Brian

Amazed as always

Could easily be cast fittings with a plain steel blade. But considering Japanese smiths get a hamon on a kogatana, if they wanted to, it could easily be a real blade with hamon not visible. I still thing it's well done.

Looking at the skill in wrapping those multiple strands....humbles me. I can barely tie my own shoelaces.

Just found this. Looks interesting

Can't see any smith deliberately adding the mon so offset, and we can't even think of the nakago being altered, as the mekugi ana show center placement as Grey pointed out.

Everyone plays their part, and I welcome even those vague "hints" that are meant to make us research further. Enough of the personal attacks. I for one am very glad Reinhard is taking the time to post. Drop the subject now.

Wow that's gorgeous!

Heck of a lot of work to forge those "folds" I've seen them at the edges, folded upwards, but this is the first I've seen them forged in the inner part.

https://www.facebook.../share/p/19hgyq8Na8/

And without koshirae, I guess it is possible with a lot of work.

Here's what Darcy had to say about daisho (minus the pics) Daisho A nice to have on everyone’s list… the daisho. The name literally means “big-small” and refers to the pair of swords that only a samurai was authorized to wear. There are some simple basics about daisho and some misconceptions. The learning curve is shallow but some people skip over the essentials, and it can cause some damage. Koshirae The first and most salient point is that daisho are about the koshirae. It does not matter what swords you put into a daisho, but once you have matching koshirae, you have yourself a daisho. The katana might be Kamakura period and the wakizashi might be Shinshinto, with 6 centuries difference in time, but they are still a daisho once they go into matching koshirae. Lose the koshirae and you have two independent swords again. Keeping with this thought that daisho are a koshirae thing, you can have daisho tsuba, daisho fuchigashira, daisho menuki and even a full set of daisho tosogu that have all the parts you need to create mounts for two blades. People have a misconception that daisho were usually swords made as pairs, and this does not bear out when we examine the NBTHK Juyo Token records. Rather we see evidence that these swords were all mixed and matched. The reasons for this are: Some lords provided a single sword to their samurai and he was expected to provide the other, so they got sourced from different supply. Desirability of a sword for use is highly individual, if you had a katana you really loved you might test several wakizashi to find one that you also really loved, in order to mount together. Love might be synonymous to “this blade feels great in my hand, and I feel good about defending my life with it.” What you may like out of one maker’s katana you may not be interested in with their wakizashi. Koto wakizashi from earlier than Muromachi might not be easily accessible as they usually depend on making a tachi suriage (unless you use a hirazukuri wakizashi or a naginata naoshi). So this makes matching a koto katana difficult. Some swords were assembled by theme as gifts, such as giving a Yukimitsu wakizashi along with a Masamune katana, to or from the Shogunate. In this case obviously some thought went into this to make the blades both Soshu school and with smiths that had a close relationship. But these seem to have been done like this more frequently than to match both blades together by the same maker. You could break one sword and then you’d get a replacement which you could afford, you liked, and you felt could defend your life, and the last item of worry would be matching the “swordsmith brand” of your other unbroken blade. There are however some swords that were made as a pair. These are very rare. Daisho Token Everyone tries this at some point, we try to get two matched blades by the same maker, so we can have our own daisho. These blades sometimes have passed their papers at different times, and we take this and construct mounts, find some matching tsuba and fuchigashira and boom, we have a daisho. It’s not a true daisho. True daisho were used by samurai in the Edo period. Unless you are a samurai with a time machine, what you just made is not a true daisho. At best, these… are what I call self-assembled daisho. Or an assembly. We can colloquially call them daisho but the important thing is to not mix them up with historical daisho. They are just expressions of a collector showing some love for his swords and assembling them so that he has something that makes him happy. Sometimes a collector looks carefully and finds two blades with similar signatures by the same maker, and well matching styles and submits them together to try to get a very rare paper. Daisho token This paper is the daisho token paper and it is almost never awarded. Because the NBTHK knows we submit blades we’d like to be daisho in our fantasies, and they examine very carefully these blades and find discrepancies