Ian B3HR2UH

I am somewhat skeptical that these are a real daisho and not two similarly themed pieces put together . The workmanship on one looks better than on the other .

Hi Thomas,I have the attached piece which I believe is a gardeners knife or Nata .The blade has a reverse curve in that the cutting edge is on the concave side . I suspect yours is a Japanese gardening implement as well. Ian brooks

Hi Hamish , it looks like a stylised dragon wrapped around a ken . Ian

A collector out here had a good looking daisho pair in " shakudo " nanako with mon on them . To me, on a cursory inspection , they looked good but he submitted them to shinsa and they failed being rejected as modern cast pieces . The coloring on the clouds of this piece looks odd to me . Ian Brooks

I have the attached Kai gunto and the ito on it is completely original so such pieces do exist . However such light binding is highly unusual and with the other red flags it should add up to a warning to avoid the sword . The kabuto gane on the originals generally are made of one metal to which the copper flower parts are soldered ( ? ) on . You can see this on the photo of my piece . The one you are being offered seems to be just the one metal which is I think a bit odd . I wait for others to howl me down on this and show me their pieces where just the one metal is used for the kabuto gane

I would be very suspicious of this piece . As Brian says the habaki is way off and a few other bits raise red flags for me . These coupled with the fact that the other piece the seller has is a Chinese fake leads me to say don't go near it unless you see photos of the nakago

With pictures being submitted by attorneys it looks like you are wanting to sell this and are picking our brains for information ?

This Soten , which is owned by Mishina Kenji , is pictured in the Kokusai Tosogu Kai 8th Exhibition and is described as one Soten's best . I thought it was fantstic and decided to post a copy . Makes you wonder where the others fit into the scheme of things when you see something like this one

The mei / signature is so recently cut that the blade is probably gendai / showa period but certainly no earlier than shin shinto

An octopus on one of my tanto

Absolutely NO chance that this is genuine. My strong guess is that it is a showa era fake .

Hi Vincent , to be very blunt , the piece is a junker which you will probably soon tire of . It has had the stamp removed and been mounted up in crummy old mounts to deceive people into thinking that it is a genuine old Edo period sword .There are much better pieces available out there some of which will not break the bank .

Hi Vincent , it might be a good idea to seek opinions before you buy stuff like this rather than afterwards .

And the bottom fitting is odd

If you are looking to pay that sort of money do yourself a favor and have a serious look at the Kunikiyo katana that is for sale on this site where the price has just been dropped to $4250

Thanks Gents , much appreciated

I was sent the attached pretty rough photo for translation but I am struggling with it. I read the last three characters as Kanesada saku but have done no good with the earlier ones . It seems to be a Showa piece . Does anyone recognise the smith Thanks

Well done Bruce . When you see them all together there can be no doubt about what they are ie clearly NOT made during the war

David , what basis do you have for that statement ? Ian

Soshu Ju Masahiro

Based in the three square inches that I can see I would say that it is a real Japanese blade . It is almost impossible to read the signature most of which seems to have rusted away. There is possibly a Kin or Kane in there . A photo of the overall sword and of the full tang might help .

Roger Robertshaw has a second generation Tadahiro , signed katanamei , illustrated in his book which is thought to be genuine . I can't recall if it was Roger or the NBTHK who thought it was right . I would be hugely suspicious of any full length Hizen sword that is signed katanamei.

There is ZERO chance of that Bruce .You are being far too kind Richard Fuller , I think , wrote about fakes being made in india . Perhaps this is one of those as the brass inlay is something that might be found on an Indian sword . It is however NOT Japanese . It is rubbish . These things should be called out for what they are and we should not be giving people false hope

The tsuba in question is a complete piece of junk which doesn't warrant five replies let alone five pages of them . Yet here I am responding !!.The Japanese would shake their heads in disbelief that the gaijin were discussing such a thing. The defect is probably just a result of poor workmanship when this crapper was made

Two of my tsuba have red numbers painted inside the nakago ana . I can trace their provenance back to the Sothebys sale of Dr Stevens's collection on the 25th of July 1967 . Dr Stevens had a huge collection that was sold over five sales by Sothebys from 1966 to 1968 Does anyone else have anything else from the Stevens collection or anything with similarly placed red numbers ? I would like to understand whether these numbers are peculiar to the Stevens collection or if they relate to an earlier collectors numbering system . In similar vein I have another pair signed Kikuichi Tsunekatsu . These were sold by Sothebys in their sale of the 3rd of June 1981 and the catalogue stated that they are ex Trower and Stark collections . Both tsuba have tiny stamps on the reverse about the size of a pinhead . I suspect that these may also be a collectors identification mark. Has anyone seen such a mark before ? Ian Brooks