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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

I think I have written a small bit about various designations on the forum before. I think I have understood this properly but I hope out Japanese members can correct any errors I have written. I think we all are aware of Kokuhō (National Treasures) 国宝. Then another well known designation is Jūyō Bunkazai (Important Cultural Property) 重要文化財. After this it starts to get complicated. Jūyō Bunkazai is a National designation (国). Now there are 47 prefectures in Japan, and prefectures can also designate and item to a Bunkazai status. However that is a Prefecture Bunkazai, prefecture level designation (県). To make it even more complicated Japan has 800+ cities and yes it is easy to guess cities can elevate items to a Bunkazai status. However that level is the lowest of the City Bunkazai, and city level designation (市). I did go through all the prefecture websites and searched for all of the swords that have achieved Prefecture Bunkazai status. It was tedious job going through lots of websites, PDF files etc. with just rows and rows of various things listed. I think I am pretty decent in finding the Prefecture level items and identify swords amongst the thousands of listed items. As there is so much to search for I might have missed few items but this would be the rough general count. Now out of these 695 swords I found 293 that I feature in my database. What is slightly irritating is that there is a huge difference in the amount of information about the item that is featured. At most minimum level it can just be 刀 伝当麻 Katana - den Taima, no picture, no additional text (just an hypothetical example). While others have lots of additional information, sometimes even a good sized picture (mostly the pictures are extremely minimal) is featured and links to other data sites etc. I do item matching as that is the search and research thing I enjoy so much, so I have been able to identify bunch of them. I believe some of them have achieved the Prefecture Bunkazai status so long ago and perhaps current owners of the Jūyō swords might not even know they are also Prefecture Bunkazai. I can share maybe in the end really well documented sword I was able to uncover. It started when I was going through Kanagawa Prefecture Bunkazai list. There was an entry for mumei Chōgi, some prefectures have these clickable links that open a page for the item. For some single row like this is the all info you will get about the item The link opened to Cultural Heritage Database but unfortunately there is no picture of the item either. However the owner of the item is Nitro Plus and the item is in Tokyo. I did not know the company Nitro Plus but with googling I found out that it is the company behind Tōken Ranbu. And with more googling I was able to find a picture of their 2019 exhibition that features the Chōgi. Unfortunately this was only picture I found but I found out NBTHK tweet that said that Nitro Plus Tokubetsu Jūyō Chōgi will be featured in TJ29 2026 exhibition as an extra showpiece, now as I have almost all the Tokubetsu Jūyō items and this was most likely TJ. It was just a matter of matching the correct sword and this one was Tokubetsu Jūyō 8. This particular sword was sold by Iida Koendo in 2019, and most likely Nitro Plus acquired it from there. https://iidakoendo.com/6300/ I was so happy to find out that Iida had also the Prefecture Bunkazai document pictured in the ad. I will attach it here as I think it is extremely rare to see these. Now it is possible to track down at least this much of the modern history of this particular sword. 1956 Kanagawa Prefecture Bunkazai - 1973 Jūyō 21 Nagasaki Prefecture - 1983 Tokubetsu Jūyō 8 ??? Prefecture - 2019 Iida Koendo - 2019-2026 Nitro Plus There is still so much more to uncover in these but unfortunately the information on them is very limited. There are for example Jūyō Bijutsuhin that have been also designated as Prefecture Bunkazai etc. Some super cool items (mostly for me the ōdachi) that I have not been able a single picture while trying to search them from Japanese sites.

Hello, 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

Hi Colin, welcome to the NMB forum! Your WAKIZASHI (not Wakazashi) seems to be signed HIDA no KAMI FUJIWARA UJIFUSA. https://www.nihontocraft.com/Hida_no_Kami_Ujifusa.htm I will add that a signature alone is not always enough to assign a blade to a swordsmith. The features of a blade have to be confirmed by the characteristics of the swordsmith's certified works. If you showed us the whole blade (tip-uwards, plain dark background, dark room, light from the side, naked blade/no HABAKI), the sword experts here may give you a more competent comment on it.

There were several Mitsunaga with these characters 光長. The only very faint connection I can find so far, and it could well be a simple coincidence, is a Kyoto metalwork artisan during Anei (late 1700s) who lived in a small street called (藤の辻子). That uses the same kanji as Tsuji on the left.　 On the other hand we always need to keep open the possibility of gimei.

