Shugyosha

Hi Gary: a trip to San Francisco would indeed make sense - I don't think I'd have to try too hard to get approval for that...and maybe a run on to Hawaii...I have a desire to visit the Arizona memorial. Also Chicago might be an option as the Missus is into researching her family tree and has a wayward ancestor who went coal mining in Illinois in the 1880s and she'd love to do some digging around to see if she could find out anything about him and I could leave her to do that and take in the show. Hi Barry: thanks for the reply - yes you are absolutely right. Perhaps the lack of focus is the problem and I should stop tinkering and get serious. Out of interest, which smith's work did you fall in love with? Kind regards, John

Hi Gary, I hope I'm not being rude but I feel that you I have to come back on some of the points that you have made. Yours is an interesting take on collecting that doesn't seem to account for the growth and changes in taste of the individual, the acquisition of knowledge or the idea that one can improve one's collection incrementally by selling from the bottom to acquire better items. Here's where I am at: My finances are never going to be such that I can own a bunch of swords worth in excess of $10,000 - even if I could I would struggle to justify spending that much on a hobby. My collecting doesn't have a particular focus, so how do I justify doing anything at all? Well for me it's about educating myself and I don't mind paying some "school fees" in order to do so - I don't regard this as taking a beating, though obviously existing in more rarified climes where every purchase turns a profit would be preferable. I guess there are a number of other ways that I could go about educating myself, one of which is to visit sword shows, but I'm on the other side of the pond to you and there aren't anything like the quantity or quality of sword shows in the UK that there are Stateside - in fact the only Japanese swords one can hope to see regularly are at millitaria fairs and these tend to be low quality. Furthermore, I have a wife who enjoys travel, but I have to take account of her when planning holidays etc and she isn't really interested in swords so my options are limited in terms of getting to Japan or USA for sword-related purposes. Also, I don't buy things I don't like nor would not be happy to keep but do feel that continuing to develop is an important and there's no point in having a house full of stuff for its own sake - so some gets moved on. When the desire to develop stops so will my interest and I'll just sell everything and ride off into the sunset. Kind regards, John

Thanks for the tip Peter. I've contacted Paul and am going to have a run down to London to drop a sword off on Saturday. If anyone wants to put a face to a name, I'll be the short, fat bloke clutching a grey holdall. Best, John

Hi Joe, I hope your sale goes well - I love your monster katana. I've got a couple of swords up for sale at the moment and they are currently priced at a loss. The answer to Gary's question is obvious in that, if you buy at dealer prices like I did, without a significant shift upwards in the market, you must sell at a loss. If I buy a sword at one price and then take it back to the dealer the next week he will pay me less than he sold it to me for. To some extent the sales section on NMB has undermined resale prices also (sorry Brian!!) because people often hold off on buying what are already reasonably priced items in the hope of a further reduction and this often follows and then sometimes another one. Should I have bought these swords? Based on purely monetary criteria, obviously not. However, I do enjoy owning them, I've learned things from having them and I'm selling them so I can put the money back into something that I can learn more from (hopefully in a pleasant way). If I can't sell them at a sensible price then they will go back in the box for a while and I'll think of another way to move them on.

Hi Brian, There's something a bit odd about this one. For me it has that "made in China" feel to it. The scale on the tang is weird and the length of the nakago for a suiriage blade seems too long, though that may be the photos. The mei looks etched rather than cut which might explain the scale (I can't make anything of it out) and even if I'm wrong and it it is genuine, like you say, the tang condition says that it may have been through a fire. There's enough doubt there to make me run away, but it's late here in the UK and you might get some different views. Best, John Mark posted while I was typing I'm not disputing what he said but if it is a shinto blade, it's had a pretty hard life - suriage and no discernable ha machi from the photos which again would make me hesitate.

Hi Guido, You know far more about this than I do, but for me it begs the question of why go to all the trouble of faking the papers and not give the swords themselves a more attractive attribution that would inflate their price? Kind regards, John

There's a nice example here: http://www.seiyudo.com/ka-090116.htm I remember reading somewhere that longer hira zukuri blades were more prone to cracking during the quenching process but I can't remember where I got that from. Best, John

It's the Seki stamp, so it's a shingunto. Best, John

Not really, which is why I hadn't replied sooner. The kanji in the second photo are (I think): 運者右天 (un sha u ten) but they don't make any sense to me in this combination. As regards the other side, I'm struggling to make out the kanji at all apart from the third one 者 (person) which also appears in the other inscription. Hopefully you'll get some better help shortly. Best, John

Do you have any close-up pictures of the blade? The activity might give a clue as to its age. As regards the tang, I'm suspicious of the colour of the patina (too red for me) which doesn't look quite right and also the metal of the tang seems too smooth. This makes me wonder whether this isn't a more modern blade with the tang adjusted to give an older look. Best, John

It's an interesting example. Having thought further, if the flaw did appear after shinsa and during polish, I'm curious as to why the "high ranking polisher" went on to finish the job after the hagire had become apparent and (excluding personal sentiment) why the owner would spend further money on what is effectively a write-off.

Sorry Lee, you beat me to it.

Hi Chris, Have a look at the photograph with the oshigata. I couldn't see it in the first picture. Maybe the blade passed shinsa before polish and the hagire was either revealed in or caused by the polishing process?

