Geraint

Dear James. Looking great! As a matter of interest why did you scrap the idea of the low stand for your armour? I think it would look good and if you are canny you can have some low concealed drawers underneath it, just right for swords......... Looking forward to the rest. All the best.

Dear Grev. For your last two images I think both are folded and then etched. With a properly forged plate very little grain would be visible unless an etchant is used. For the first image I would really like to see a view of the whole tsuba. Often a piece of raised metal is inlayed into the plate and then the whole carved, if well done then no visible joint would be apparent. I'm sure others will chime in . All the best.

Ooooohhhh!.. That would upset me every time I used them. All the best.

Dear Glen. I'm sure that pictures would help but here are some thoughts. I wouldn't file the menuki at all, much easier to enlarge the hole in the tsuka slightly, especially if the tsuka is lacquered wood rather than same. While Chris is correct that rice glue is used for saya and tsuka cores the more usual glue for metal fittings is based on pine resin. A thread here, The kozuka is often secured to the kogatana by nothing more than a paper wrap to provide enough thickness to make the blade fell firm. again, I wouldn't use any glue here. The blade itself is sometimes replace with a bamboo tsunagi, this allows the kozuka to display well in the koshirae and because it is small bamboo is more resilient than the usual timbers. And lastly, yes, working backwards to make a tsunagi fit a koshirae is tricky. I've just done one and it is much more interesting than making one to match a blade so well done for that bit. Hope some of that helps. All the best.

Dear Ron. I've checked both the books that Dale listed and cannot find your fuchi kashira in either, I'm afraid. All the best.

Dear Seth. That's a really good approach. Enjoy the journey. All the best.

Hi Adam. I will take Swords of Imperial Japan please. 'I'll message you. All the best.

Well we are in the middle of a heat wave, (for the UK that means the drizzle is slightly warm) so even the prospect of a coat is un bearable. Don't even think about getting yours John! Kirill's comment, like so many aphorisms, has a great deal of truth in it but we work with what we have got and on a forum that means we are largely at the mercy of photographs and papers. In this case we have an out of polish sword with a mei and we are not even agreed on what the mei says yet. Sometimes we can help along the way but definitive answers are hard to come by and usually the best results are from some of the swords which have gone on to polish and shinsa. From time to time a friend will turn up with a sword or two and we look at them together, one spots something the other had not picked up on and vice versa, we throw around some ideas and in the process learn a little from each other, it's not high level kantei but it's fun. That's pretty much what is going on here though some are able to offer more informed opinions, generally we are tolerant of each other and if someone throws out an idea somebody else is on hand to counter and in the process, hopefully everyone learns a little more. In spit of the heat wave maybe I'd better get my coat now. All the best.

Dear Mark. It has been my understanding that machi okuri is a term that refers to a slight adjustment of the machi without suriage. Once a sword is shortened then it becomes suriage, Of course the machi have been moved but it is a different condition. Like you I thought the nakago was long but as we are working without an overall blade image I am now not so sure, trying to extrapolate from the image of the blade in it's koshirae. All the best.

Dear Seth. For $150 you have bought yourself a ticket to an amazing theme park, one that will keep you entertained for years to come. Just to pick up some of the points made: The mei, signature, has been read and as Steve says, the Bishu part is a shortened way of writing Bizen which is a province, Osafune is a town and the smith;s name is Sukemune. However, many swords have signatures that are false, a bit like finding a violin with a Stradivarius label. In order to know for sure you would have to get this sword professionaly polished and submit it to shinsa, a process where a group of Japanese experts make a decision and issue a paper confirming the signature or they reject it as fake. Kirill suggests that the shape of the sword is typical for those made during the Kanbun period in Japanese history, once you start researching and reading you will find a number of charts that show how the sword shape changed over time, it's quite subtle. Just to get you started here is an unrelated Kanbun sword, https://www.aoijapan.com/wakizashi-jumyo/ There is a wealth of Japanese terminology to get your head around, take it slow and feel free to ask questions. If there is a sword club near you then go along and see what they have, it's endlessly interesting. All the best.

Dear Okan. Just to add, the difference in the polish on the mune is usually the length of the kaeri, the return of the boshi. All the best.

Dear Russell. The smith is Bushu Fujiwara Shigenobu. There is one working around 1661. All the best.