Jussi, your dedication and effort is simply incredible. I am in awe of the amount of effort you put in.

Chris, SteveM above has said he reckons that it's 光長 Mitsunaga on the right, a name. There seems to be a Kao following that name too. The question for me is why two different people have signed it, each with their own kao. A joint work?

The fittings would either get attributed to "Kozenji' (late Edo high level Owari Kinko) or Umetada. They only distinction I have ever noticed in the NBTHK attributions to Kozenji vs Umetada work is that the Kozenji work often has a trace of silver or shibuichi. If I were to second guess the NBTHK, I think they'd go Umetada on these fittings. Beautiful sword, and some very exceptional lacquerwork too. Imagine the challenge of doing the keyfret in shakudo on the fuchi, kashira, kogai, kurikata, and kojiri, Heavens, that is a lot of work.

Thank you, Tom. I’ve been very busy, so the Satō Kanzan hakogaki project is running late. In the meantime, I’ve found additional hakogaki, and the database has grown. I just need to stop searching for more and focus on organizing and refining what I have so far (with help from the NMB community). Here are the records for the two tsuba by Bamen Tsunemasa. Bamen Tsunemasa.pdf

Hi Marilyn, welcome to the forum! Your sword looks to be in great condition, and thank you for sharing your family story with us. It’s very interesting to hear and aligns well with what we know about the end of the war and disarmament. Your sword is a very nice example of the Japanese Type 95 Military Sword. Yours is the Variation #4 (or pattern 3 in some sources); basically meaning it has aluminum handle and round steel tsuba. Your sword has the Tokyo First Army Arsenal inspection stamp (東) , and a more mysterious stamp that’s a Sakura flower with a line inside, we sometimes call this the “Sakura Ichi” stamp, and its origins remain mysterious. It might be associated with Kōbe/Kanbe Shōten workshop, because the stamp is similar, but it’s not known for certain. The concentric circles or 4 stacked cannonball stamp is for Kokura Army Arsenal who administered the Type 95 program. Because of the mystery surrounding the Sakura Ichi stamp, it’s a little tough to date, but according to my records and its serial number I would date it around summer 1942. It’s not a transitional model necessarily. But it’s one of the several variations amongst an ever evolving sword type that was made concurrently across multiple contractors and arsenals. So you see a bit of variety. It’s absolutely genuine like you say. No reason for concern: but the fact that yours has an extra 東 stamp on the opposite side of the ferrule is unusual and interesting. All the best, -Sam

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.

Dear Mark. One of the things that cleaning it up will do is remove the patina from an alloy known as shakudo. This is a distinctive Japanese alloy of copper with a small percentage of gold which, when treated correctly, acquires a deep lustrous black colour which is still evident on the eyes and the inlayed sections at the back of the wing. Some of these retain their colour while some are now looking like copper where the patina has been removed. All being well, and further cleaning eschewed, these inlays will recover their patina over a considerable time. I appreciate that you are not interested in the monetary value but the best way of approaching this item is as a work of art and yourself as its temporary custodian. That art will communicate down the years if cared for. Enjoy this and keep up the research. In terms of age I note that no one has hazarded an assessment yet, it is an unusual tsuba. My guess would be late 18th to 19th century, just to get the ball rolling, but I look forward to others informed opinions. All the best.

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.

Probably you have seen this: https://wakeidou.com/pages/640/ Ichijo work. His student Ikkin could do this sort of design even better, though he kinda worked to the level he was getting paid. Thus, some stunningly detailed Ikkin works, and some kinda mailing it in. This is an example of "mailing it in" : Is yours Ichijo school? Hard to know. I would say No. I understand @Rivkin point that it might be Meiji work. The focus is more on decoration, less on detail. That does point more towards Meiji.

