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Brethren, Just stumbled across this site I haven't seen before: https://www.spoon-tamago.com/2020/02/05/eliza-scidmore-photographed-everyday-life-in-Japan-over-100-years-ago/?mc_cid=77cafa5ffb&mc_eid=962267c38c There are numerous 'by-way' tags of interest there too. Bestests, BaZZa.

Good morning, Here is an update with new maritime items. First an anchor Kashira, a bit rusty buy lovely object : Another Fushi-Kashira set with sails pattern, I really like this one : To complete this set, I recently got this tsuba with a similar pattern from Grey Doffin whom I thank again. And last, a single menuki with a Samurai in a small boat (I am searching another menuki to complete this one, I may just have found it), and a pair of menuki with cormorant fishing boats :

関住岡田兼定作 - Seki ju Okada Kanesada made

Alban, this is a superb piece, I can see why you love it.

thank you Brian, for your endorsement. in case my meaning was unclear due to my typing error; 'Despite apparent serious surface corrosion there is the evidence of laminar structure that would inevitably be present in hand wrought pre-industrial steel/iron.' ought to read Despite apparent serious surface corrosion where is the evidence of laminar structure that would inevitably be present in hand wrought pre-industrial steel/iron? Dan, I'd have to disagree with your suggestion that this is a rusted, not a corroded, piece of material. Corrosion in fact covers the damage caused by rust, and that's really what we're looking at here. It is perfectly correct to speak technically about a corroded steel structure and to distinguish it from a merely rusted one. Structures made from Corten steel, for example, rely on the formation of a rust coating to protect it from further rust penetration that would lead to corrosion and mechanical failure. Perhaps a simple and more familiar example might clarify; the patina we admire on ferrous tsuba are composed of rust, albeit in a fine and stable state. Once that stable rust patina is disrupted and 'goes live' it is actively rusting, and causing corrosion, ie; the degradation and breakdown of the metal's surface and eventually structure. As for the time it might take for a surface of steel or iron to exhibit the sort of texture this example shows that would depend entirely on the conditions it was kept in or subjected to. It's perfectly simple to recreate this degree of 'apparent' corrosion in a few months. Quicker if you were to use a little bit of electrical current to speed things up a bit. And for anyone who really wants to go down the rabbit hole of pre-industrial ferrous metal structure and the effects of time and corrosion etc. these four books are the most frequently thumbed on the subject in my library. There's about 1300 pages of solid material in there. regards all Ford IMG_0990.HEIC IMG_0992.HEIC

FWIW I vote for Tomomori as the personage alluded to when we see the anchor - one version of the story is that the young Antoku was frightened by the prospect of jumping into the sea - Tomomori knowing they had lost called to him "look my lord it is quite easy", tied the anchor to himself and stepped off his boat and sank into the waves, thus he is seen as a symbol of ultimate loyalty. The print showing the character "Suruga Jiro" is Kabuki and the anchor on the shoulder is meant to make him more powerful and heroic. I like your tsuba in the original post, at first I would not have said he was "wielding" it but if you look close there does appear to be someone cowering in the other boat (at 7 o'clock) Here is my poor contribution - Tochibata school...

Yes Juan, it is a fake. However you seem to have photos of an authentic Japanese sword with kaigunto koshirae mixed in with the images above. You may want to take those out to avoid confusion with those responding.

Death It's not written the same, but pronounced similar. So is often avoided out of superstition.