and so pass them on different papers, though they were submitted as daisho. I got it once on an unusual mumei Shinshinto pair of swords attributed to Ozaki Takashige. This is not a high level smith, and the blades being mumei shinshinto were not high level blades. But they were real daisho token, made at the same time, by the same smith, intended as a pair. You can see both blades are on the same paper. The Japanese heading says: 一大小 (One Daisho) and then under this heading describes the katana and wakizashi as both being unsigned by Ozaki Takashige. This is an important thing, because a lot of swords are sold as a daisho… and then have two papers. Well, that means it’s not a daisho by any stretch unless they are in matching historical mounts. True daisho token are hard to get, because they were almost never made in the first place… and those made were damaged, lost, mixed up and so on. Now 99.99% of the time people try to get a daishi token paper it doesn’t happen and it just comes back with two separate papers. This doesn’t mean that the swords do not belong to a daisho. It just means that the swords themselves are not a daisho. Daisho tsuba are still daisho tsuba even though you take them off of the mounts, however daisho swords lose their status unless they were made together: all the other tosogu items were made together so they retain their daisho status. Being a daisho themselves for swords means that the swords need to be made on the same day by the same smith with the intention of being a mated pair. Same as tosogu, it’s just that while it is common for tosogu it is not common for swords, as it wasn’t a requirement. What matters here is the intent. On a wakizashi you found on eBay and a katana sold to you by your friend, even if they look like they match, these are not daisho token by the classification that gets them onto one paper. There was no intent of the maker of those blades to mate them together. Hence, they are not daisho token. Historical daisho In a historical daisho, it doesn’t matter if your sho is a tanto or a naginata naoshi, or your katana is a naginata naoshi and your sho is a shinto wakizashi: if they go into Edo period koshirae and did so in the Edo period, then they are part of an Edo period daisho. The swords are not daisho token but they are part of a daisho. Burn the daisho koshirae: you are left with two unrelated swords. Secondarily, if that daisho koshirae is not Edo period, and the assembly itself is not Edo period, then it is not a true daisho. It’s a collector’s hobby project daisho. An assembly. True daisho koshirae from the Edo period are hard to find, and those of high quality pass Juyo on their own. If the NBTHK accepted them into papers, it means the NBTHK thinks they are Edo period daisho koshirae and not slap togethers from 1978. Pre-Shinto swords in daisho Daisho is a concept that begins to be formalized in the Muromachi period with Oda Nobunaga’s conquest of Japan and under the Tokugawa is formalized as a badge of office for samurai. So, no koto smiths we know of made daisho token explicitly. Samurai did not exist at the time of the koto smiths, nor did this wearing of the sword pair exist as a badge of office, nor was it even a common pattern to wear a katana and wakizashi together both edge up in matching koshirae. It would be far more likely that a Muromachi bushi would have a yari and small katana or large tanto as a backup. But it’s likely that these warriors armed themselves as the case required it based on what their mission was. So no koto pair of swords today will be accepted onto one paper as daisho token basically because they predate the concept. They can be united later into a daisho by being chosen in the Edo period and mounted in purpose made mounts. Now they are part of a historical daisho. It’s up to you to use your thinking cap to see what you’re dealing with, as a self-assembled daisho has no particular historical value other than it can be two nice swords and some nice mounts. So, no bonus value for you as a collector other than how you feel about those mounts aesthetically. Whereas a historical daisho is something that is rare and very nice to have as it is a hard to acquire artifact of the Edo period. The more parts in the set = the more rare the set. Daisho token revisited When it comes then to who made daisho token the first thing we learn about them is that chiefly they are a Shinshinto thing. The idea of making swords as explicit pairs did exist in the Shinto period but it doesn’t appear to be very common. In the Shinshinto period it seems to have come into vogue then to place orders with one smith for a fully matched pair of blades. Even so, that in itself was not so common when we look at the Juyo results. By my count there are only 23 daisho token that have passed Juyo, compared to 11,422 swords as of the time of this writing. So, the number immediately must strike you as miniscule. The earliest daisho token that the NBTHK made Juyo is a Mizuta Kunishige pair of swords.

