Gakusee

From the organisers, I have heard that probably pre-sales and ticket allocations are trending towards 200. Hopefully, there will be some visitors on the day, who have not pre-booked. The reality is that in Europe, we do not have that many options to attend hobby events like the US. The recent Berlin study day was a great success at the Samurai Museum, and around 40-50 people turned up at that NBTHK led event. I hope collectors and students of the samurai arts will turn up. This Utrecht event is more multidisciplinary than just swords. The Utrecht event website has a lot of detail about the armour / sword dealers who will attend as well as the educational programme.

I have actually tried ChatGPT with Juyo Zufu for which I have translations and sometimes the results are so far off, it is not even funny. For standard, non-technical subject matters where English resource material is prolific, it does reasonably well. For arcane subjects such as nihonto, in less intuitive languages such as Japanese and Chinese (where different alphabets and characters have different meanings subject to context or time-period usage), then caveat emptor. Be very careful as it mixes myth with fact, pulp fiction with history and blends things up. I made repeated attempts to teach it about Osafune, and within the same discussion thread, it did seem to pick it up somewhat. However, in a new dialogue, the knowledge was gone. It is a very advanced semantic model but that is what it is for now.

Fully matched, kamons in place, great kabuto smith, in great state of preservation, koshu tokubetsu kicho paper - what more to wish for Well done

Abalone or beetle, these are beautiful!. Thanks for sharing, Piers

Ah, that is a no. The regulations have been about for a while ....

One also needs to ask the question why the blade is not signed…..You know what the regulation in Japan stipulates

John / Yulian: in fact this did happen a lot in the past. Blades which were either mumei, or with deliberately removed signatures, but bearing stylistic similarities to certain smiths subsequently have had applied to them the signatures of these aforementioned smiths. That is the whole idea behind gimei: you do not chisel a gimei signature on a random blade but on one that is close enough to be perceived to be by the putative smith. It goes even beyond that. Sometimes the styles of both workmanship and mei are close enough and a blade could switch attribution. For instance, I have seen Masatsune blades which at one point were deemed Bitchu Ko-Aoe but have also had Ko-Bizen attributions (admittedly these two Bizen schools were close in workmanship and geographic proximity). Similarly, even within Bitchu, there is a Masatsune that at one point was deemed Ko-Aoe and at another Senoo. Now that is a bit too close as they are both branches of Bitchu (most people just tend to lump these into the Aoe bucket) but nevertheless, it is still illustrative. I have held a blade which at one point was deemed to be an Osafune Kagemitsu (at Juyo ) and at another, Osafune Kagemasa (at TokuJu). It just happened that it was strategically clipped after the “Kage” character, with the rest of the signature intact. Now, of course these were master and student respectively but clearly close enough. Sometimes the NBTHK would uphold a blade as made by a certain smith but would qualify the mei as “to mei ga aru”, which means that they acknowledge there is the mei of the given smith but they have some doubts, or the signature is a bit off, but needs further study. Sometimes the qualification disappears in the passage from Juyo to TokuJu and they reaffirm the signature. My examples above are not pertinent to the NTHK NPO, but demonstrate the subtleties involved and how many nuances there are that go through experts’ minds, while we / collectors like sliced and diced and readily regurgitated answers.

Thank you. Could you please elaborate on who judged the sword in your video as a Sanjo Munechika and what documentary background does it have? We appreciate your videos and input. Thanks

Please refer to the brilliant publication by Markus Sesko: https://markussesko.com/2013/02/14/the-honami-family/ In there you will read about which generations are more reliable than others as well as the different types of mei: kinzogan, kinpun, shumei, shusho etc

…. which would make it a later Honami attribution (while we know this from the actual translation, it is a good standard shortcut when looking and kinzogan vs kinpun mei and are wondering about the dating / reliability etc of the attribution).

Yes, Colin, thanks. I was being unclear.Was wondering if we had images or seen the paper on the above blade which seems non-traditional to me too. The tanto you posted is a different kettle of fish - hand/traditionally made.

Is it worthwhile discussing / debating by whom and where the particular NTHK papers were awarded (domestically or in the US)? That might have some bearing on the fact that papers have been issued…

Piers - that is as conclusive as it gets with no zokumei. Clearly the quality is the main reason for the attribution, supported by the date. Were the jiba not of sufficient quality and clarity, it would not have gone to Yosozaemon. Remember that he had a workshop full of students and helpers. It would have been a generic statement (in the other Juyo, there are such, stating it is a good quality Sue Bizen of Sukesada school). So quality first and foremost. Similar case with this one. Also ascribed to Yosozaemon.

Don’t trust me?

Well, as you asked politely and nicely It does not happen often and is in fact rare. Normally they have to have a name such as Hikobei etc. But there are various Juyo Sukesada which are just Sukesada and without a specific name. This below has an interesting setsumei which speculates that it could be by Yosozaemon. As always, for advanced study and understanding, one needs to read / translate the setsumei.

The reality is that they cannot be 'sorted out' to a specific smith unless they are dated and named (or in very rare circumstances, the quality is very high and they are dated, so they go to the school head of the time). They are often generic, multitudinous and span several centuries. One could say 'well this does look like a Muromachi Sukesada' or 'this is signed Sukesada,the mei is a bit unusual for the Muromachi ones, so likely later one', or 'this is a Sukesada but the shape is not early', etc. Actually, people sometimes even struggle to differentiate between a kaziuchimono Sukesada from non-kaziuchimono one, let alone pinpoint a generic one. So with the more generic Sukesada, one can sort of veer towards a broad period and whether it is mass made or not.

Apologies, Grev - what are you trying to achieve with a new Sukesada post? Markus Sesko and Hawley have both listed and sorted various Sukesada smiths. If it is one of the master smiths, eg Yosozaemon, etc, usually the sword tang will bear the specific name or the NBTHK will have noted it. If the NBTHK have not noted one of the greats (Yosozaemon, Hikobei, Genbei, Hikozaemon) on the paper, then it is one of the many Sukesada smiths (or at best they might say something like 'late generation').

Agree. We just need to be very clear about the point in time we refer to and what monetary values were pertinent then. We cannot generalise over an extended period of time (end-Muromachi to end-Edo). Thank you for the interesting topic. I also recommend that people read this: https://nihonto.com/samurai-income/

The value of ryo fluctuated widely due to the debasement of the koban and diminished gold content (over a century, century and a half, it halved from the original 18.5g). So while 1 koku used to be worth 1 ryo = 1 koban, by the end of the 18 century, 1 koku was already worth over 5 ryo. So, calculations as the above are meaningless unless we know precisely when certain prices are quoted and then comparing these prices to the in-kind value of rice koku and also physical gold content (from the respective gold coinage at the time). So people are not comparing like with like in the commentary above.

Well, the NKBKHK article written by Nishioka san is very clear that all these were made by Otsuka san. That would make him a katchushi in my mind, as some of these seem quite sophisticated, but I am no expert to determine that, Andrew. The same magazine, after the article dedicated to Otsuka san, has a tribute to Miura san by way of a trilateral reminiscence by Ueda san, Yamasa and Jo Anseeuw in discourse format.

Thank you for posting them, Giuseppe; indeed these are top-notch items, from katchu to blades.