I didn't suggest they were interchangeable at all. Nice summation of exactly what I wrote; "Corrosion in fact covers the damage caused by rust, and that's really what we're looking at here. It is perfectly correct to speak technically about a corroded steel structure and to distinguish it from a merely rusted one." On zinc and lead it'll be white. Silver is reduced to a black silver sulphide, as described below. The corrosion products that occur on iron and steels appears in a range of reddish, brown to black colours and is known as rust. Some of the blue and green corrosion products you refer to do contain some oxygen but those particular compounds are generally more complex than simple copper tin zinc lead alloys and oxygen. Copper chloride is a turquoise colour CuCl2, no oxidation involved. Copper Nitrate is a good royal blue, if it was only oxygen doing the work the result would be either black or brick red but the nitrogen changes things. Cu(NO3)2 Not all corrosion is in fact a result of oxidisation, as described above. Take silver as an example pertinent to tosogu, it's a silver sulphide Ag2S that forms on the surface and gradually consumes it. I ought to add that the broader topic of corrosion covers much more than only metals and involves many more complex process other than merely oxidisation. The scientific literature on rust lists (at least); 12 varieties of Iron oxides and hydroxides 3 varieties of iron carbonates 9 types of Iron chloride 12 Iron sulphates 4 Iron phosphates and 10 Iron carboxylates and cyanides. These all have their own particular colours and microscopic structures. The colours range from yellows, ochre, green, a wide range of browns through to red, greys and black. I believe it's the interplay of various specific 'rusts' like these, in a patina, that results in the characteristic colour and tone of certain Tanko school's tsuba. What has been especially interesting to me is that traditional tsuba patina recipes and those I've developed from the original sources reflect very well almost all of those varied and complex compounds we generally lump under the generic term 'rust'. Rust is so so much more than Iron oxides. Stable iron patina are invariably complex and multi layered compound structures produced by complex and sophisticated process that were developed over many generations through trial and error. If it just looks like crusty red iron oxide the patina is long gone. Well that'll teach me to throw in my tuppence worth... but as chance would have it I was in fact writing on exactly this topic of corrosion and ferrous patina last evening.

Two more with Mon on top of the Kabutogane:

Beautiful pieces and an interesting theme - wow you have been busy! Just the guard to go with that anchor kashira - https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/294566514997 Whoops- or this one is nice too https://www.jauce.com/auction/g1055698290 https://www.jauce.com/auction/w1056944942

Dan, When you get an opinion from someone as highly regarded as Ford, as perhaps one of the West's foremost authorities on Japanese metalwork, his opinion bears some careful thought, to put it diplomatically.

Very odd, considering what actual beauty he can get for that amount of money. I mean that thing has ZERO redeeming features. In fact, if you offered it to me for $50 and free shipping, I would say no. Your friend maybe needs to learn a very hard lesson.

The Mon itself on this isn't anywhere strange but there is another addition to the end that is described as a representation of a kabuto. Post war addition or something period?

I think you can translate “宍道” as “Shinji”…. Regarding the date, the carver simply avoided to chisel “四” because of its meaning. I’ve seen this several times.

In my early years, I would immediately called the Type 98 a fake, with the poor quality kabutogane, and ito wrapped all in one direction, and poor quality nakago. I've seen enough variation since then, and lengthy debates over island-made gunto, that I'm going to firmly say - I don't know! Could certainly use more clear closeups of tsuba, fuchi, and kabutogane for a better opinion. You haven't shown enough of the Rinji details to begin a guess.

I went back through this whole thread to see if I'd posted one like this, and in the process, have been re-amazed at the beauty, hard work, and skill that goes into so many of these habaki. WOW! But, on to the latest. Found HERE, posted by @kealpe. I've seen that semi-wavy pattern once or twice, but cannot figure out what it represents. A river maybe?

Alban I have an image from an article published by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston in 1912 of a Choshu school guard from the 18th century.

Here is another maritime theme tsuba, representing Japanese traditional ships. This was the typical shape of stern and rudder of merchant ships like kitamae bune which where following the northern sea route.

The one in the Kuniyasu print with the anchor on his shoulder is Taira no Tomomori (see George's post), also known as Shinchūnagon Tomomori, also known as Ikari Tomomori. "Ikari" means anchor. At Dan No Ura, after losing to the Minamoto, it is said that he walked into the sea holding an anchor. Wikipedia says he tied an anchor around his feet. Anyway, it was an honorable death, as they say. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taira_no_Tomomori But Suruga Jirō Kiyoshige is also a possibility for the motif on the tsuba in Alban's original post. The ukiyoe print in Dale's post #4 is from the set of 100 Famous Warriors. Suruga Jirō was a retainer/guard for Minamoto Yoshitsune, and enters the 100 Famous Warriors list due to his exploits in protecting Yoshitsune. https://www.Japanese-wiki-corpus.org/person/Jiro SURUGA.html I don't follow why he's holding an anchor in the print. It was no doubt more obvious to people in the 19th century. photo is of the Taira no Tomomori statue in the city of Shimonoseki (near Dan No Ura).

