Den Norishige with possible umegane?

[eternal_newbie]

7 minutes ago, Lewis B said:

Doesn't this describe mitsumune 三棟となる。

 

I was referring to the English listing: https://sword-auction.com/en/product/32499/as26228-tachi：-mumei-unsigned-den-tametsugu-為継the-50th-nbthk-juyo-token/; now that I look at it, the Japanese listing does indeed say mitsu-mune.

 

But yes, I wouldn't put too much faith in the listing text on Aoi. Presumably because of the high blade turnover (2-3 per day at least) there's often mistakes in the description and inconsistencies between the Japanese and English versions.

[Lewis B]

Ah OK, I see why there was a discrepancy. I was using the Japanese page.

[Sebuh]

16 hours ago, Tetsu said:

 

 

RVA Katana tried to auction snipe me by out-bidding 90 seconds before the end of auction, the auction history tells all.  He'll need to stick with doing more TikTok videos

 

This cracked me up, I see those videos every other day 

[Brian]

His videos on TT do a lot for education, and I find him a pleasant guy who does have a passion. I'm glad to have him on TikTok, and I know he looks up to Ray Singer for advice.
Enjoy watching his stuff.

[Tetsu]

10 hours ago, Lewis B said:

Smart choice and worth the wait. I was tempted myself but timing was bad. I would seriously consider getting a Sayagaki done by Tanobe while its still in Japan. Look forward to seeing some photos when you receive it. 

 

As for potential thefts. Ask Tsurata to hide an airtag in the box. Cheap insurance. 

Thanks @Lewis B, good suggestions.  I wouldn't know how to engage Tanobe Sensei (I'm guessing Tsurata-san does), and wonder how long of a backlog he has - I'm guessing maybe 3-6 months?

 

Funny story regarding US Customs.  I recall seeing stories here regarding theft in customs (one in particular from @Rivkin comes to mind), and then one day about 3 years ago, I had a set of Yoroi (armor) shipped from Japan.  At the time, there was also an increase in scam calls of various sorts, but on the very afternoon of delivery, I got a call from someone with a native English speaking voice claiming to be from customs, asking for information.  Like most Gen X, I wasn't opposed to answering the phone (although more recently, forced to filter unknown calls), and hadn't previously gotten a "customs" call.  The timing was way too close to be a coincidence, IMO information was being sold by an employee from within customs.  My mind went into buffer overrun mode, "...given the timing, maybe the call is legit?" which was probably their intent.  Second question in, they asked something they should have already known.  I addressed them as a scammer and hung up.  2 hours later, my Yoroi arrived.  

[Tetsu]

4 hours ago, Brian said:

His videos on TT do a lot for education, and I find him a pleasant guy who does have a passion. I'm glad to have him on TikTok, and I know he looks up to Ray Singer for advice.
Enjoy watching his stuff.

Agreed, John's videos are the only social media content of their kind (much like this site is the only English speaking antique Nihonto), and good for education and community engagement.  For better or worse, ours is a small hobby.  On one hand, I want Nihonto preservation to continue for hundreds of years and beyond - we are all the beneficiaries of generations of Japanese people carefully preserving Nihonto by lamplight, despite a lack of continuous heating, in a land of high humidity - while on the other hand, over-tourism of any hobby isn't great as well.  Case in point, Japan's current over-tourism and all the misbehavior of the unappreciative it brings (starting with Logan Paul, in 2017).  So both under-appreciation and over-appreciation are bad; I'm not sure there is Goldilocks zone, but most of us would agree its better to error on the side of over-appreciation to ensure preservation.

 

While we may find the educator in question endearing, I did not appreciate the auction sniping attempt.  It was underhanded, and something we would all confront if it were a friend, family member, or co-worker.  I left a comment on his most recent YouTube video:  "Will you be providing an informative video about auction sniping, e.g. how to win a week long auction by out-bidding 1-2 minutes before auction close?"  The comment got deleted, I'm probably banned on his channel now.    The truth hurts, he probably learned absolutely nothing, and would do the same thing tomorrow if it meant winning another auction.  I'm still irritated, and there's unlikely to be a single one of us here that wouldn't be irritated as well.

Edited August 2 by Tetsu

[atm]

Aoi Art can arrange for the sayagaki. In my experience, it is done by the time the export permit is approved, so it does not add to the wait.

[Tetsu]

Anyone have any theories as to the source of the Den attribution of the Tametsugu?  @Lewis B provided a lot of insight as to why the shinsa might have veered away from other smiths.

