Jump to content

ROKUJURO

Members
  • Posts

    5,959
  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Days Won

    19

Everything posted by ROKUJURO

  1. Gentlemen, reading all these comments on fakes, I want to add my view on it. About thirty-five years ago, there was an auction of Japanese art at Lempertz in Köln, Germany. One of the blades on display was a gorgeous KATANA with HITATSURA HAMON and a very long O-GISSAKI. It looked very nice, but an advanced collector I met there told me it was GIMEI and not KIYOMARO as the signature implied. Nevertheless it looked very desirable to my untrained eyes. Later I learned that this sword was bought by a professional dealer from Japan. I could not understand this, because I thought he should have known it was GIMEI. The collector explained to me that the dealer knew exactly what he was buying (at a price of something around DM 8.000.--; quite a lot then), and he explained about the mentality of private Japanese buyers. He said this sword would very probably be sold at a much higher price to a private collector without mentioning the GIMEI - and without being asked about it either! If the sword was about the quarter of the price of a genuine KIYOMARO (or even less), the new owner would know what it was, be happy with it, keep it in his TANSU, perhaps even not telling his closest friends about the purchase, and never show it to someone to avoid being called a boaster. The German collector said, the price difference made the fake obvious, so nobody felt a necessity to talk about it. It would not have been polite to mention it. Later I learned also that O-MINOGAME, the 1.000-year-turtle, is not exactly 1.000 years old - it is just old. This and some others stories taught me that terms like 'genuity', age, 'truth' and 'original' can have different meanings in different cultures. To sum this up I suspect the Chinese fakers do not at all feel bad about their business. They might even not feel guilty when they are caught selling pirated products. To an extent this could be a question of Asian mentality.
  2. ROKUJURO