Dear Alban, instead of kendo gear, I believe your tsuba shows a samurai. What you are seeing as a "men" or kendo helmet is actually the sode (shoulder armor). I think that your tsuba shows Kanemitsu or Tomomori.

Dear colleagues, today I want to show you one of the latest pieces that I have added to my collection, with a curious story. It is the work "tsuba no naka no tsuba" performed by the tsubakō Ōkawa Chikō, 18th generation of the Būshū Edo Itō school under the name of Itō Masanori, and which also has the gō of Masami Tōhōsai. In November 2019, we invited Mr. Ōkawa to Spain for tsuba exhibitions, lectures and gin zōgan and nanako tagane demonstration workshops, in one of the few such visits to Europe and the first time in Spain. During this trip, I took Mr. Ōkawa to the Prado Museum, and there, looking at the painting "Las Hilanderas" by Velázquez, we talked about the concept of the work within the work (as Velázquez depicted in this painting the paint "Europe's kidnapped" by Rubens) In this sense, I told Mr. Ōkawa that I had seen tsuba with many decorations, including nakago decorating, and nihontō-shaped menuki, as well nihontō in suemon zōgan in tsuba and fuchi-kashira, but I had never seen a tsuba inside a tsuba, and I told him that it would be a piece very interesting for me as an art historian. So, he accepted the commission, and after the years of the pandemic, I have been able to travel to Japan and collect this wonder in his own atelier. It is a tetsu tsuba where he has applied sukashi to recreate not one, but two tsuba within the same tsuba. The recreated tsubas add up to four because they represent the omote and ura sides. The tsuba chosen to represent belong to the first generations of the Akasaka school, the other being from the Owari tradition, although with a design also seen in Kyō-sukashi. I hope you like this piece as much as I do, and, of course, if you know of another tsuba that has a tsuba inside it, it would be very interesting to see it. Best regards, Marcos.

Well as I've mentioned few times that I have a "sword database" that I am building and I've also mentioned that I have some online prices stored up. As I am not a commercial guy I thought I'd share the price list to NMB. Sharing is caring right? The idea for this came to me some years ago as I was constantly listing the few favorites for potential purchase, and that list was evolving all the time. As I removed sold ones off and saw that I started to get more expensive swords to the list that I could not even dream of getting. So I thought I should just let the swords stay in list even if they were sold. Here are few words about the price list, there are about 1750 swords listed, I have direct links to about 1600 swords that you can just click and they should take you to the sword. About 1250 swords have their prices listed. The really high end swords usually don't feature the asking price. And I have taken out some prices that I've got to know privately, as I wanted to keep this so that all info in this is/has been open to public. And private information that has been said in private should not be in my opinion distributed on open forum. The cut off point in the list is approximately around 1450's (I know I still have few dated ones in the 50's). There might be some errors that I've put a smith under wrong school or tradition (or even have the wrong smith) but I've tried to minimize them and tried to correct most to my actual database. Sometimes it is quite difficult to pinpoint the origin of some smiths. This is kinda barebones version as for example I've put mei and measurements to my real database. I just wanted to have this document as easily viewed and quick as possible. The document has headlines, so when you open it it should be 1.tier Province 2.tier School 3.tier Smith etc. Granted I didn't make headlines for all the smiths. For example there are 2 Sōshū Masamune in the list, so I thought it wouldn't be necessary to make a headline for him as he can be easily found through search or just going to the Province. Once you start using it for the first few times it should be quite easy to navigate. Especially when you use ctrl+f to get the headlines tab open. Then you can just move fast by clicking various schools. The format on the document is like this Smith or School - Type of sword (mei or mumei) - [koshirae] if there is one featured Length in cm - price of the sword - authentication paper - seller of the sword Direct link to the sword I might have messed it up in some place but in general the classification arrangement I used would be odachi -> tachi -> katana -> naginata -> naoshi -> wakizashi -> tanto -> others I hope members will find this useful Miekkojen hintaseuranta NMB version 1.docx

I've been bothered by this muddying of the waters regarding corrosion and rusting. The actual physical and chemical process whereby iron and steels is converted into any of the corrosion products I listed as 'rusts' in my previous post is called, by real metallurgical scientists, the corrosion process. We can have our own, tsuba/tosogu specific understandings of patina etc. and personally I need to make that distinction sometimes because that's a big part of my own particular work. But : The action on the metal is 'the corrosion process' and the result of this process is 'the corrosion product' or rust. Sometimes this rust can be made into a stable and attractive finish we enjoy as patina.