Love it! That's the most aggressive looking bunny I have ever seen. http://www.ncjsc.org/item_sadanaka_kozuka.htm All the best.

Dear Bob. Is Item 79 not Jakushi? https://www.japaneseswordbooksandtsuba.com/store/tsuba-%26-kodogu/t327-signed-jakushi-tsuba-paper# All the best.

As regards mounting, here is what I have done with a couple of mine which had no poles. Makes everything much easier to handle but if you want to go for the full size pole then have at it! Look forward to seeing the photographs. All the best.

Dear Dan. Bear in mind that a large number of yari and naginata spent their lives being carried to and fro from the home province to Edo. I don't think functionality carries as much weight, excuse the pun, as presence. All the best.

Hi Jon. For what it's worth, and that's nothing, here goes. 1 Ubu, nice koshirae. Owari and ranked. The tsunagi looks woeful and you would probably get tired of the kogai. 2 Sue Seki, like the elongated kissaki but the hada would bother me and the koshirae wouldn't get a second look. 3 Ubu with both mei and date, koshirae is nice. Interesting group to study. 4 Claims ubu but I think not, koshirae uninspiring. 5 Fujiwara Takada, nice enough but that koshirae! I think I have talked myself into number 1. Over to you but do let us know how it turns out. All the best. .

Sorry Steve. Yes, Izumo Daijo is an honorific, as is no Kami, Daijo ranking a little lower than no Kami. Izumo refers to the province which does not mean that the smith actually worked there. Fujiwara is an old family or clan name and Yoshitake is the smith's name. The practice pretty much starts at the turn of the Shinto period, 1600 and is more a matter of keeping the right people sweet than earning a ranking because of the quality of your work. All the best.

Thank you for those Matt, they illustrate the shape of the first kanji and the slightly thin chisel strokes very well. I don't have the book 'Japanese Swords in American Collections' by Dan Massey an entry in it suggests that there are two signing styles for the shodai and that might account for the differences Inoted and give us some hope for the posted example. The sword referred to in the book is possibly the sword I linked to above. As regards the titles of the generations, in various places both are listed as having held both titles at different times. Nihonto 1, a magazine published by the Token Society of Great Britain, illustrates a papered katana with the Izumo Daijo mei of the nidai, the Wazamono listing has both, each having the Izumo Daijo title, and so on. I think we have to assume that the Toko Taikan is not totally inclusive in this instance. All the best.

I agree that shinsa would be ideal. The one I linked from Nihontocraft is as close to the one that Steve has posted as I can get and it states the date as 1624 which is comfortably shodai. Most of the mei I have seen are cut with a rather thin chisel and have the characteristic 'broken back' to the first kanji. Steve's sword does not have these features but it seems closer to the Nihontocraft example. Would love this to be just such a result. All the best.

Dear John. Unlike some smith names there are very few Yoshitake to deal with, some sources claim two generations, some three. As far as my research goes none of them was ever Izumi Daijo so I fear we might have unearthed a slip of the keyboard in Marcus' excellent work. (And also Tsuruta san's.) The sword you linked to is an Izumo Daijo Yoshitake so no worries on that score. The other differences in titles is to do with the smiths changing their honorific during their careers, I have a second generation blade with the Izumo Daijo title. Having done some digging into that one made reading the mei much easier of course. There is a good write up here, https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/tokubetsu-hozon-nbthk-jo-saku-nihonto-1867295911 ( I am sorry to have to use this link but I can't find the original from Nihontocraft). The example that Steve has is quite close to the mei on this one. All the best.

A year or two back a very nice daisho koshirae was sold in Bonhams for something like £75,000 so I have a feeling they are out of their depth with the presale estimate. Interesting to note that in the FB write up they say that the blades are unsigned .... and thought to be the work of Omori Teruhide. Look forward to seeing where these end up in terms of price. Just because they are very pretty to look at.... https://www.bonhams.com/auctions/21861/lot/196/ All the best.

Dear Adam. I'm not sure what you are looking at but hagire are often hard to spot. I can see a few lamination flaws but they are not too serious. The usual marker for hagire is a straight line running from the ha through to the rest of the blade, visible on both sides of the blade. Have a look here, http://www.ksky.ne.jp/~sumie99/flaws.html All the best.

Here, here! Nice and crisp. All the best.