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Let me boast a little bit "Nihon No Bi" is an annual exhibition in Moscow devoted first of all to Ikebana and Suibokuga arts. This year it was expanded and included other Japanese arts like kimono, temari, kamono and origami. There was a showcase with three katana as well. I had an opportunity to participate with several tsuba, so I had two small showcases.

Gareth these are two of the best condition swords you can hope to reasonably find, both by two well regarded Gendai-Tosho and with their original Tassels as well. These are pieces we all dream of finding, thanks for sharing. On a different note if you make sure you hit enter under the text before posting pictures they will all be put under your message rather than jumbled up.

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Matsukawa-hada is also a characteristic of Kiyomitsu of Sue-Bizen.

I am quite delighted that the Museum will exhibit around 25 items from my personal collection. I look forward to seeing the Video when it becomes available. Congratulations Dr. McNicholas and I'm quite sure the Samurai Museum in Lynchburg will please and educate many visitors on the Arts of Japan & The Samurai !

Hi John Your second piece is quite different. I can discern traces of irregular dendritic structure (modern material would be pretty uniform) in the breakdown of the surface due to corrosion. The surface corrosion is reasonably varied, I see one or two fissure like folds just visible, again due to corrosion. One such fold is to be seen trailing off the bottom outer edge of the kogai hitsi in the top image. Another at 10:30 on the same image near the mimi. And the wear around the kogai hitsu and nakago-ana is a bit like broken off stone, again exactly what I'd expect from corroding and friable old metal. Compared to modern iron/steel, which is quite pliable when in an unhardened state, old forge weld consolidated sponge iron (tatara material etc.) is somewhat crumbly. I use, almost exclusively now, old mid 19th century finely wrought iron in my own work, and even the best material, which looks flawless to the naked eye, has a grainy structure under the chisel and can tear and break in ways that are simply not the same as homogeneous steel. Actually this is a good example to contrast with the first piece to illustrate those subtleties that distinguish modern from pre-industrial iron. I've attached a microphotograph of some dendritic structure in a modern steel as a guid to what can be seen on this old tsuba. Uniformity is of course the aim in modern metallurgy whereas pre-industrial stuff is inevitably much less ordered, even when relatively well processed.

+ 1 zohei to IMO

IMHO (first time I've used that acronym!) It's zoheito. Nakago is too long for kyu; long enough for 95 but wrong shape and only 1 hole; bohi goes too deeply into the kissaki for a 95. Pluse the "to" stamp is classic for a zoheito.

Here is my 1943 dated Kai-Gunto by Noshu Ju Kane Nobu with a samenure covered saya. The sword came from the same source as Shin Gunto I recently posted . Many thanks Gareth

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Hi! Here is a nice variations of ya in a transportation box. Regards, Anthony

Fabulous! Hiōgi 檜扇 https://kamon.myoji-yurai.net/kamonDetail.htm?kamonName=檜扇

Hi everyone i wanted to start a new thread about this sword I had post d previously Of this sword It had scuffs scratches and a Nick! It is listed 5th seat at the sixth exhibit held in 1941 Because I have been told a sword should be judged by its own merit I thought it was good enough to get be polished by Woody Hall He said it was quite a nice sword so I told to him to have it polished !! I’m glad I did now! I know I won’t get what I put into it but I believed it to be a nice traditional sword now with a good polish that really brought out the hamon!! Woodys comments below Im happy to get feed back!

Congratulations Robert Benson. I was looking around and I saw this Posted Sept. 30 ,2021 : " Hawaii's own Robert Benson is the President of the U.S. NBTHK . Congratulations Mr. Benson 👍 of Bushido Antiques https://www.bushidojapaneseswords.com/index.html (check out his website) posted by : Al Furuto - JSSH "

2021 Dai Token Ichi Cancelled Sadly, yesterday (Sept. 28th) at a board meeting of the Zentosho Kumiai Directors (All Japan Commercial Sword Dealer's Association) the decision was made to cancel the Dai Token Ichi for this year. The decision was not made lightly as many sword aficionados in Japan and around the world were following this closely with the expectation it would brighten up the mood among collectors of samurai treasures. The venue management was concerned about social distancing, pandemic cluster issues, and negative publicity. It made little sense to compromise the event by trying to regulate crowd movement within the exhibition/sale hall. Sorry for those who planned to attend. Let's hope we can enjoy the event in 2022! Best Robert Hughes Member All Japan Commercial Sword Dealer's Association

A link to another one discussed over at GBF between posts #66 and #75. Showing Off And another GBF discussion involving several of these swords. Need help with a Japanese sword found in a pawn shop

Thanks for the help everyone and a zōheitō [造兵刀] blade it is then.

I agree, it looks like later war 造兵刀 instead of early ones. @Kiipu

Butch you are very lucky to be the caretaker of TWO GREAT Swords. Enjoy them, share them and care for them. MikeR

An amazing outfit, that saya is incredibly attractive and Kanenobu was a very respectable smith.

THANK YOU! I've been waiting for someone to post that. Bugs the hell out of me.

The condition of these is outstanding! Simply gorgeous.

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Bruce, being a newbie myself (started collecting Gunto earlier this year), you guys taught me to take notice of Damascus steel as one of the more obvious signs of fakery. In fact, that was the first thing I noticed about the sword in question. Thanks again - I'm learning more all the time! And, posts like Robert's reinforce our understanding of fake versus real, and the information shared can help newbies avoid making costly mistakes. Remember, no sword is worthless, it can always serve as a bad example.

Retouched image

It seems to be “濃州関住星谷義長” (Noshū Seki Jū Hoshitany Yoshinaga)!