This is a beautiful one Piers ! I saw this pattern several times, would be nice to find one someday

You're right, I didn't see it at first but it looks like there could be even 2 people in the other boat, missing inlays for hands and figures like the main character

@Stegel Ernie What do you think about this scabbard?Paint or wrapped with white cloth?

Not sure if that scabbard was painted white or wrapped with the white cloth

Oh wow. I never really thought about that. Most Gunto I see are from the 1940s, so I've rarely seen ones from Showa 14. Might be why I've never seen this before.

Hey BaZZa thanks for your input! Yeah I'm pretty happy with it in either case. Like I said earlier this would be the first in my collection so I think I'm going to snag it. Maybe it's a little high at $1400 but seeing comparable Gunto at that price I feel like this is a good deal for the quality. Thanks everyone for your help in narrowing this down. It's either one of two smith's signing Shige in this way. They wouldn't be more than one generation apart in either case and at the very least it's Gendaito. Hopefully now I can snag some more books and learn more about Nihonto in general because I would really love to own something pre Tokugawa.

My opinion is this sword was made in the 1930's and subsequently remounted in the current Gunto mounts during the war. The second Mekugi is of note, and may indicate the owner was a diligent practitioner. The tassel appears to be the all brown type, signifying a civilian employee of the Army.

Fake and a scam, the listing should be reported as such.

Oh, to have it in the hand!!! I would opine this is a WW2 era sword no question. The shape of the nakago and the patina easily suggest this (to me). The large shinobiana (the bottom hole in the nakago) is noteworthy and not seen (?) on Shintou or Shinshintou swords. The koshirae has 'blackened' fittings and others can comment on this. It has its tassel. Oh, and the kanji for SHIGEMITSU is well-struck and looks very elegant, not the scrappy signatures so often seen. The quality of the hamon is not easily seen, but selectively enlarging a portion of the blade pic shows what seems to me to be a komidare hamon - picture below that needs to be enlarged in a viewer. All-in-all I see this as a worthy and collectible sword, depending always on what one likes to collect and of course the price. I might suggest it is a good item to get, study and pass on much later if your collecting direction doesn't sit in the area of this sword. BaZZa.

Fake, 100%. Grey

Ha! Doh! I completely missed it. I'm still very new to nihonto, this would be the first in my collection, so I'm grasping for information a bit 😅 thanks for catching that. I think this is enough to go on for me to pull the trigger on the purchase. I just wanted to make sure it was actually nihonto or at the very least gendaito.

For what it's worth this is what I see... Despite apparent serious surface corrosion there is the evidence of laminar structure that would inevitably be present in hand wrought pre-industrial steel/iron. This sugests that the tsuba is made from an homogeneous plate of material, my intuition suggests mild steel. The second point, already implied by my first observation, it that the very evident pock-marked corrosion surface is absent from the inner walls of the sukashi. We also see still crisp edges around the seppa-dai and, for me, unconvincing tapering out of the texture in to the seppa-dai itself. The kozuka atari is a bit too curved too to be a reasonable fit alongside a kozuka back suggesting a lack of awareness of its realy practical function and meaning. My feeling is that this is a modern-ish hobby piece worked up to look older than it really is.

Mino was landlocked, but by marrying his beautiful and intelligent daughter to Oda Nobunaga in Owari to the south, his lands extended to the sea at last.

A few more pictures, showing the Tang, a MON on the Kabuto-gane, markings on the end of the tsuka, and the Habaki.

