Ian B3HR2UH

Thanks for posting it Tim . My friends above may or may not be right in their assessments . Bonhams recently had some pretty big estimates too Good luck with the sale

Hi Barry , this shows how all of our tastes differ ,as I would love to own it

I think that is a good call . Their hamon are usually narrow suguha like this piece has . Most that I have seen are quite thick , yoroi doshi , so if yours is thick then I would say it is certainly Tosa Yoshimitsu .

They look like two tsuba with similar themes and by different makers that have been put together to try and sell as a Daisho set

I visited the shop thirty years ago .Full of high priced junk . I left after about three minutes .

Why not give it a gentle touch wtth a belt sander and see how that works !. Seriously though post some photos so people can see what you are talking about .

Another Peony . The tsuba is tanto size so is enlarged and a little blurry. Ian Brooks

Hello Jake , as no one else has commented I will give you the bad news . There is no chance of these being Goto . The workmanship is just nowhere near good enough . You would expect the Shakudo to be a dark bluey black wheras yours are a coffee color . Sorry to ruin your day . Attached is one of my pieces signed Goto Deshi ( I forget the rest ) which will show you what the color should be like . Ian Brooks

Hi Barry , would you aspire to have that " lovely " tsuba in your collection ? I think it is pretty mediocre and that we should be trying to educate people that this sort of stuff is just that. Regards Ian

Nice to have an original copy though MIck Ian Brooks

This is an interesting observation that deserves to be treated seriously . I haven't seen such a thing before . Ian brooks

They don't Gerry . I was offered some of these pieces ie newly polished blades in shirasaya with an accompanying mount . I obviously couldn't put the newly polished blade in the old saya to see if it fitted but I could see if the tsuka fitted over the nakago . It was no surprise that none of the handles fitted the blades they supposedly went with . It was just a mount thrown together to put on display . The lack of respect for their own history staggers me . The NBTHK must bear some responsibility for this , I think , as they seem to provide no incentive not to part things out . Ian Brooks

Dealers can make more from selling the parts than they can from selling the whole sword so they separate them out . Westerners want a koshirae to display with their blade so the obliging dealer puts one together for them from his left over parts. Ian Brooks

In about 1970 when I was 15 years old I owned a few non Japanese swords . Each month I would attend the Antique Arms Collectors Guild meeting at the Hawthorn Band rooms . There was a signed Japanese blade in a gunto saya on sale for Eight dollars . That price was way too high . Each month the asking price would come down by a dollar and when it got to five dollars I bought it ( from underneath my good friend Barry Thomas's nose ) . I couldn't read the mei at the time but later was able to read it as Tojiro Hisakuni a famous koto maker . Gimei ,I am sure ,although one Japanese who saw it was pretty keen on it . It is something that I still own . Ian Brooks

These are so obviously metal and NOT wood