I suspect it would be very, very difficult to paper 2 swords as a daishowithout koshirae. Yes, these were done, but since they are modern, and likely documented by the smith as having been made together...I think that was an easier call. But 2 antique blades that had no koshirae when submitted for papers? I wouldn't think there would be more than a handful, since daisho either requires documentation that they were carried together, or the fittings need to prove that. Not saying it never happens, but blades without koshirae getting daisho classification would surprise me, aside from Shinsakuto.

You could try Proton Drive. There's a coupon that gives you a year at 2 Euro a month, billed for a year. Gives you 200 Gigs of storage. Just remember to cancel before the year is over to prevent the regular pricing. https://account.prot...=EUR&coupon=BF2024YR You can publicly share links. (Btw, I have nothing to do with them, or the coupon, just found it online) They are a decent host, being one of the main privacy email hosts.

He is/was an awesome and knowledgeable guy. Without further info, we can assume he hasn't passed. But his condition was described as one that won't change, he was in a comatose-type state and the doctors had no hope of recovery. I believe it was a decision of one of his family not to take the inevitable step. Very very sad. Those who met him and socialized with him at the DTI know that he was the life of the party, had a great sense of humour and was very highly respected.

I've banned gold members before. I'm suspended them too. In fact I don't even look who is on what level when I react. You're not making this any easier for me. Off topic discussions about the discussion around off topic discussions? Not helpful.

Correction Alex. Not made as a daisho, but carried as a daisho. A pair of swords that can be proven to have been carried together as a daisho.

Wishing you a full and speedy recovery. I promise, the dog wasn't sent by anyone on the forum

I'm still in pain after the surgery weeks ago, and spend half the day in bed. Just sitting at this pc taking care of forum stuff hurts...a lot.

Thanks Dee. But importing into SA is too expensive. Post office doesn't work, so only courier which would likely cost as much as the items. Rather trying to find them in a country I can find someone coming back from who can bring them with.

Nope, and why does it bother you? This isn't a popularity contest and there are no prizes for the most popular topics/posts/people. Just ignore it. I don't even look who posts downvotes, and I'm sure most don't bother either. Let's leave the worrying about votes to TikTok and Facebook.

Dan, you are missing the point entirely. This isn't proving your point...it's proving the opposite. That many of these tsuba you claim are cast, showing dubious "casting flaws" and tagane ato not cast into the tsuba, are NOT cast. And forget that whole "annealed and reheated" nonsense. If someone casts tsuba, it's to make them cheap and fast. Additional processes just add expense and time, and make it pointless. That tsuba was obviously cast. Thank you Matt for doing that, it is a huge help, well done. I suspect tsuba like that one were either made for display, cheap mounting or deliberate deception. They didn't take too much care cleaning up the insides of the sukashi, as that would have taken more time and expense, which goes against the point of cast tsuba.

Last warning. Get back on track, this isn't a sparring ring. Last 5 personal and off topic posts have been deleted. Can we NOT go into 2025 like this?

Since this isn't meant to be functional, just decorative...still like it a lot. Would display it anyday. Like those Chen display boards showing miniatire katana through the forging process.

Can't blame you...gorgeous!

Yeah, I get it. But there's that "precedent" thing I need to keep in mind. Otherwise I'm going to get people posting tsuba books in the fittings section, and armour books in the katchu section. Once I allow one, the next guy gets to say "but you allowed....." Sorry, but if the military guys have any sense, they will be checking this section regularly. Btw...excellent books that are a must have.