Hello All, First, thank you so much to all those who keep/maintain this forum. I just discovered it, and am absolutely thrilled. I am originally from Reno Nevada, but now live in West Lafayette Indiana. My first exposure to nihonto was in 2003 on a trip to Japan. A friend of mine and I stumbled upon a dealer's shop in Okayama City. I couldn't believe my eyes. I had no idea owning such things was possible. The dealer (I believe his name is Ando-san) was so gracious to let me gawk at his wares. Of the roughly $1000 I brought for a really cool gift all was spent at that shop. I purchased three tsubas (which I will upload to another forum topic to see what thoughts are thunk about them). I saw that him at the San Francisco show the next year, and he was so very kind (we had lunch together). He also gave me contact information of a collector who lived in the Reno area (whose name I have lost). I was lucky enough to get ahold of this person who spent about an hour on the phone with me. One piece of advice he gave me was to NOT start collecting at that point in my life. I was an undergraduate student at university, and so had little/no cash. I never stopped thinking about nihonto. All these years later (having graduated with a doctorate degree and with a job) I am in a position to begin a serious collection. As it stands, one could fill several giant warehouses with what I do not know about nihonto. I find the level of precision and technical knowledge of the members here to be absolutely impressive and I aspire to know a fraction of what some of you know. As it stands, I spend at least one month a year in Japan (my wife is Japanese - family is from Odawara), and am planning on purchasing a high quality sword next trip (December 2022). So, I may chew on some ears so as to sharpen my scouting skills.

Many many families adopted traditional mon after the Meiji restoration. Many many families had several sons and daughters each who earned the right to wear the family crest. They would have started branch families and perhaps changed names several times. Many many cousins, housemen, servants and advisors were given permission to use the mon by their lord. For this reason a single mon on a koshirae, fitting, item of clothing or armour is most often insignificant. The great houses had primary and secondary mon, three, four or sometimes more. The individual style and combination of these mon can sometimes help to assign something to a single family or a single generation. Without that second mon or some other information it is foolish to try and assign a single item to any one individual from a single example... -t

yes the kirikomi is not really a fault, the boshi is very well hidden, I think I can see it sometimes but other times not at all i showed it to a polisher here in the uk and they thought it was most likely lost and would need a window made to check. I love the sword though and will be sending it to Japan for polish and shinsa no matter what. The results; who knows, but it's worthy of restoration and one I wont be parting with so I don't care about value.

Good morning, Very nice sword. I have often seen wakizashi or relatively short katana blades on navy mounts. To compare to army swords, I did a little survey on the lengths observed on more than 300 army and navy blades. Either ancestral blades or war productions, Kai Gunto most often have blades around 24/25'', often shorter, whereas army swords lenghts are more distributed, usually longer, around 26'' and up to 28'' (with all 26.25/26.50'' industrial blades for NCO swords). (Number of swords / blade length) Interesting finding. Trying to explain this notable difference, as sailors were certainly not to be smaller than their army counterparts, it was undoubtedly rather to facilitate movement onboard ships, and naval swords had certainly less chance of being used in combat. Was there any regulation precising and explaining blade lenghts for both Army and Navy ?

Thank you so much Ray. Here is a screenshot of the promised support!

Nice close ups

Here's a couple of closer shots of the item.

I wish all swords had a Mon, they are just so interesting and add a personal touch to the swords.

I'm pretty sure the first one is signed, 宮城 守國 (Miyagi Morikuni). Pretty sure he's an RJT smith who made gendaito only. Second blade I can't see well enough to make out characters

Something niggling in my mind prompted me to return to this thread and I was struck by the fact that the helmet illustrated on the now sadly defunct 'Samurai Armour Forum' also had a reinforcing plate riveted to the top of the front plate just in front of the tehen to stop the top of the plate springing upwards. Perhaps this was necessitated because the bowl was assembled with only four rows of rivets rather than five. I also decided to consult this smith in Robert Burawoy's work 'Etude du Meikan Zukan' where it states that in the Myochin genealogy Munehisa is described as being a pupil of Yoshimichi yet differs from Yoshimichi's work in signing on the front plate and using only four rows of rivets. He never seems to have used the name Myochin and it states he worked in Shimotsuke. In the Zukan is shown a helmet with this signature dated to Tenbun 5 (1536) and the suggestion that he was contemporary with Myochin Nobuie but was probably not a Myochin smith nor a pupil Yoshimichi but in all probability was an independent armourer. Ian Bottomley

Looking for a match for this Dragon Boat Menuki. Note the fine detail - literally hundreds of inlays and the faces are about the size of a pen tip...)

Excellent idea, Brian! Thank you! One day, you might also want to start a FUCHI-KASHIRA orphanage, I have a few which wait for their respective counterpart.