I have been reading conversations about Type 95 Shin Gunto on the Nihonto Message Board for about two weeks, trying to educate myself enough so I can tell what I have. My father was in the 97th Infantry in World War II, and after service in the European Theatre was sent to Japan for the expected invasion. By October 1945 he was in Matsuyama, bunking in what had been the Matsuyama Army Hospital. The task of the 97th was to disarm the Japanese. Dad rarely spoke about his experiences in the Army. Among other things, he was present at the liberation of a concentration camp in Germany; I can't say I'd want to keep reliving that, either. He died in 1975, and many years later I met a number of men who had been in his company, some of them had been his squadmates both in Germany and Japan. One of them wrote a memoir about his time in the Army, so there were a lot of bits and pieces I could pick up from there. One of the passages from Stan's book, from the time they were in Matsuyama: Our first job was to disarm about 300,000 Japanese soldiers. As they turned in their equipment, we stockpiled mountains of army clothing, swords, gasoline, rifles, etc. Since the 97th was occupying over 9,000 square miles, we soon had huge amounts of war material under our control. From one of those "mountains" of swords, Dad pulled out the Type 95 that's here in my office. It has turned out to be a lot more difficult to determine what I have because it's really not standard. It's authentic, but not standard. My biggest problem has been the marks on the fuchi. I'm going to try to attach a few photographs, in hopes that someone might be able to steer me in the right direction. I think what I have is a transitional piece manufactured in mid-1941, but "think" is the operative word there. Most of these are very large files, mainly because I wanted to be able to zoom in as far as possible. Many thanks for any thoughts anyone might have. It has been a very interesting journey so far, and I have come to truly respect the depth of knowledge and generosity of sharing that knowledge among yourselves. You have a wonderful community of people! Marilyn C

Very unusual and surprising, thanks for sharing Piers.

Hey everyone, I feel like its finally time to share a project that I've been working on for a while now. Not because it is finished but because my first child was just born a few days ago and development on this project will likely slow down for a bit as I navigate the new phase of life that is fatherhood! Anyways, I've been building a website https://nihonto-db.com for some time now and wanted to present it here. At the core, it is an interactive and searchable version of @Jussi Ekholm's Koto sword index he's so graciously shared with the NMB. I can't begin to state how incredibly powerful Jussi's research has been and without his tireless efforts and collaboration, this wouldn't have been possible. So at the core, the "Sword Database" portion is a simple searchable database that allows you to search from over 16,000 swords. There are filters and advanced filters available to allow you to search, filter, and compare works by many smiths with as narrow or broad of a search breath as you wish. Additionally, I've created a few other tools that I find useful. Namely an interactive Province Map of Japan showing the old swordmaking provinces which allows you to click on each province and see associated schools, swordsmiths, and other details of the schools and smiths of that province. Thirdly, there is Gokaden Timeline which is built upon a Google Sheet collaboration that some of the members here helped with a few weeks ago. It is as the name suggests, a simple plotting tool that allows you to plot and view the various swordmaking schools broken down by their tradition, and the timeframe in which those schools spanned. Currently this is limited to mostly mainline and some obscure Koto schools. Shinto and Shinshinto aren't appropriately represented at this point and will be a future addition. Finally, there is an articles section where I have been posting various articles, photos, and zufu translations for the main Gokaden schools. Currently Soshu mainline and Yamashiro mainline are finished and Yamato and Bizen are in the works. I have many more plans for this site to hopefully become another helpful resource in the world of nihonto study and also be a place where swords can be researched in detail with photos, descriptions, and other additional information. I also would like to expand this into including many more shinto and shinshinto blades but as I'm a 1 man operation and now have a 1 week old baby, slow and steady is the key! There is a registration and sign-up option available, currently there is no additional features to this at this time but I do have plans in the future to have some pages and information locked behind having a valid account to do as much as I can to prevent AI-bots and crawlers from skimming too much information too easily. I hope this site serves as a resource for all and if anybody has any comments or things the community would like to see, feel free to let me know and I will do my best to work on them as time allows. Thanks again to the NMB community and everyone here who has given their knowledge, time, and previous resources to make this all possible.

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

I am super happy that guys with technical knowledge are putting things together and making amazing stuff happen. It is wonderful to see how just simple rows of text can be changed to a really cool and fine resource. As others said above, the map might be my favorite thing. Starting from it, it's great to advance in few clicks to various smiths and items. Congratulations on the baby Chandler

Cool thread. I was thinking that you were hinting at the Egg shape of the tsuba, but it isn't that unusual given the maritime and foreign influences. I didn't think to look through the sukashi. I thought it might have a goldish backing, but I would never have guessed the other side was was fused brass sukashi.

