in JPY, USD, or EUR. Every filter combination is a shareable URL. The sold archive tracks thousands of items for pricing research. And it works for every budget, for collectors at every level. - All Tokubetsu Juyo Nihonto on the market - All Tsuba with Hozon or Tokubetsu Hozon, maximum price $2,000 Setsumei translations: On some items, you can press the floating book icon on any Juyo item to toggle between photos and the Juyo setsumei translated text. For most Juyo and above items, the NBTHK evaluation text from the dealer's page is identified by computer vision and translated into English. It will fail if the dealer has not posted the Juyo Zufu extract, but in the majority of cases they do, and the result is remarkably accurate. Do use responsibly — the quality is great, but not perfect. Always purchase professional translation from Markus Sesko when contemplating the purchase of a Juyo-designated piece. Search alerts: Never miss an item again. Define keywords and filters and save them. NihontoWatch will run your search every 15 minutes, and when something new appears, immediately send you an alert email. In practice, missing a listing that fits your interests becomes almost impossible. Tip: I recommend avoiding overly specific queries. "Juyo tsuba" or "Kamakura signed tachi" are safer than specific artists such as "Yozozaemon Sukesada," which would be more fickle. Broad queries give you the best market coverage. Inquiry emails: Press "Inquire" on any listing to draft a professional inquiry in Japanese. Handles etiquette and formality, and can help you request the 10% consumption tax exemption available to overseas buyers. Did you even know you could get 10% off? How many new entrants lost 10% on this, at least at the beginning? I for one did. I've seen countless high spenders neglect to request it while shopping across Japanese galleries. Glossary: The technical language of Nihonto and Tosogu is deep and specialized — needlessly so for non-Japanese speakers. Anytime a technical term comes up, you can click and see what it means. Over 1,200 terms, searchable, automatically linked from the setsumei translations. Who remembers always keeping an index open to keep track of terms when studying Juyo items? https://nihontowatch.com/glossary How best to use NihontoWatch While it works wonders on desktop, NihontoWatch works most beautifully on your phone. I use it every day — it feels like I have the market in my pocket. Open nihontowatch.com on your phone, hit Share → Add to Home Screen. And voila, you have an app. It becomes something you check with your morning coffee, the way one might check the news. A word of caution The data has errors — always verify independently. This is a tool to explore the market, not a substitute for critical thinking. If it looks too good to be true, it likely is, and this system can't easily correct online misrepresentations. Old listings where dealers have not marked items as "SOLD" will still appear as available. Listing errors will slip through, but data quality improves continuously as the system learns over time. Get involved - Missing a listing or dealer you like? PM me or post here. - Bug? PM me or post here with steps to reproduce. - Dream feature request? Reply in this thread. I will keep this thread active and share major updates when time permits. Everything is free right now, and will remain so until ready for official release. This is no trivial task, and it is expensive to operate — it will need to be covered in some way down the line. It will be tempting to keep it for yourself. But if we want our field to grow, we must share knowledge and expand market access and transparency. The single most impactful thing you can do right now is help others discover and use the tool. Share it with your study group. Share it with your collecting circle. Share it with a friend who has been curious about Nihonto and Tosogu but found the barrier to entry too high. That barrier just got a lot lower. Farewell, Darcy. This is for the teacher in you. Hoshi 8 31 7 4 Quote
Jussi Ekholm Posted February 18 Report Posted February 18 I think the clapping emoji sums it up pretty well. This is an amazing resource. The tracking of dealer pages automatically is just amazing. And that is just one of the features 2 Quote
Sebuh Posted February 18 Report Posted February 18 amazing work Hoshi! I think you made Darcy very, very proud! Quote
nulldevice Posted February 18 Report Posted February 18 Wonderful resource for buyers of nihonto and tosogu alike! Great work Hoshi, I’ll be following this closely. Quote
Hokke Posted February 18 Report Posted February 18 Well done Super user friendly and easy to navigate. The only thing I would consider adding is a currency exchange calculator, similar to the one on Aoi. Quote
Steve Waszak Posted February 18 Report Posted February 18 Incredible work, Hoshi, not just in execution, but in conception. Kudos is not a strong enough word. Thank you. Quote