[Jacques]

17 minutes ago, Tetsu said:

Anyone have any theories as to the source of the Den attribution of the Tametsugu?  @Lewis B provided a lot of insight as to why the shinsa might have veered away from other smiths.

[eternal_newbie]

29 minutes ago, Tetsu said:

Anyone have any theories as to the source of the Den attribution of the Tametsugu?  @Lewis B provided a lot of insight as to why the shinsa might have veered away from other smiths.

 

The hada, while not exactly Norishige's matsukawa, is quite strong; perhaps some on the panel thought Kashu Sanekage (the intermediate quality step between Tametsugu and Norishige) might be a possibility.

[Lewis B]

This is purely speculation as its really difficult to fully understand the reasoning behind a Den attribution. Especially reading the Setsumei as the underlying tone is that the Shinsa panel were happy to attribute it to Tametsugu. Since Tametsugu was not the only apprentice working concurrently or quasi-concurrently under Norishige's tutorage it may be tough to decide which smith actually made it, hence the typical NBTHK hedging attribution.

Its clear the sword was forged in the Hokuriku region. As I mentioned Go and Norishige are not strong candidates here. That leaves Tametsugu and the Ko-Uda founder Kunifusa (eldest son of 2nd gen Kunimitsu) who is said to have studied directly under Norishige and considered the most accomplished early Uda smith during the Nanbokucho era. Read the description for this Juyo Ko-Uda blade and you will see some overlap, particuarly the ashi and itame/nagare hada. 

 

https://www.giuseppepiva.com/en/works/katana-in-koshirae-ko-uda/

 

Ashi with flowing nagare-itame hada can be Yamato characteristics. I would seriously look at the possibility of your blade being by a master Ko-Uda smith like Kunifusa, with strong Norishige influence, as a possible explanation for the 'Den' attribution. Ko-Uda also has many examples of long swords with mitsu-mune. Some good discussion here:

 

 

 

[Lewis B]

Some other reading material

 

https://www.sho-shin.com/hoku15.htm

[Lewis B]

Dustin, you should acquaint yourself, if you haven't already done so, with the thoughts around Den from the late Darcy Brockbank and others, here and especially here

Once you've educated yourself a little, you will start to understand the meaning behind a Den attribution. Remember it can also signify a departure from the normal style expected for the smith.

[Tetsu]

5 hours ago, Lewis B said:

Dustin, you should acquaint yourself, if you haven't already done so, with the thoughts around Den from the late Darcy Brockbank and others, here and especially here

Once you've educated yourself a little, you will start to understand the meaning behind a Den attribution. Remember it can also signify a departure from the normal style expected for the smith.

Lewis, thanks so much for your thoughts and valuable insights regarding the Tametsugu Den attribution. 

 

I did read Darcy's explanation of Den in another blog page a couple of years ago.  Archive.org still has post in question, although I believe there may be other archived versions saved by other folks here (maybe Ray?).  https://web.archive.org/web/20210126050136/https://blog.yuhindo.com/den/

 

The common misconception held by most new people to Nihonto (including myself, at some point) is that Den means "lesser," but the nuance runs deep.  Doing my best to summarize in a single sentence:  1.) differences in opinion of NTBHK judges, or some degree of uncertainty, 2.) a tactful correction of a previous Shinsa, 3.) characteristics differing from other swords by the same smith (including both better or lower quality), 4.) the old way of attributing all Mumei blades, and 5.) as you pointed out, a way of mapping quality to a hierarchy of similar smiths.

 

The uncertainty case is the one I find the most amusing, possibly because of the differences in Japanese and western culture.  To paraphrase, "We're less certain than usual that it's a Norishige, but we stand by our assessment that its definitely a Norishige."  I think standing by an attribution in the face of uncertainty or differences of judges' opinions is healthy, a best judgement with a firm stance in NTBHK papering is better than "we're just not sure, no one here will commit to an opinion."  At the end of the day, NTBHK judges and other experts such as Tanobe-sensei and yourself are THE experts.

 

On a similar note, I worry about the future of Shinsa.  Are enough young people stepping up, or is this going to be another dying and lost art, like the forging methods of the Kamakura Period and early Soshu smiths?  Many people dislike AI (in the same way horse and buggy drivers hated cars), but I believe Shinsa is one area AI could/would really excel in.  Even if the NTBHK remains set in their traditional ways in the near term, AI could provide an alternate perspective increasingly over time, and maybe become the expert of the future.  The database of existing NTBHK paper and attributions would be the easy part (whether crowd sourced, or scanned by the NTBHK), what we're missing is a sufficient quantity of high quality sword photos and a standardized method of photographing them (e.g. Aoi-Art's method of top-view scans, plus oblique views with angled lighting to pick up Utsuri, etc.).  

