MauroP

I don't think it's just an overcleaned tsuba. If the iron patina was abraded surely the nunome-zōgan would have been abraded as well. Nunome-zōgan over silver is unusual, nontheless silvered iron tsuba do exist (here one of mines).

I'm leaning towards gimei, the third kanji and the kaō show more inconsistencies. Anyways a nice piece.

Complimenti, Manuel, the surface textures are really astonishing, both ishime-ji and Amida-yasurime.

Hi Laurent, welcome at NMB. The first kozuka show an unusual subject. I really don't know if the object depicted is a quiver, but if a quiver it surely recall a representation called ebira-no-ume (箙の梅) or Ikuta-no-mori (生田の森). It's a story of Genpei War: before going to the battle of Ikuda forest, Kajiwara Kagesue took a branch of a flowering plum and stuck it in his arrow quiver. The signature is compatible with 後藤光佐 - Gotō Mitsusuke + kaō (but I'm unsure if gimei or not...).

Hi Zack, nice tsuba, just some active rust issues. Possibly Mito or Nara school. I think the cranes should be made of silver, now tarnished. The tsuba definitely deserves a professional restoration.

I thought NPO (usually in brackets after NTHK) means "non profit organization". Surely I'm missing something...

Hi, welcome at NMB. The "ring" is called fukurin (覆輪) and it's quite a common feature in many tsuba (tsuba doesn't take the plural tsubas). I'm quite doubtful about the additional protection a silver fukurin could eventually offer... The subject of the design is usually referred as Yodo suisha, usually seen in Daigorō or Kyō-sukashi pieces, but in your tsuba the thickness of the cut-outs looks too coarse for those schools.

That's the personal signets of the actual members of the shinsa.

About certifying mass produced tsuba, I wish to remind that "sanmai tsuba" or Kyo-kanagushi tsuba (wich weresurely mass produced) are commonly papered by NBTHK. Here the problem is that the NTHK paper states that the tsuba is from Edo age...

I've found questionable attributions in both NBTHK and NTHK (BTW the above is a NTHK paper, not NBTHK). But in some NTHK papers even the mere description of a tsuba is sometimes incompatible with the object shown in the accompany picture.

Maybe 信國吉橦 - Nobokuni Yoshihiro?

Where is the rosary? The NBTHK paper says hana-mon sukashi tsuba...

The signature is indeed compatible with Shōami Kanenori. The shape is better described as kurikomi-aoi-mokkō-gata (刳込葵木瓜形).

Here's a "hidden communist" tsuba... and it's one of Nobuie's, to boot...

Here a cast iron tea kettle from the Tokyo National Museum, clearly dated in Muromachi period, 15th century. A very fine casting know-how was available in Japan in that period. That imply that casting tsuba was a possibility. Pre-Edo Japanese tsuba makers used to cast iron tsuba? Probably no. I remember an old Italian TV sketch based on the dialogue between an elegant interviewer and a rude artisan, whose aim was to obtain from a big wood log a single toothpick after months of heavy work. Casting iron tsuba in Edo period (or even earlier) would possibly offer the same same approach that the fictious tootpick maker considered rational.