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Here is one in my collection papered by NBTHK as Saotome. Dimensions 92.9 mm x 89.5 mm Regards Luca

Ok a few of you asked for my story so here it is. I collected WW2 US, German and Japanese weapons including, knives, bayonets, rifles, pistols, shotguns, holsters and other WW2 stuff for over 40 years at the time of my dispersal. Everything that I purchased was purchased for myself and was the best that there was out there at the time. Do to a divorce I had to sell my whole collection. With this many years invested and the fact that I had all premium items I had many friends or so I thought. When it came time to sell many of those friends stepped up and expressed their desire for many of my items. With the type of person I was I figured that this was my opportunity to pass many of my beloved items on to “ friends” at a well below market cost so that they may enjoy them as much as I did and I could still be proud of the items as I “ thought “ I knew where they were going. I had offers well above my “ friends “ prices but this was my way of treating others with the way that someday I might be treated. Soooo after passing many pieces of my collection on I started to see “ my stuff “ for resale at inflated prices. When I questioned my so called friends as to why did they tell me that they wanted my items for themselves they said that they knew I would sell them my things to them cheap and they could resell them ( for what I could have ) and make good money as there was a demand for items in the condition of mine. They had no Problem telling me that once I sold my items to them that they now owned them and could do what they wanted with them. This was a tuff one and very unexpected. After that I started to offer my not so friends- friends the rest of my collection for going rate. Of course they told me I was nuts. At this point I sent the remaining collection off to a well known reseller that charged me 10% commission. The ironic part was that I added 20% and some of the same people stepped up and paid the reseller the new price so I ended up making more money through him. What did I learn: most friends are not friends they are acquaintances. I came through this with a new look on life and a new set of rules for those I call FRIENDS. For about the past 10 years I started collecting Japanese Swords, again only for myself, and the people that I have met here and at the Orlando Japanese Sword Show have restored my faith in what real friends are. Thanks everyone here for treating me as a friend and I will still pay it forward when my time comes but this time my Real Friends will appreciate my gifts I told you it would be long but you asked for it. Hope you enjoyed it and maybe learned a little from my life’s experience and take the time to figure out what Real Friends are I know the difference now. MikeR

竹木禽獣鍛備前長舩横山祐包 – Chikuboku (bamboo and trees) kinju (birds and animals) kitae Bizen Osafune Yokoyama Sukekane I do not know the actual meaning of the first part of the mei.

Think about when they were made, and the warfare of the period. Often the nakago ana is large. No kozuka and kogai ana. I've heard the theory before that they were going on large swords. Maybe what one would call 'horse killers'? Give one to the biggest guy in every platoon or group of a certain size, and tell him that his job is to fulcrum that long sword through every pair of horse legs that comes near him. The one Mifune-san was swinging in Seven Samurai has a Gorinto sukashi ko-tosho / ko-katchushi and the Saotome tsuba sometimes get lumped in the katchushi made tsuba category for relatively well known reasons.