[nulldevice]

51 minutes ago, Tetsu said:

Lewis, thanks so much for your thoughts and valuable insights regarding the Tametsugu Den attribution. 

 

I did read Darcy's explanation of Den in another blog page a couple of years ago.  Archive.org still has post in question, although I believe there may be other archived versions saved by other folks here (maybe Ray?).  https://web.archive.org/web/20210126050136/https://blog.yuhindo.com/den/

 

The common misconception held by most new people to Nihonto (including myself, at some point) is that Den means "lesser," but the nuance runs deep.  Doing my best to summarize in a single sentence:  1.) differences in opinion of NTBHK judges, or some degree of uncertainty, 2.) a tactful correction of a previous Shinsa, 3.) characteristics differing from other swords by the same smith (including both better or lower quality), 4.) the old way of attributing all Mumei blades, and 5.) as you pointed out, a way of mapping quality to a hierarchy of similar smiths.

 

The uncertainty case is the one I find the most amusing, possibly because of the differences in Japanese and western culture.  To paraphrase, "We're less certain than usual that it's a Norishige, but we stand by our assessment that its definitely a Norishige."  I think standing by an attribution in the face of uncertainty or differences of judges' opinions is healthy, a best judgement with a firm stance in NTBHK papering is better than "we're just not sure, no one here will commit to an opinion."  At the end of the day, NTBHK judges and other experts such as Tanobe-sensei and yourself are THE experts.

 

On a similar note, I worry about the future of Shinsa.  Are enough young people stepping up, or is this going to be another dying and lost art, like the forging methods of the Kamakura Period and early Soshu smiths?  Many people dislike AI (in the same way horse and buggy drivers hated cars), but I believe Shinsa is one area AI could/would really excel in.  Even if the NTBHK remains set in their traditional ways in the near term, AI could provide an alternate perspective increasingly over time, and maybe become the expert of the future.  The database of existing NTBHK paper and attributions would be the easy part (whether crowd sourced, or scanned by the NTBHK), what we're missing is a sufficient quantity of high quality sword photos and a standardized method of photographing them (e.g. Aoi-Art's method of top-view scans, plus oblique views with angled lighting to pick up Utsuri, etc.).  

 

Even with Aoi Art's good photos, they're not good enough to properly kantei a blade using AI with those photos. There is far too much nuance to see in a blade that I haven't seen fully captured in any but a very very small handful of photos. For knock it out of the park attributions to big name/distinct smiths you can get close to really great right now. But it quickly falls apart when styles blend and smiths and their students who are very close need a keen eye of an experienced shinsa panel. 

 

I don't even know that the NBTHK has their Hozon and Tokubetsu Hozon papers digitized at this point. Juyo and Tokubetsu Juyo are taken care of as they are part of major publications and are the small hurdle. ~15,000 swords and they're well documented in many formats and places. For Hozon and TH, you're talking about a few million swords. I'd personally love to have every single H/TH blade published digitally as it would make the work I'm doing so much easier! But, alas, in the meantime we work with what we have and even with the Hozon and TH papers alone, you're getting nakago photos and nagasa measurements along with an attribution. Helpful sure, but there is still so much more historic data out there to be mined, collected, matched, and published. Its a labor of love of many people in the hobby who want to take on the technical aspect of it. It's been fun for me, but very tedious at the same time. 

 

Others will probably have different opinions and thoughts on the NBTHK, Shinsa, AI, and all of the rest. 

[eternal_newbie]

8 hours ago, Tetsu said:

To paraphrase, "We're less certain than usual that it's a Norishige, but we stand by our assessment that its definitely a Norishige."

 

A more accurate way to phrase this would be "It's a little less typical than most Norishige work, but Norishige is still the best answer we have".

[eternal_newbie]

I should add; if you're interested in the whys and wherefores of attributions, I strongly recommend the 10 volumes of "Honma 'Kunzan' Junji's Appraisal Diary (Kantō Hibi Shō)" translated by Markus Sesko, available as both hardcover and eBook. While the state of research has progressed since Dr. Honma's days, his insights on why each attribution was made, as well as his various thoughts, clarifications and even reservations, are invaluable if you want to understand how folks on the shinsa panel might come to a particular attribution, as well as the various edge cases and gray areas.

