ROKUJURO

Steve, these are probably not HIS swords, so it was a comment on the seller, not on the blades. But you can be sure the blades are considerably more expensive at this seller than in the original shop.

To prevent bleaching out in the sun, wash textiles with cold water. That is logical!

With these out of focus photos any comment is just guesswork, in my opinion.

When did these kind of TSUBA appear first? I don't remember seeing them 20 years ago, so I personally think that they are all recent copies, made with modern tools and techniques. From a craft point of view, they may appear well made as silicon molds and new casting technology yield good results. But there is no artistry behind it, in my view. They are way different from the opuilent TSUBA I used to see in the black COMPTON catalogue.

Piers, If they are cast, they are not really "hand-made", strictly speaking. Smaller differences would then mean "not the same mold", which is well possible in a shop which produced numbers of similar items with several molds. I could imagine these candle-holders to have been standard equipment in any Japanese household before they had electricity, so possibly EDO JIDAI after all?

It is perhaps a modern camouflage version.....

Bruno, sept années après?

MOTO KASANE 8,7 mm! Wow, that is heathy! Nice sword!

It is GINKGO.

Jacques, don't look so much at the possibly lacking competence of others! I know you are very knowledgeable in this field, so your opinion might be especially valuable to us!

What makes it a TACHI blade?

Could that be SHODO equipment in the foreground? I think I can see a SUMIBACHI with an ink stick. Representing a poet or a painter at work in the beauriful landscape?

Jacques, I had the impression that Sky just asked for opinions of knowledgeable collectors.....

This is very surprizing to me. Perhaps it should be "....Late HEIAN to Late KAMAKURA period..."?

KUNIYOSHI signed TANTO? More pictures of the "naked" blade (without HABAKI) on a plain dark, non-reflecting background would help for an impression of what you have.

Try JAKUSHI.

When the corrosion is heavy and no HAMON can be seen, there is sometimes a fire involved.

Jack, there is always a possibility that a was in a fire and damaged. Blades should always be presented tip-upwards, especially the NAKAGO. This would make reading a signature easier.

No, I cannot see the signature. You need to post a close-up photo of the NAKAGO, tip-upwards, dark background, light from the side. But on the other hand, as the blade is Damascus steel, we don't need more photos, it is clear that it is not Japanese.

Mark, welcome on board the NMB! Your sword is signed KANETAKA, who may have been the worker or smith who made it. The photos are not good enough to guess if this is a machine made blade or a traditionally hand-made (water-quenched) one. Good focus would be necessary to see details, and a dark room, light from the side and a dark background would help a lot.

Difficult to say for me what was first - YAMAGANE or iron in this kind of TSUBA? But I don't remember the so-called SAOTOME TSUBA being made of copper. Referring to the HITSU, this TSUBA could have been made pre-EDO. I have seen these TSUBA made from small parts (= single spokes) that were fitted into the MIMI rather than cut out of a solid blank. Age of my below pictured TSUBA: No idea, I guess early to mid EDO. In any case, it must have been a lot of work! Compare this one with 64 petals (Diameter 94,5 mm)!

Piers, these are intersting and valuable ideas! But we shoukld not forget that our ancestor craftsmen were inventive and even ingenious. Grinding with stones is a neolithic technique as well as drilling, and all iron-working cultures found ways to use similar tools. Coming back to early iron TSUBA, we see that piercing/SUKASHI techniques were dominantly executed with chisels, and only the finishing was done by grinding and filing. If I remenber correctly, in his videos, Ford Hallam showed the use of small grinding stones in his work - not his invention, but learned from his master. Just remenber AKASAKA TSUBA with heavy chisel traces (not removed or ground level!) on the inner side of the MIMI! Files were used much earlier than metal saws in Japan, so we should not look at iron SUKASHI TSUBA with the notion of our present technologies. And there is another point we often forget: Working time was no issue in former eras. The goal was the finished item, and people were not paid on working hours but on the quality of the single workpiece. So "working slowly" is just a picture in our brains as we live in times where speed is dictated by machines. When a beaver is gnawing down a tree, he rarely looks at his watch - he works until the tree falls.

Jack, we are all learning! No sweat! The question is what you can learn from items like yours. After a while, I think you will want to "upgrade" a bit to be able to get more information out of your treasures. That is basically the fun in collection items like these: We want to know who made them and imagine/speculate who might have carried them.

Jack, as mentioned above, this seems to be a broken-off piece of a longer blade. The tip has been ground by an amateur, and all features - HADA, HATARAKI, SUGATA....) are lost. It even might have been in a fire, considering the surface, or have served as agricultural tool. Just looking at the NAKAGO, it might have been a WAKIZASHI of some age, but in this condition, there is little chance to determine the exact age or tradition/school, I am afraid.

...images without TSUBA, SEPPA, and HABAKI, please? On a dark background?