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Interesting question, the answer is not that easy but for sure they appeared quite early, as can be seen from the following example from Sasano's book on early fittings It seems they're around since koshigatana were in fashion, you'll probably won't find tsuba with kogai and kozuka ana before Nanbokucho period though as the use of uchigatana instead of koshigatana became popular in that period. Here you can see an example of koshigatana koshirae with details of kozuka and kogai from Nanbokucho period https://bunka.nii.ac.jp/heritages/detail/553930

I recently bought a nice wakizashi with an unusual couple of bonji engraved on the nakago, but i can't recognize either of them, right one might be a script version of "monju", but the left one i have no clue. Anyone can help?

Chrisptophe's departure was sudden and unexpected, he was a very nice person. He will be sorely missed

i think the beginning is 伊奈波 Inaba, can't figure out the middle part, end is 兼利作 Kanetoshi saku

You need to take pics in different angles and different source of light in order to capture most of the features of a sword, some example of pics i took on a modern made tachi

菊一文字 Kiku ichimonji

元治之子四月日 Should be "first year of Genji a day of 4th month" (april 1864)

Thank you! Glad you enjoyed my article and tsuba, you have a fine example as well

seems the answer was already here 🙂

Might mean in chinese "Beginning (始) of Zhou (周) Dynasty" Tho would mean that's a really old guard

It was up for sale before, it's in good conditions and from the same maker, hard to tell if was born as daisho but it's a nice set nonetheless

Maybe they were shipped to Osaka freshly made and got damaged in the trip Seems that school only worked on iron

Yes, there's another one as well from same school but both have some corrosion problem unfortunately. Seems that saying about corrosion is real

Thank you, i read somewhere these are quite prone to corrosion, so it's always good to find a well preserved one

Indeed it is, in hand is even better cause you can appreciate the precision and depth of the engraving even more

I saw those as well, the Bonhams one someone made a great score. The second one is badly corroded, last kanji is hardly readable so they made a guess i think, but to me should be the late Edo Tomohisa (same as the published one in my article)

Thank you Dale, i actually know those but i deliberately excluded cause not signed. Actually i have other signed examples but since the workmanship and subject are the same i thought no need to include those.

Recently i made a research on the subject depicted on the following tsuba made by Yaji Tomoyuki (八道友之) that i currently own, since i thought it was quite interesting what i found i made an article about it. Feel free to download it and i'd be happy to hear your thoughts about it. Chōshū Yaji research.pdf

Bishu Osafune ju Sukesada Tenbun 21 a day in the 8th month

My guess seeing the oxidation and the construction is that probably comes from a statue

Interesting concept and execution, among fittings i saw only menuki depicting tsuba before

Because that writing is just the cursive for the same kanji

https://markussesko.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/nihontocompendium-e1.pdf Courtesy of Markus Sesko

Is been done before, read "episode 11"

Ichi Tomonari gojūroku-daison Bizen Osafune-shi – Yokoyama Kaga no Suke Fujiwara Sukenaga saku (一友成五十六代孫備前長船士・横山加賀介藤原祐永作)