 

For the best price, you can contact Markus directly via email (see https://markussesko.com/about/) or in here, where he goes by the username @Markus.

[Tetsu]

@eternal_newbie I have Markus's book (but have not yet read it), I like how he continues to supplement it online as well. 

[Lewis B]

13 minutes ago, eternal_newbie said:

I should add; if you're interested in the whys and wherefores of attributions, I strongly recommend the 10 volumes of "Honma 'Kunzan' Junji's Appraisal Diary (Kantō Hibi Shō)" translated by Markus Sesko, available as both hardcover and eBook. While the state of research has progressed since Dr. Honma's days, his insights on why each attribution was made, as well as his various thoughts, clarifications and even reservations, are invaluable if you want to understand how folks on the shinsa panel might come to a particular attribution, as well as the various edge cases and gray areas.

 

For the best price, you can contact him directly via email (see https://markussesko.com/about/) or in here, where he goes by the username @Markus.

I would second that. It has been an invaluable resource and saved me from making an expensive mistake, confirming the opinion of a trusted NMB member.

Personally I prefer the electronic version of these resources due to the ease of keyword searching when researching specific schools, smiths and features. 

 

As an aside does anyone know if Tanobe Michihiro is writing a similar Kanto Hibi Sho. With his experience of contemporary sword connoisseurship it would be an essential reference for todays collectors. 

[Tetsu]

9 hours ago, nulldevice said:

 

Even with Aoi Art's good photos, they're not good enough to properly kantei a blade using AI with those photos. There is far too much nuance to see in a blade that I haven't seen fully captured in any but a very very small handful of photos. For knock it out of the park attributions to big name/distinct smiths you can get close to really great right now. But it quickly falls apart when styles blend and smiths and their students who are very close need a keen eye of an experienced shinsa panel. 

 

I don't even know that the NBTHK has their Hozon and Tokubetsu Hozon papers digitized at this point. Juyo and Tokubetsu Juyo are taken care of as they are part of major publications and are the small hurdle. ~15,000 swords and they're well documented in many formats and places. For Hozon and TH, you're talking about a few million swords. I'd personally love to have every single H/TH blade published digitally as it would make the work I'm doing so much easier! But, alas, in the meantime we work with what we have and even with the Hozon and TH papers alone, you're getting nakago photos and nagasa measurements along with an attribution. Helpful sure, but there is still so much more historic data out there to be mined, collected, matched, and published. Its a labor of love of many people in the hobby who want to take on the technical aspect of it. It's been fun for me, but very tedious at the same time. 

 

Others will probably have different opinions and thoughts on the NBTHK, Shinsa, AI, and all of the rest. 

Don't underestimate the efficacy of AI, in many cases, with proper training it can make better decisions than humans, who have limited memories.  If a human can squint at a few pictures and make judgements, so can AI.

 

I've watched AI go from novelty, to summarizing meeting and documents much better than myself, to coding with stunning quality and efficiency, to the point of one of my peers lamenting the death of "the coding craft."  Its accuracy (i.e. avoidance of being confidently incorrect, aka. "hallucinating") is only limited by how much reliable data and resources are available to use (compute units measured as "tokens").  Its main flaw (or reason for breathing sigh of relief, depending who you ask) is AI is not generative, it still needs to learn from human judgements, opinions, and creations.  So if a couple of morons on Reddit make false statements, and their echo chamber is false consensus, AI will parrot this, like a child learning swear words from their parents.

 

A Shinsa novice will need to do much research, while attempting to retain their learnings in short (and hopefully long) term memory.  A Shinsa master will have years of knowledge in memory to apply to judgement, but AI catch up to in a matter of seconds by learning from past Shinsa master assessments.  3 years ago, I dismissed and underestimated what AI could do.  2 years ago, I was surprised, shocked, and wrong.

 

I'm not here to advocate for the morality of AI and what it means to the human experience, I'm only stating its more effective than people realize (or hope against).  For the time being, human Shinsa experts still have a place, AI isn't generative and can't create new judgements on its own.

[nulldevice]

36 minutes ago, Tetsu said:

Don't underestimate the efficacy of AI, in many cases, with proper training it can make better decisions than humans, who have limited memories.  If a human can squint at a few pictures and make judgements, so can AI.

