Ian B3HR2UH

Thanks for your comments Chris . Much more enlightening than you previous cryptic ones. When I first saw this sword I thought wow I will have a crack at it however my ardour has since cooled . A number of things concerned me 1. As you said the date characters didnt line up on the nakagos ridge although some mei that I have seen in the books don't either 2.The gap between the bottom horizontal stroke of the Tada and the top horizontal stroke of the Tsuna seems too great even allowing for the photo being blown up. See the example above and that in the book Japanese swords in Dutch collections 3. the gap between the Tsuna character and the Hori do saku is too large 4. The point is too long . The NBTHK English journal 15 says that the kissaki is generally in medium size and sometimes was shaped slightly longer than usual . This Kissaki looks way longer than any that I have seen of Tadatsuna"s in the books Ian B

Robert , I was the buyer of this sword and thought you would be interested to know how it turned out. The late Robert Lewert had a Juyo blade by Bishu Suyetsugu that was dated 1378 . This featured in the May 1974 JSSUS Newsletter . The length and shape of Lewerts sword are very similar to the one that I purchased . In the translation of the Juyo write up that is in the Newsletter the shape is described as " Naoshi Nagamaki , shobu zukuri, high shinogi " I think that it is fair to say that the shape of the ebay sword was also Naoshi Nagamaki. I took a punt on the sword for two reasons . Firstly the mount was in my opinion the best Katana mount that I can recall seeing on ebay for ages .There are lots of mounts with mediocre fittings that come up but I thought this one had some class about it . The Fuchi Kashira were good , tsuba by Owari Sadahiro , fine silver foil habaki and gold foil seppa . As a generalization you would expect a mount of this class to have an OK blade in it . Secondly the blade was Nagamaki Naoshi and as you said, seemed to be about 70 cm long.The very few blades of this style that I have seen in books or in the flesh all seem to be attributed to or be by Nambokucho smiths so I thought that there must be a reasonable prospect that this blade was too. When it did turn up the mount was as classy as I had hoped for. The blade is 68 cm long and is in fair condition . The hamon is nioi based and I would decribe it as undulating suguha with some Ko midare and ashi . There are a couple of rounded spots in one area of thi Ji which might be shintetsu . I think I have got myself a probable cut down Nambokucho Nagamaki . There is a shinsa out here in September and I will put the blade in that and see what the experts think ! Ian B