A friend bought this since it was way too expensive for me! But I directed him to it after I looked at it.. The surface is wild. john twineham

A few from way back: And a book I doubt most people would have heard of? [It seems if you don't keep your eye on them tsuba will get up to some strange things!] Tsuba coat hooks

Rather than a Tanto this looks to be a Wakizashi or Katana re-purposed as a Tanto. As a general rule of thumb you don't see Shinogi-Zukuri Tanto.

Dale, Not sure if it's powder coated, but it's definetly very modern. Your example is very similar: the color, and the surface texture. And it's made for Hiroshima Lions Club too. Mine is 30th Hiroshima Youth Kendo Tournament, yours - 22nd Another one "tsuba object" - cufflinks, found on a fleemarket in Tokyo:

Andrey I have two or three like that, different patterns. I wonder if yours is powder coated? At least one of mine is, which would point to very modern manufacture. Barry that is a nifty little item, I see Jean Collin made something similar but I like the folding aspect of yours. I have an image of another strange use for a tsuba shaped object.

Per request, I will post photos of the Sanemori sword here - originally posted earlier today under the "Show us your high-class Gunto" thread in Military Swords of Japan category on this board. I had the pleasure of visiting with my local mentor again recently and this is one of the swords he showed me. This sword had been in Japan for months waiting to be papered. My mentor received it back last week. A fine Gunto indeed!

The damascus steel blade is another clue, along with the poor imitation metal fittings. Check here for how Japanese gunto fittings should look: http://ohmura-study.net/905.html

大仁田厚 Ōnita Atsushi is.... a famous Japanese pro wrestler. A fake sword onto which someone has carved the name of a pro wrestler. I'm sure this sword has been on this forum before.

Hope you didn't pay too much for this Chinese fake.

In fact, I found some close-up (before polish) pictures you had posted in earlier threads, I'll post them here for convenience. The polish makes a huge difference

Michael, Like Alice in Wonderland you have fallen down a hole that will last the rest of your life if it grabs you by the throat!! I think all of your points (as I believe the Western yanone/yajiri collectors call them) are Japanese, however, No. 5 is a puzzle to me with its hollow tang. Reminds me of a fukuro yari and I've not seen a yanone like it. To reinforce my opening sentence you might like to look at this link, an Obituary I wrote for a dear friend of 50+ years who devoted his latter collecting life to yanone, even devising means of polishing them as he could not get professional togishi to even look at them, with one exception: Best wishes, Barry Thomas aka BaZZa.

The Royal Armouries collection in Leeds UK has a crossbow with three bolts having diminutive heads like No. 11 above. The bow is made of slats of baleen fastened together to increase the draw weight. There is another crossbow in the Met. New York, formerly in the George Cameron Stone collection, and a couple in Nagoya. On the whole they seem rare in Japan in contrast to China. Ian Bottomley

Just for your info guys.....that particular sword surfaced one day earlier over at Gunboards Forum: https://www.gunboards.com/threads/Japanese-sword-found-in-the-trash.291010/#post-2361496 before showing up at warrelics the next day. A great find and the fellow was very excited as nearly everyone else was for him too! This was November 2012 ! When found it had NO scabbard as you can read in the links. The next time it made an appearance, was in a dealers site in March 2019. Here it amazingly now had a matching scabbard, as can be seen here now: The likely hood of actually HAVING the scabbard and finding the CORRECT sword would HAVE TO BE A VERY LONG SHOT in my opinion. Looks like a good job ,but the fonts are the give away clues to me. Here's the sales pitch from back in March 2019: After 7 years i cannot point fingers at the dealer directly, so have refrained from actually naming him here.

Gilt is 70/30 Copper/Zinc brass, that can be electroplated.

Because of how the mounts are configured, it was probably a Manchurian officer attached to the Japanese navy.

No, the seller was a private individual in upstate New York. He didn’t know what he had, just said it was a samurai sword brought back from Iwo Jima, and that some of the proceeds were going to be donated to some charity. He was clearly an inexperienced ebayer, and I knew the sharks would be circling bombarding him with lowball offers. Although I wasn’t in a position to buy it at the time, I wrote the seller urging him to resist the offers and let the auction run its course, simply because I hate to see anyone get fleeced. He responded, thanking me and explained the whole story. The sword was brought back by his brother(a Marine) from Iwo Jima. He had recently passed away, and the seller was selling it for the widow. He had no idea it was so valuable. He sent me a copy of a photo showing the guy cutting his wedding cake with it after the war! It ended up going for 15k. After the auction he again thanked me. He clearly idolized his brother, who went on to a career in the Secret Service. I had no reason to doubt his story, and still believe it had a very real chance of being Kuribayashi’s sword. Regardless, it was a beautiful Gassan in high end mounts with a general’s tassel. Steve

Chris, sure some "good" swords went to war. But a man with a family heirloom and a family left will save this heirloom. Your officer reminds me to Tolkiens Stewart of Gondor. Best

I’m sure many officers, especially higher ranking ones had more than one sword. Years ago I was researching a sword that was for sale on ebay that very possibly belonged to General Kuribayashi. The sword was a Gassan made in the 1930’s in beautiful gunto mounts with a general’s tassel. I discovered a reference where his wife said after he left to take command at Iwo Jima, she discovered he had taken his new sword with him instead of his old family sword. This made her realize he didn’t expect to return. Steve

John i think you thought on Nick Koyama who says that not high valuable swords came to war. I didn't follow Nicks thoughts further. My thinking is, when a Officer is going in a war and gives the most valuable thing for his country his life. Why he should honor this with an invaluable third class sword? No, i think he will choose the best blade and if he fall the blade will fall with him.

I'm sorry, but the size of his head versus his hands in that shot has me in stitches. I need the weekend..

Will there be a tasting section... 🙏👍😎