 

I've watched AI go from novelty, to summarizing meeting and documents much better than myself, to coding with stunning quality and efficiency, to the point of one of my peers lamenting the death of "the coding craft."  Its accuracy (i.e. avoidance of being confidently incorrect, aka. "hallucinating") is only limited by how much reliable data and resources are available to use (compute units measured as "tokens").  Its main flaw (or reason for breathing sigh of relief, depending who you ask) is AI is not generative, it still needs to learn from human judgements, opinions, and creations.  So if a couple of morons on Reddit make false statements, and their echo chamber is false consensus, AI will parrot this, like a child learning swear words from their parents.

 

A Shinsa novice will need to do much research, while attempting to retain their learnings in short (and hopefully long) term memory.  A Shinsa master will have years of knowledge in memory to apply to judgement, but AI catch up to in a matter of seconds by learning from past Shinsa master assessments.  3 years ago, I dismissed and underestimated what AI could do.  2 years ago, I was surprised, shocked, and wrong.

 

I'm not here to advocate for the morality of AI and what it means to the human experience, I'm only stating its more effective than people realize (or hope against).  For the time being, human Shinsa experts still have a place, AI isn't generative and can't create new judgements on its own.

 

I don't underestimate it. I'm one of the biggest proponents of AI, but within reason. What I mean is that, you have to be meticulous in how you direct it or it can quickly go off the rails. When AI is well confined in its task and has good underlying research and data to work on, it will do wonders and continuously blows my mind with the things I've found using it. I've built things that would've taken teams of devs years in previous employment in a matter of months. 

 

But based on photos alone, in its current state, photographic kantei is hard. Very very hard. I won't say it won't ever happen. But right now, even with Fable and other top models, they struggle hard on kantei even when provided with top notch photos. Now what I've found interesting is that if you have good underlying data, you can describe a blade to AI and it can reason through what schools/smiths did what and actually give you some good options for possible matches. The amount of underlying data and analysis of 10s of thousands of smith's/school's work it takes to get to this point is no small endeavor. 

[Tetsu]

9 minutes ago, nulldevice said:

 

I don't underestimate it. I'm one of the biggest proponents of AI, but within reason. What I mean is that, you have to be meticulous in how you direct it or it can quickly go off the rails. When AI is well confined in its task and has good underlying research and data to work on, it will do wonders and continuously blows my mind with the things I've found using it. I've built things that would've taken teams of devs years in previous employment in a matter of months. 

 

But based on photos alone, in its current state, photographic kantei is hard. Very very hard. I won't say it won't ever happen. But right now, even with Fable and other top models, they struggle hard on kantei even when provided with top notch photos. Now what I've found interesting is that if you have good underlying data, you can describe a blade to AI and it can reason through what schools/smiths did what and actually give you some good options for possible matches. The amount of underlying data and analysis of 10s of thousands of smith's/school's work it takes to get to this point is no small endeavor. 

We'll probably need to agree to disagree for the time being on if AI is already ready for the task, using less than optimal photos.     Maybe @Hoshi will one day add AI Shinsa judgements to the already glorious Nihontowatch.  

[nulldevice]

5 minutes ago, Tetsu said:

We'll probably need to agree to disagree for the time being on if AI is already ready for the task, using less than optimal photos.     Maybe @Hoshi will one day add AI Shinsa judgements to the already glorious Nihontowatch.  

 

I'd be happy to see AI kantei blades from Aoi level photos. But as it stands and in my opinion, you can't see enough of the fine activities in those photos to make trustworthy judgements. Maybe the next Fable model can make out the finer details from a compressed, artifact-ridden JPEG, but I don't think the AI is the main limiting factor, its the data being fed (the photograph) that is the underlying problem. 

[Scogg]

I'm probably one of the biggest skeptics of AI. That said, what Chandler and Hoshi are doing with it is genuinely impressive, and in my opinion, the right way to use the technology. I'm continually impressed by their work.
 

That's where I think AI shines; gathering source material, organizing large amounts of data, and helping researchers study more efficiently. Not replacing the research itself or becoming a substitute for learning.
 

What drives me crazy is when people use it to copy and paste questions and answers, then treat its output as unquestionable fact. We've all seen it on this forum, "But ChatGPT says otherwise!" As if the rest of us couldn't ask ChatGPT the exact same question ourselves. That's neither here nor there.
 

I also agree with Chandler regarding photographs and that images are the limiting factor. Unless the AI is working from 100% clear, high-quality photographs, and even then it will inevitably have to make assumptions based on incomplete visual information. That doesn't make it useless, but it does mean its conclusions should be treated as a starting point for investigation, rather than the final word.