My thanks to everyone who commented. I very much appreciate your help. J Ambrose

The auction date is March 18th

I just read that in Finland, PhD graduates get a awarded a Top Hat and Sword with their degree... The top hat apparently symbolises academic freedom and independence, while the sword represents the responsibility to defend truth and scientific knowledge. So I am fact checking on my favourite Sword forum... @Jussi Ekholm is this true, it seems old world crazy enough to be true but does it really still happen? if it does is there a specific sword you need you get awarded or do you get to chose your own sword? Perhaps nice katana to write off on tax cause it was part of my degree. Or does each university have their own specific sword? Or is it only a specific university? So many questions. If true it might be time for me to do a doctorate in Finland! 🤩

I’m not too worried about the value because I don’t have plans on selling it but would be more interested in its age. So hopefully I didn’t make it harder to determine.

Hi Lance, It looks to be signed Yoshitada and dated June 1945. It’s in Type 3 Army fittings and is not traditionally made. The black painted numbers are subassembly numbers and may match the fittings (八七四=874) or the first character could be hiragana. There is also the Gifu inspector’s stamp on the nakago.

Generally it's a big no-no to clean these unprofessionally as the patina will often contain vital clues as to age.

光長 Mitsunaga

I was struggling with the Japanese description of a mounting . Mr Moriyama , who is a huge asset to the Board , assisted by giving me the translation ,being Yosegane ,together with a link to the Mokumekin Museum . The museum describes Yosegane as"like marquetry Yosegane combines metals of different colors to create patterns ". Members might be interested to see an example of what I now know to be Yosegane. This sword , regretably not mine , is one of the finest that I have ever handled. I hope you enjoy looking at it . Ian Brooks

So a NI MAI construction with brass! This is not difficult to solder or to fuse (= MOKUMEGANE technique) together, but all in all, it must have been a heck of work to complete! Very extravagant! Thank you Piers for showing!

Im sure im not the first to have the searchable database idea and certainly won’t be the last. I think many collectors want to get their hands on more data when the resources for non Japanese speakers are very limited. I did realize I forgot to add that you can search nearly anything in the search bar. “Tanobe”, “Denrai”, “Meito” and double quoted strings are literal searches so you can search (Shizu, “Juyo 27”) to get filtered results if you have a particular sword you’re looking for. Kanji also works if it matches the Mei. Truth be told there are other pages still private that are the main bread and butter of the site and where I believe the true value will live for serious nihonto students that im hoping to release very soon.

Personally I think its late, as in late Meiji period most likely. Many elements are not very traditional, but rather a mixture with western art and decorative techniques of the period. Interesting, attractive, but Goto Ichijo - I don't know.

Some of the best Chinese ink stones have 'eyes' in them. 端渓硯石眼 - 検索 画像

@MauroP please find some pictures of the hakogaki attached, apologies in the delay.

Might represent an ink stone?

Was going through the listings of a local internet auction when I stumbled upon this lacquer panel. And since it featured two swordsmiths working on a sword, I bought it. It came cheap, less than 50 USD including delivery. It arrived today and I decided to share it here. Is this one of those panels that came in pairs and mainly were for selling them to Gaijin? Also I am very curious about the headgear of the swordsmith to the left. The dimensions of the picture are approximately 307x232mm. I also found a round version of this picture here: https://www.roseberys.co.uk/a0470-lot-494323?el=494323&lo=&pp=96

I agree it's the former. The technique is similar but the form of the precious metal is different. As I understand it, with kinzogan Mei the chiseled kanji are filled by hammering in gold wire then filed flat to the level of the nakago. In nunome zogan the gold, silver or copper elements are applied as thin sheets/foil using a hammer.