    Tsuba lot

    Mariusz, if it has no NAKAGO-ANA, you cannot call this a TSUBA! Is it signed, at least?
  3. Fred, it is perhaps rare but I don't think it is interesting from the view of NIHONTO. It seems to have been Laser-cut, it is not well made and the maker does not seem to have seen a real TSUBA from close. I don't think that 'this is really beautiful', and I never heard about any 'test of time' in relation to TSUBA. Any iron having been used in a TSUBA is about 4,5 billion years old, and that is sufficient as far as I am concerned. I'm not impressed.
  4. Peter, it seems, the x-axis is the number. I don't see an average length of blades, but in the range of the measured blades there is a significant number with a typical WAKIZASHI length and a typical DAITO length between 65 and 73 cm. Nothing extraordinary. I think the objective was not to find the average length but to explain why a certain length was predominant. Just my personal interpretation.
  5. Thank you, Gabriel! There is a point I am curious about: are the data based upon blades in general or were they chosen with regard to SURIAGE or UBU NAKAGO?
  6. Jean, I read that also with a smile, but on the other hand, he is an American TANUKI, so you never know....
  7. Gabriel, the blade length is certainly related to the physical dimensions of the people who used them. A KATANA, worn in the traditional way in the OBI, has a useful maximal length when drawn, if the SAMURAI had an average height of, let's say, 165 cm, and a respective arm length. Of course, there are always exceptions, but we talk about statisics. The other side is the physical dynamics. The shorter a blade, the faster it can be moved. A longer blader is slower, but has wider reach. A TACHI, wielded from horseback, will have other requirements than a sword of an ASHIGARU. Fighting techniques and the develoment of armour will certainly play another role. So there will always be a consensus from practice in blade length if all factors are to be considered, and this comes obviously down to an average of around 65 cm.
  8. Vern, this I cannot tell from the photo, but in any case it would not affect the value of the TSUBA. The age is not related to the value - a newly handmade, high-class TSUBA is very desirable und will increase it's value. A mass produced copy remains always a copy (not speaking about UTSUSHI). Concerning your feeling of not being sufficiently knowledgeable: This will probably not change a lot even after 50 books! Welcome to the club!
  9. Vern, what can be judged from a photo, the TSUBA is likely a recently made copy, a decoration piece.
  10. Stefan, if it were me, I would contact Paul Martin. Wish you a successful and enjoyable voyage!
  11. Darcy, I would like to add some information to your overview: Citric acid is a weak fruit acid which nevertheless attacks steel. It cannot be 'extremely concentrated', because it is a crystalline powder, when you buy it as 100% acid. It is soluble in water at a max. of 75% at 20°C. A varnish of tung oil or linseed oil has no solvents. Also URUSHI does not need solvents. The change of the molecular structure during curing is called polymerization. The same goes for polyurethane, but here solvents may be added to lower the viscosity or as accelerators of the chemical reaction.
  12. I cannot comment on the coins but the TSUBA look like originals to me. They have very likely been treated with a steel brush, so all patina is gone and all edges became bright and shiny. The SOTEN TSUBA may not be a genuine one but a Japanese fake as there are many of them. The rounded square TSUBA on the right might not look too bad when restored, I believe.
  13. Lance, thank you! I think I understand now, what could have been meant. After refining the steel, that last fold has also to be done at welding temperature so maybe I missed his idea a little.
  14. Pardon, Thierry, I am a bit slow today and don't get what you want to express. I was only citing Haynes, and I wanted to explain that folding cannot be done after forging.
  15. Ken, you are perfectly right. I did not want to express that forging knowledge is essential for aesthetic studies or evaluation of an arts object. But as special technical knowledge is available now (and where I have concentrated on) I did not want to leave it unsaid. It is my personal approach to a better understanding of TSUBA, that is all. As more knowledge is on the table, I think that it should be allowed to say that some older information is not at today's level, even if the respective authors absolutely have their merits in their fields of interest. Interesting enough, there is a parallel in ceramics to what you say. When Bernard Leach, a famous British potter, asked his Japanese teacher, KANJIRO KAWAII, about the chemical composition of ceramic glazes, the latter did not understand the question. He replied: 'If you do it the same way I have done it all my life, you will get the same results.' But we in the West are obviously different, and asking questions can lead to insights that can replace older ones. There is still another point I want to shed light on. In Japan, arts and crafts were never far away from each other, so I think we should not separate these ways too much by saying: I am only interested in the artistic facts of a TSUBA and I dont care how it was made. That would, at least in my understanding, not do justice to the subject.
  16. Ian, as promised, I had a look into my books. Seems that you are right, as tempered cast iron can indeed be forged to a certain extent. To obtain this property, the treatment of cast iron has to be as follows: raw (white) cast iron is exposed to intensive heat at 1.000°C for 60 to 120 hours in an oxidising atmosphere, depending on the thickness of the workpiece. It is thus possible to produce a partial or superficial decarburization, which can result in an increased resilience of the surface of the workpiece. However, as we can see, many TSUBA display clear features of forging techniques like TEKKOTSU, laminations from folding and forge-welding, and other hints like TSUCHI-ME. Relying on the information I have that casting iron (not soft metals!) was a relatively late technique in Japan, I am convinced that iron/steel TSUBA were generally forged with the exception of late copies for decoration or for sale to tourists.
  17. Photos, Peter? Where are the stamps on the TSUBA, how deep are they?
  18. Ken, thank you for your comment. You are certainly right in that an author has to focus on his readers' spectrum. He can probably not cover all forging details if it was a treatise on steel art. I understand that, but then as an author you have some responsibility and should be very careful in choosing the details you use in your text. In my eyes there is no justification for obvious misconceptions and faults, completely independent of the subject of a book or text. You may well call me a perfectionist, but there is so much mediocre information in the media that at the end no one is correctly informed. Japanese arts and crafts on the other hand are so much 'deeper' in concept and execution than we Westerners are used to, that it does not meet the requirements of this subject to go over details in a sloppy way. Just my personal view, and this applies as well to mistakes I find in my own texts......
  19. Ken, there is no standard thickness I have heard of. As far as I know, TSUBA (MIMI) can vary between ca. 2 mm (or even a little less in KO-TOSHO) and more than 10 mm in some AKASAKA. Concerning the function: we are actually disussing this subject in the TOSOGU section.
  20. Pete, thank you, this is helpful! WIKI explains nicely what a lever is. Arnold, I will not continue the discussion. I am obviously not able to make my points clear enough, which may be due to my clumsy English. By the way, I never mentioned the TSUBA's possible function as hand protection. Ken, thank you for the Haynes scan. This is a very good example for my observation, that statements from books are sometimes just repeated without questioning their respective plausibility. Haynes wrote that MARU GITAE forging will produce MOKUME grain. That is not correct. A grain pattern will only occur by removing surface material so that the layers are cut at an angle. This is usually done by filing. Then Haynes writes: ....the plate can be folded, a single time after the forging process.....This is not correct either as the folding and welding is a part of the forging process. The last paragraph contains a description of the welding process where he wants to use straw and ash as a flux. This may mislead inexperienced readers as he probably meant to write 'clay and straw ash' as is actually used. So even a knowledgeable author can cause confusion and misunderstanding when his explanations are based on something he only heard or read, but did not experience himself.
  21. .....the notion that the added weight has to be at the end of the tsuka as a necessary condition for the function of the tsuba, is clearly not so. If the primary function of the tsuba is to protect the hand by stopping or deflecting the opponent's sword I believe we would see rather different shapes predominate, such as cup shapes or even some features that would entangle the opponent's sword. I believe that we would also see similar diameter sized tsuba for both the daito and wakizashi, were protection the main feature, with the weight of the wakizashi tsuba being less, perhaps through thickness, so that the proportional weight distribution would remain roughly the same. Arnold, first, I was referring to you using the term 'counterbalance', which by itself implies a different position on a weapon than on the end of the handle where the blade is. As I wrote, a counterbalance by it's function means something like a heavy pommel we see in European swords and which facilitates rapid movements in fencing, a completely different fighting technique compared with those in medieval Japan. Secondly, I doubted that a TSUBA's main function is intended to be the weight shifting for fine-tuning a KATANA to it's user. There are so many weight-related parameters in a KATANA that have considerable influence on balance (length of blade and TSUKA, material distribution in the blade, SORI, shape of KISSAKI, a.s.o.) that the TSUBA and it's weight is probably a very small factor. I have read and heard a lot about TSUBA, but sometimes I have the impression that statements are just repeated without questioning their respective plausibility. l am keen to learn more, but based on facts, not on hearsay, and I allow myself to ask questions and to do my own practical research in the forge. So, this is not personal but only related to the subject, and has nothing to do with being right or wrong.
  22. Thank you, John! I can understand simple physics. So a TSUBA is meant to work similarly to a sliding weight on the barrel of a precision rifle? I would not have thought this to be it's main function! Concerning the main TSUBA theme in this thread, you wrote:..... Certain tsuba are harder because I believe they are quenched and have a little higher carbon content whilst others.......are not and left purposefully softer to facilitate inlay and carving... This could well be and would explain the forming of martensite on the surface. Subsequent annealing would then reduce the brittleness. Do you have a link or information source for this assumption?
  23. Arnold, if I understand correctly, 'counter' means the opposite end of the handle while the blade represents the major part of the weight of a KATANA. We have counterbalances in medieval European swords where a massive pommel at the end of the handle serves this purpose. In Japanese swords the weight of the TSUBA adds to the weight of the blade while a KASHIRA has no function as a counterbalance.
×
×
  • Create New...