So, Colin, thank you for the suggestions. Below is a heartfelt outpouring and please do not take it as a diatribe but a reality description of what is happening in the U.K. As you mention both the London and Birmingham arms fairs, you must be familiar then with how both of these (much wider arms and antiques, going beyond the purview of only Japanese swords) fairs have diminished and degraded in the last 10 years or so. Poorly attended with barely a few interesting items available. Why? Commercial reality and advancement of technology (ie Internet) and awareness / knowledge. Side events/ gatherings of ToKen members around the time of the fair though do oftentimes take place in smaller informal groups. Then, do you think there will be enough support for a purely Nihonto based fair as in the US? The answer is unfortunately a resounding No. Such fairs seem to have had their heyday in the pre-Internet era when all the Nihonto aficionados had to go by was John Yumoto’s book and the arms fairs to buy or sell a sword. Sadly, when Eddy tried to organise the second edition of the Japanese / Samurai arms fair in Utrecht this year, please try to conjecture how many sign-ups (ie prepayment of a daily ticket) he had? Sad, very sad and very disappointing outcome. A couple of dozen. And this was supposed to be an event aimed at the large European countries surrounding the Netherlands, a well connected place and easy to travel to. The first instalment was a fine event with numerous Juyo and TJ items to view and study, with 10-15 dealers present, with iaido demonstrations and sword kantei, with sushi and lectures, with socials and drinks….There were only around 100 attendees over 3 days. Unfortunately, nowadays when one can buy a sword from Aoi Art with three clicks of the mouse (ask Paz for instance or other new ToKen GB members) or when people can place a “like” here or on Facebook, or view a NihintoNoBi or TheJapaneseSword YouTube video instantaneously, the Token of GB are struggling to attract more than 10-20 attendees to our physical events even when we roll out various Juyo swords by Saijo Saku top smiths. But our Zoom sessions, on the other hand, are often attended by 30, sometimes over 40 participants. I honestly believe that we have enough publicity and awareness among interested people that if they really wanted to join and participate, they would. In fact, we have been attracting foreign members in the last few years, whose only interaction with is via our newsletters and Zoom sessions. Believe me, the fact that gunto and gendaito are not mentioned in our statement is not stopping anyone. As mentioned before, one of our most prominent members with close to 100 swords in his collection, actually specialises in gendaito. What is hindering people is often apathy, reluctance to travel / participate / come out of the shadows / inertia. Or similarly to Kiril, they might not believe in organised events, mentors, sensei, authorities (whatever you might call them, we don’t have them in our organisation anyway). Regarding “for sale” publicity: we are not a commercial organisation but an educational one. Members can sell to each other as much as they wish. However, it is not our purview or ambition to facilitate or organise such endeavours since there are plenty of venues, dealers, arms fairs, auction houses and the like for such activities. Our little creative energies or available time are dedicated to indeed expanding the popularity of our subject, organising events and advancing knowledge of our members. What we are truly lacking is: individuals who have the commitment and energy and enthusiasm to share what they have, to organise regional events, to make presentations or to write content for the magazine or help with the editing of the magazine. Or even to attend / participate. People are often passive consumers of content. Nowadays, younger people crave instant gratification and knowledge and have no time to learn kanji, know about the Gokaden or Roads or traditions, or go and visit museums or study sessions to learn about swords rather than instead look on the Internet or search for answers on this forum and other such venues. How often do we cover the same ground even on this forum because newcomers did not bother to even use the Search function? Better inter-member communication and discussion is something we have been thinking about for a while and need to resolve. We are pondering a member-only section of our Token website akin to a forum. But that will also need volunteers to monitor, oversee, curate, administer. Any help putting it into practice will be appreciated. Anyway, as Tom Helm in the US has been advocating for a while, it boils down to participation. People often good-naturedly make recommendations but it is indeed the same committee members who often need to implement things or try to change things. If more people volunteer and participate, things could improve. Otherwise, we are all growing older, grumpier, less capable and energetic or willing to shake things up.

Hi Guys what do you think about this horimono and my thoughts about big pieces of Replacements that in my opinion have been done…?!

If you mean this, it's just missing the mouth piece that would conceal this.

New members joining and immediately sending offers of swords to people via pm. Do NOT fall for it folks. Please let me know if you get any suspicious offers from unverified members. Ask them to prove their location or give you known Nihonto community members who can vouch for them. And DON'T trust email addresses that seem to be known. They can have an extra digit or something making them seem like a known email. Today we have someone new with the above activity. I am looking into it. IP address seems to go back to Nigeria, so not looking good. But please always be aware. I'll be taking this all the way to his ISP....South Africans know how to deal with Nigerian 419 scammers

Good find Uwe, I wonder if the blade Tom posted is the same sugata as the one you found? All the best.

I tend to read it as “祐包” (Sukekane)?!

It looks low end but genuine to me. Blade made out of bar stock, cheap fittings, and late war. A readable date is a point in its favour, Chinese inscriptions are usually nonsense. Officers bought these out of their own money, and the official set price was 80 jpy which went nowhere in 1944.

I would guess at a poor quality arsenal wartime sword. Can we get another pic or 2 of the tang, the side that doesn't have the date? Not sure if I can see a Seki stamp. Needs a lot of refitting, so value would be in the low hundreds if it turns out to be genuine. Has had a hard life.

Ziyi, the mei is the LAST thing to examine. The sugata is the first, & it tells us that this blade was late Shinto or early Shinshinto. It's signed tachi-mei, which is unusual. Yakidashi show the blade is ubu, but the ana sren't as smoothly cut as are most blades in that era. Good advice to stay away from eBay until you have lots more experience.