Hi Donny, It's your money and they are your eyes and I don't mean to speak out of turn here but, just keep your hand in your pocket for a while. You seem to be buying a number of items that are, at best, of doubtful quality and you don't need to do this. You can learn just by looking at items for sale on the internet and studying and researching them. There's lots of good advice on here and usually good items at decent prices if you look at the sales section. Also, if you are contemplating a purchase, there's no shame in asking advice first. Kind regards, John

Hi Joe, So here I am sitting out on this tree limb and I'm about to get to sawing at it... Whilst I absolutely agree with your reasoning, I'm not sure that this is the way to look at it. Is it not the case that the best works by koto smiths are better (or regarded as better) than the best works of shinto smiths notwithstanding that there might have been a greater thinning out koto works over time? Essentially what I'm getting at is that, however many shinto swords are eliminated from the equation, if the best five (or however many) koto works are put up against the best five shinto works of all time, the koto works will win despite the fact that there are more shinto works extant. As regards Ken's original question, (and I don't know the answer) but here's a bit of supposition: The best quality iron sand will be used up first (gold mines in certain provinces were pretty much mined out by the 18th century), so it was possible to use up all of a commodity in a particular locallity); The more easily accessible sand will be used up before the stuff that is hardest to get to; Smiths working with a material that they know inside out and which is of a consistent quality will achieve consistently higher workmanship; Groups of smiths were forced to move around during war time or as a result of natural disasters are more likely to have to work with materials of a quality that they are not used to; When peace broke out in the Edo period raw materials were available from a variety of sources and so the iron available might have come from a mixture of sources or at least was less likely to be from a single source; Many of the swords produced in the shinto period were more akin to art swords rather than swords made as weapons that were coincidentally beautiful and also were not made for use against armoured oponents so the need for the best quality steel possible was reduced. I'm sure someone will shoot all of this down shortly, but it has been fun trying to hypothesise. Best, John

ZZ Top??

Many thanks Morita san. Apologies Bojan. Kind regards, John

Hi Bojan, It reads: Mogarishi 藻枋子 Soten sei 宗典制衣 Best, John

I have dealt with Marius several times and have always been very pleased with what I've bought and the transaction as a whole. Also, I feel I have to give a shout to Hamish who bent over backwards to get an item to me recently, despite the Australian Postal Services best efforts to the contrary.

Sorry if this is a bit obvious, but it looks rather like the mae kanji from maedate 前 : Mae - ahead, in front, before. Best, John

The first kanji in the seal looks like 軍 but it doesn't look like this in Markus Sesko's book on Identifying Seal Script...

Hi Golda, Well done on making a great start to collecting Japanese swords - you've held off from buying first and repenting later. I wish I had done the same. Often the problem with authentication papers is the lack of information that they actually give. There's some information here on reading them: http://www.nihontocraft.com/japanese_sword_papers.html The first one is a wakizashi, unsigned papered to the Yoshii (吉井)school. There's some information here: http://www.sho-shin.com/yoshii1.htm The second one is a wakizashi signed Omi Kami Fujiwara Tsuguhiro on one side and Echizen Ju Shimosaka on the other. This could be one of two generations of smiths, again the paper doesn't specify which. The reason the part of the paper is hidden came up in a thread recently where that part of the paper was cut out: apparently it is to hide the name of the sword's owner when it was sent for shinsa and avoid any negative implication for the seller or their family that selling the sword might have. From Markus Sesko's E Swordsmiths of Japan: TSUGUHIRO (継広), 1st gen., Kanbun (寛文, 1661-1673), Echizen – “Echizen no Kuni Shimosaka Tsuguhiro” (越前国下坂継広), “Ōmi no Kami Fujiwara Tsuguhiro – Echizen-jū” (近江守藤原継広・越前住), student of the 3rd gen. Yasutsugu (康継), he lived in Echizen´s Fukui (福井) but moved later to Zeze (膳所) in Ōmi province, he also worked in Edo, we know. blades from the Meireki (明暦, 1655-1658) to the Enpō era (延宝, 1673-1681), itame mixed with masame, hiro-suguha with ashi, notare, gunome-midare mixed with togari-gunome, some blades show horimono, wazamono, chūjō-saku TSUGUHIRO (継広), 2nd gen., Genroku (元禄, 1688-1704), Echizen – “Ōmi no Kami Fujiwara Tsuguhiro” (近江守藤原継広), “Echizen no Kuni Shimosaka Tsuguhiro” (越前国下坂継広), “Echizen Shimosaka Ōmi no Kami Fujiwara Tsuguhiro” (越前下坂近江守藤原継広), we know date signatures from the Genroku and the Shōtoku era (正徳, 1711-1716). The third one is another wakizashi signed Bishu Osafune Ju Katsumitsu (備州長船住勝光). There were a number of generations of smiths in Bizen province signing this way from around 1400 to around 1590 and, again, there isn't any hint on the paper as to which it was. Some information here: http://www.sho-shin.com/sue2.htm I'll let someone else comment on the validity of papers. Otherwise, welcome to the Board. Kind regards, John

Hi James, I'd go with chu suguba. Sunagashi is an effect within the hamon rather than above it. There's a picture here: http://www.japaneseswordindex.com/terms/terms.htm There's definitely some nie in the hamon but I'm not sure I'm seeing the brushed sand effect in yours, but that might be my eyes. Best, John

Mmmmm....Big Macs....

Hi Donny, I'm struggling with the photographs of the sword's nakago. The date reads a lucky day in February of the 16th year of Showa, (1941). I think that the tsuba mei is 芝近作 Shigechika saku. Unfortunately, and it may be my screen size, I can't work out the detail of the signature and maybe some clearer pictures would help. However, as it's signed with a tachi mei it doesn't look like a run of the mill gunto. Best, John