When photos get that good, I'll stop traveling around to see swords 
-Sam

Edited Tuesday at 04:41 PM by Scogg

[Jussi Ekholm]

This is a personal take but I don't think den in front of item is too relevant, after all it is for mumei attributions and well they are attributions to begin with. I feel the item itself should be more important than some lines of text in description.

 

The mumei Tametsugu discussed here is most likely very nice sword as it has passed the coveted Jūyō shinsa, congratulations Dustin for getting it. However I do admit I do not understand the sword at all. If I would see that sword without previous knowledge on anything about it I would maybe guess late Muromachi to Momoyama katana for it from pictures, I think I would not be able to figure out it is ō-suriage from these pictures alone. I think it is crucial to see swords in person for proper analysis, even though I admit with my skills it would still be extremely difficult to do identifications for mumei items. It feels crazy that I might not even be able to judge if the sword has been greatly shortened.

 

I tried to do photoshopping for 20 minutes to bring my visualization to reality but couldn't make a proper one so I scrapped it... However I was measuring from the Jūyō book by ruler in old school style as my backup plan  As NBTHK identifies this is an ō-suriage tachi and there is no hole below the 2 on the tang, then only logical explanation is that the original hole was removed by shortening. By my visualization if that indeed is the case then this would have been at minimum around 82 cm tachi in original form. I tried to do a nice photoshop side by side with current and presumed original blade in full size to get the idea. NBTHK expert in hand judgement is of course far superior to my personal opinion.

 

For some reason there does not seem to be any long tachi by Tametsugu surviving to this date (just as note I do not believe the smith X only made ōdachi theory, as I do not think they were even that common in the period, and it surely cannot be true for every famed Nanbokuchō smith as there are ōdachi by almost unknown smiths remaining to this day). So far I have only found 2 signed tachi by Tametsugu, both would seem ubu and they are 72,4 cm and 68,2 cm. For comparison I have so far found 86 mumei katana with Tametsugu attribution (length range 75,5 cm to 61,8 cm), out of those 26 are with den prefix.

 

Advances in AI have been so massive, I admit they far surpass my abilities to dig up information, and I think I am pretty good at it. It takes a person very long time to do what AI can achieve very fast. There are some mistakes it can make but it can also provide some information that might not be found by a single person. The difficult thing is that Japanese swords are extremely similar in shape and size throughout ages. Yes there are slight variations but in general I would say Japanese sword has changed quite little through history. It might be a generalization but the vast majority of sword fall within the common range. Identifying by just size and shape alone by AI or by a person can be very challenging. As that is my main identifying method I sometimes hit difficulties like that above. I just lack the skill to identify minor features, and I think AI could excel in this field beyond basic human ability if pictures/videos of very high quality were given to it.

[eternal_newbie]

32 minutes ago, Jussi Ekholm said:

This is a personal take but I don't think den in front of item is too relevant, after all it is for mumei attributions and well they are attributions to begin with. I feel the item itself should be more important than some lines of text in description.

 

For the most part I agree, and folks with access to the Japanese market (as well as the Japanese sword scholars) generally feel that trying to discern value — or lack thereof — from "den" is something mostly done by non-Japanese; indeed, for many older attributions "den" simply means "mumei." Not to mention the current-day NBTHK policy of automatically assigning "den" when attributing to any maker who has no authenticated signed works, such as Go and Sadamune.

[Lewis B]

18 minutes ago, eternal_newbie said:

 

Not to mention the current-day NBTHK policy of automatically assigning "den" when attributing to any maker who has no authenticated signed works, such as Go and Sadamune.

I thought recent NBTHK Juyo and TJ shinsa have given firm Go attributions rather than qualify with Den. Eg Andrew's 2 examples. Admittedly I've not seen the papers.

[eternal_newbie]

20 minutes ago, Lewis B said:

I thought recent NBTHK Juyo and TJ shinsa have given firm Go attributions rather than qualify with Den. Eg Andrew's 2 examples. Admittedly I've not seen the papers.

 

Still den for both Go and Sadamune as of Juyo 71: https://www.militaria.co.za/nmb/topic/54363-jūyō-71-results/

 

Even the presence of Hon'ami paperwork from 1656 wasn't enough to shake off the den for one of the Sadamunes.

[Lewis B]

12 out of 64 passing swords are den. I was quite surprised by that number. The common theme seems to be the crossover styles of many of the late Kamakura and early Nanbokucho period smiths in Yamashiro and Sagami.

[eternal_newbie]

There's also the strong overlap in styles between early Kamakura Yamashiro, Bizen and Bichu, to the point where I've seen Ko-Bizen smiths described as "working in the Yamashiro tradition".