I wouldn't compare the signature on the wakizashi to the signature on the kogatana. They are two very different things. Kogatana are often signed as an homage to a famous smith, rather than signed by that smith's own hand. Its likely that the kogatana is meant to refer to the famous Sanjō Munechika, and not the one from Edo/Meiji. Regarding the wakizashi, it already has authentication papers by the NBTHK, so I don't think you have to worry about it being a fake. There are some other papered examples here https://www.e-sword.jp/katana/1410-1077.htm https://www.e-sword.jp/wakisashi/1910-2055.htm

The surprising thing about those big Saotome, the weight!, understandable should a Samurai have wanted something lighter. Piers, that website has always been a gold mine of information, and wondeful tsuba.

Hi Jeremy, yes it was common to have Urushi lacquer on early sword guards and it does indeed tend to flake off and leave small patches behind. From my understanding the thinness of the plate is also early work, it tended to get thicker later - someone might correct me on this and I am sure there are exceptions to the 'rule' [there generally are.] There is an old thread here dealing with lacquer on iron tsuba.

Well like a lot of Japanese designs it is often in the eye of the beholder - but I might suggest the designs are a conventionalized cloud and a snowflake. The larger opening could also be a Tomoe [comma shape] but they are usually curved more. You should check this site out it has a lot of information on Onin tsuba and indeed many other styles of guard. https://varshavskycollection.com/onin-tsuba/ I was amused by one description [the first] on this site originally by Henri L. Joly In 1910. I don't believe Ockham's Razor was a subject for Japanese tsuba makers!

Michael, thanks for sharing, I'm sure it not always easy to do that. Many of us could relate to your (and others involved) personal circumstances at the time of liquidating your collection. Not wishing to appear flippant, but I find it of much greater interest to know what actually happened, as in your case, rather than reading through the many threads about what members intend to do, or wish to do, or would like to do in selling/dispersing their collection. Notwithstanding, they are interesting in their own right. On occassions, when negotiating a possible purchase, I make it known that I am a collector, not dealer (no offence dealers!) because that's what I am. Like most, I am not going to on-sell. I have the first Koto I bought, and everything after that. But one day I ... we ..... will find ourselves in a position that is not dissimilar to yours. I can say without reservation, the collector friends I have made on NMB are exactly that, friends and collectors, not opportunists. Thanks again for your honesty and personal insight. Rob

John, Recommend you start a new thread with these. I'd like to discuss them a bit, too, but the subject matter is divergent from the "Pilot Sword" topic.

There have been other examples of similar Ito wraps posted on the forum, so a good chance they are original.

This is a document of the first major Budo demonstration taking place in 1950, shortly after the final the ban on Martial Arts was lifted. Here's a huge amount of information on the reality of the levels banning compiled by Joseph Svinth and Jason Couch: I've been told various fairy tales over the years, both here in UK and also in Japan of exactly what went on regarding training during the Occupation, the article is concise and authoritative and puts to rest quite a lot of urban myths With due recognition to the EJMAS, where the article reside along with a positively monumental amount of other information on Budo and Bujutsu: https://ejmas.com/jcs/jcsart_svinth_1202.htm

Peter, many are ago, due to personal circumstances, I was forced to sell off a extensive collection of let’s say WW2 items. If I were to try and explain how it went and what I tried to do and ended up doing it would be a book of its own. I will try and figure a way to condense my story if this is what you and other members would like. I can tell you it was a eye opener to say the least. This was my start in life to find out and understand the difference between Friends and TRUE FRIENDS. Let me know if this is what you are looking for and I will see if I can work it out. Thank you. MikeR

two photo's of Kotani san. Yasunori one in traditional clothing at Yasukuni other shortly before his death, in the home for aged.......... please enjoy, he was a nice man !

Hello friends Please enjoy some private pics of Yasunori san with me, shortly before his passing away.

Just saw a wakizashi for sale, I was just curious with the text on the blade. I'm not 100 percent sure Google translate is correct so just wondered what it actually says! Thanks Tom.

Know the person? I know A LOT of people and I know not to deal with them. Let me simply explain "dealing" and what I call "Bad Behavior" in specific collecting venues . Many moons ago enhanced embellished language / information was used, kind of like chumming for fish. That embellished language / information wasn't challenged, so more started to using it. Then more and more and more. Not only was it used, it was / is amplified. I'm not speaking about the china crap, I'm talking main stream Nihonto. Does it work from the bottom up, the top down, or both. Well it's both! Most collectors don't see the red flags, because they don't understand the game, and it is a game. A Big part of the Art game is blind emotion and the Art of lost information .