Toryu2020 Posted February 18 Report Posted February 18 One item for the wish list - this gets flagged for "Weapons" on my work computer wish there was a way to get around that. Not that I look at Nihonto while I am at work... 2 Quote
Hector Posted February 19 Report Posted February 19 This is an absolutely fantastic resource Hoshi - thank you! (I apologize if I'm not using your actual birth name but I can see no other name to use. m(_ _)m) Quote
BrentC Posted February 19 Report Posted February 19 Outstanding! What an accomplishment. Congratulations and thank you very much! Quote
cluckdaddy76 Posted February 19 Report Posted February 19 Thank you for this Hoshi, absolutely amazing work!!!!! I am playing with it now on my phone. Jason Quote
DanielLee Posted February 19 Report Posted February 19 Very cool, this tool will be invaluable thanks for creating it! Quote
Brian Posted February 19 Report Posted February 19 Incredible work, lately the study of Nihonto and resources available have made gigantic leaps and bounds. I'm pinning this for now, and we'll work out how to integrate a link in a more prominent place. 3 Quote
Lewis B Posted February 19 Report Posted February 19 3 hours ago, Brian said: Incredible work, lately the study of Nihonto and resources available have made gigantic leaps and bounds. I'm pinning this for now, and we'll work out how to integrate a link in a more prominent place. As a noob to nihonto collecting and study I feel I've entered in what could be described as a golden era. There are so many English language resources (thanks in no small part to Markus Sesko @Markus) and individuals like @Hoshi, @nulldevice and @Jussi Ekholm, just to name four. Special mention to @Brano for his incredible photography of some spectacular grandmaster swords. One might argure that doing the hard yards is part of the initiation into Nihonto, but having access to this reference material at our fingertips will certainly enourage others to dip their toe in the pool. Once that spark ignites a lifelong passion will follow. We can count ourselves as the lucky ones. 3 1 Quote
Grey Doffin Posted February 19 Report Posted February 19 Hi Hoshi, I've had only a quick look but that was quite interesting. One suggestion: your choices for background and text colors make some of your text nearly invisible to my old eyes. Thanks, Grey 2 Quote
eternal_newbie Posted February 19 Report Posted February 19 25 minutes ago, Grey Doffin said: One suggestion: your choices for background and text colors make some of your text nearly invisible to my old eyes. There's a small icon near the top that will let you change colour schemes; I do think this could be more obvious/intuitive, and it doesn't change that some of the fonts are a little wispy at high resolutions (i.e. on a monitor instead of a phone). Quote
Hoshi Posted February 19 Author Report Posted February 19 Hello, Quote I've had only a quick look but that was quite interesting. One suggestion: your choices for background and text colors make some of your text nearly invisible to my old eyes. Thanks, Grey Great feedback. I added a special UI mode for accessibility. It's called "Classic" Click the right most icon: In the dropdown, select "Classic" And from there, it should be light mode with large fonts. I hope this helps. Currency conversion is already implemented, and takes the live FOREX from the Frankfurt exchange. In the filter panel, on desktop and mobile, select: Keep the feedback flowing, it helps tremendously. Enjoy everyone, Hoshi 4 2 1 Quote
Hokke Posted February 19 Report Posted February 19 2 hours ago, Hoshi said: Currency conversion is already implemented, and takes the live FOREX from the Frankfurt exchange. In the filter panel, on desktop and mobile, select: Thank you Hoshi, I actually found it (embarrassingly) a while after I made my comment but it was too late to edit my post. My fault for not looking carefully enough. Quote
BjornLundin Posted February 19 Report Posted February 19 Amazing, just tried it out! Several Morimitsu blade to drool over. Quote
Gakusee Posted February 19 Report Posted February 19 Great democratisation of information, Prometheus 3 Quote
MassiveMoonHeh Posted February 20 Report Posted February 20 On 2/19/2026 at 3:53 AM, Hoshi said: Open nihontowatch.com on your phone, hit Share → Add to Home Screen. To add NihontoWatch app icon on Android: Open nihontowatch.com on your phone, click on the three-dot menu and select Add to home screen. 1 1 Quote
Lukrez Posted February 20 Report Posted February 20 Looks like you’ve been under the radar for a while, ignored all the noise, and now back with a vengeance, really laying the hammer down I’ve been enjoying the site for some time, and I haven’t noticed any major issues. Minor points — like the photos initially overlapping with the descriptions — you’ve already corrected on your own. I think it’s a good moment to say that I hope you’ll continue contributing here for a long time 1 1 Quote
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