You can use a magnet to see which components are steel/iron vs fibreglass, resin or other material. it will help you to know what exactly you have bought. Although new, a lot of work has gone into assembling it. Absolutely nothing wrong with enjoying this as a highly decorative display item (for a fraction of the cost of the Edo equivalent) These armours are usually available in the $1500-2000 range although some are horrendously priced on eBay and misdescribed as Edo or “genuine vintage” (whatever that means) I have recently started to collect armour……it can be rather addictive and is certainly very very challenging as there is so little reliable written information in English (compared to swords or stamps or coins etc🙂) if you get “hooked” and want to progress start with components….masks…Kabuto and exercise extreme caution seeking advice before diving in. Pieces in poor condition can be bought for very little yet can still be interesting. PS……I’m what Bowie would describe as an “absolute beginner”

So here is my latest purchase. Long story short. In the second half of October Zoheito (or at least the sword that I identified as zoheito) popped up at the local internet auction. I turned out to be the highest bidder yet my bid didn't reach the reserve price. It was not the first gunto put on sale by that seller. And as the seller had couple of shin-gunto on other internet platform which shows actual contact of the seller, I decided it's time to call him. We had some conversation and agreed to meet when I could make it to Kyiv. Later on we talked once more and he said that he has four gunto for sale. Basically, I knew what three of them were. The zoheito from auction and two shin-gunto he had on another platform. Yet, the war kept me away from Kyiv for a longer time than initially was planned, so when I made it there and met the seller in person, only three swords remained. The interesting thing about the swords in question is that I found all of them (except zoheito) to be present here, on this very board. Yet, again, at the moment of our meeting I knew about two out of three. The seller was quite surprised by this knowledge of mine and told me that it's his partner who is a member of this forum. This showato with Seki stamp has already gone by the time we met: https://www.militaria.co.za/nmb/topic/49753-shin-gunto-with-signature/ Zoheito turned out to be an assembly of parts from different swords. In photos from the auction it just looked like avarage zoheito, not the best but not the worst either. Yet, holding it in hands, taking some close looks and removing tsuka revealed the truth. Tsuka core was badly hewn to fit fuchi and some remnant of seppa (grinded and filed) was put between fuchi and tsuka. Fuchi had some scratches on it too. The state of nakago was horrible. It was heavily rusted and I believe what I've seen in one place might have been a mix of rust and glue to make tsuka fit without freeplay. The blade was heavily buffed (and likely sandpapered before that). So that was no go for sure. The third sword (and second known to me at that moment) was this shin-gunto: https://www.militaria.co.za/nmb/topic/46565-shin-gunto/ It might be a pretty decent showato if not for tsuka. It might have been rewrapped at some stage as Ito looked too new and clean. Yet the main no-go were fuchi and kabuto-gane. Even in pictures from the topic one may notice that they look too blurry, especially kabuto-gane. With sword in hands they looked like someone made the molds from original parts and re-cast them. It was a strange contrast with the brass fittings on saya that looked pretty normal. Now if one took into account these details and the fact that there are two mekugi ana in nakago, one may come to the conclusion that the tsuka is not original and was a later addition to this sword. Considering this, I decided to pass on this sword too. Yet, I made quite a long way to get to Kyiv and I didn't wish to return without a sword. Also, the fourth sword caught my eye. The blade was buffed overall (in some places it was buffed so havilly that even the line of hamon was lost). However, something about the sword proportions (especially compared to the other two swords) and the certain things I was able to catch in even buffed hamon made me buy this sword. Its saya had clearly nothing to do with the sword, however the tsuka, tsuba and seppa seemed to belong to the sword. I even performed the test the Jean here taught me: I disassembled the sword, put tsuka back on nakago without inserting mekugi ana and yes, it holded blade perfectly. The sarute was installed incorrectly, tsuka seemed to be rewrapped (but Ito was stained, so it seems to happen quite a long time ago). And sure, I found a topic on this sword here too: https://www.militaria.co.za/nmb/topic/49821-shin-gunto-with-signature/ I recommend taking a look at it before looking at pictures of how the sword looked when I bought it. Mind, it was me who removed the sarute. I decided to remove it and put it in the correct way later. So here are photos:

Nakahara Nantenbo (1839-1925), Buddhist name Toju Zenchu (Complete Devotion), was in the last 17 years of his life the Exalted Master of the main temple of Moyoshin-ji of the Rinzai sect. The inscription is the second half of the quatrain traditionally attributed to the First Patriarch of Ch'an known as Daruma, who brought Buddhism from India to China: It's simple: pointing directly at mind. There, (jikishi ninshin 直指人心) seeing original-nature, you become Buddha (kenshō jōbutsu 見性成佛) Of course kenshō is the Japanese Zen phrase for enlightenment which resides within us. That is perhaps the major distinction between the "prayer" and "meditation" type of spirituality. In the former, the dialogue is directed within in order to awaken the already enlightened original-nature/true Self. In the latter, the dialogue is directed outward towards a deity. Suzuki and other Japanese intellectuals introduced Zen to the West as a philosophy in order to cater to the Western European tradition. In truth, if you visit a Zen monastery in Japan, you will find a deep and profound practice of spirituality (God within) that is indistinguishable from that of a Catholic Trappist Monastery. This depiction of Daruma is one of my favorites--a testament to Nantenbo's irreverence and Zen humor. I can't quite imagine an artist during the Italian Renaissance producing any form of iconography that portrays one of the disciples of Jesus Christ or of a Catholic saints in this manner.The work was done when he was age 86 (the last year of his long life). Translation: David Hinton, The Blue-Cliff Record, Shambala Publications, Inc (2024), pg. 226

Just wanted to share some images for study that Keisuke over at https://www.katana-case-shi.com shared with me today during a chat. In the order from the title.

Just stumbled across this video by Cross Cultures from the NHK, published on the 12th January: https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/shows/2084073/ "The fact that foreign collectors cherish Japanese swords helps to unearth ancient works taken overseas after 1945. It also serves as a force for preserving traditional techniques facing extinction." Nice little time capsule of today's Foreign Japanese Sword Enthusiast.

It's very hard to learn things only from pictures, without real traditionally forged blades at hand. One starts to doubt and double check everything. It was very important to me to get confirmation that what I see is what I think it is. Therefore, I reached Jean ROKUJURO here with a question and he kindly responded. Thanks to him once more for his answer! He confirmed that these are indeed sunagashi. I was very glad to receive that answer. For one thing, it makes me happy that I not only learned something but also was able to apply this small knowledge in practice. For another, it does mean that this sword is likely gendaito. And because it's my first gendaito and I found this out on my own it makes this sword kind of a treasure for me, even as for many of you guys it's just another war time blade made by a not very renowned smith. Also, as Jean noticed in his message, the general condition of the blade is an issue. Still I am very glad that this sword is in my hands now. Buffing caused a lot of damage. Yet, I suspect that long before the buffing blade was polished and the polisher didn't do his best. The main indications of this are as follows: the line of Koshinogi is more straight on the mei side of the blade while it's more curvy on another. There is also a spot on the blade close to ha-machi (on the mei side ) that looks strange. In my inexperienced opinion it looks like the polisher didn't get the real line of hamon and tried to create a false hamon line. These occurrences couldn't be explained by buffing only. Later on I'll shoot some photos of these areas. At the moment I am away from my swords and will be away for some weeks. Alas in cases of even gendai blades made by not very renown smiths like Nagamura Kiyonobu the polishing might be unwise. Also finding a polisher here in Ukraine might be an issue. So for the time being I will go only as far as Uchiko could get me. And even with it I'll be very cautious.

In some photos above you may still see the marks across the blade left by the person who "prepared" the blade for buffing. The only direction I was working uchiko is along the blade. The line of hamon doesn't overlap ha-machi. And it was especially hard to catch the boshi. And just a photo of the hamon line.

Three photos of next spot:

Three photos of yet one place:

And here is nakago. And the signature of Kiyonobu ( 清宣).

Some photos of bare blade: Kissaki. Yokote is visible.

You may notice the spots where the blade was "overbuffed". These spots correspond to the spot of rust visible in photos from the original topic. The greatest loss is the original saya. I asked the seller about it. He told me he knew nothing about its whereabouts. So I contacted his partner, Den through the private messages here. Alas, no answer so far. Hope he will answer soon. The saya that came with the sword, well, dunno what to say... I believe it has nothing to do with the Japanese swords at all. The grey stuff seems to be automotive putty. The kurigata is crude and was held in place by sheer power of super glue. I was visiting my parents at the time of taking sword photos, so there were some cats around doing cat things. Additional photos of sword: