Rivkin

I am sorry to say I don't get the point... Tsuba and kozuka makers made money by selling practical items which were also artistic, not by issuing a guarantee that each kozuka is one of a kind. There are hundreds of near identical kinai or soten tsuba. Hundreds of near identical dragon or sea shells kozuka. Hundreds of identical ones with scenes from Heike monogatari. Which is why you can't 100% identify the Goto generation even if yours is a very decent match for the one in the book. If the motif sold well, you made another. And there are a lot of low grade kozuka - its just a knife.

Frankly - you should. Echizen Seki call on this blade means they did not care to examine it. The last two years Echizen Seki attributions are like a floodgate opening from every orifice. And I thought all blades are supposed to be Bungo by default...

I will be shooting myself in a foot since my current ownership is skewed towards the early sessions... But everytime somebody big on a shinsa dies the appraisals and customs do change a lot. Sometimes not right away, but within couple of years they do. You suddenly see different names being used and specific judgements leaning more on a conservative or liberal side. These institutions are very persona based, unfortunately, and each generation tends to have its own scenario. Comparing Juyo received today to the one received 50 years ago is difficult.

If asked what is easily sellable for 25K from Oei I personally imagine a lesser known but first tier smith like Heianjo (Oei+) or at least nidai Masahiro... In both cases the blades would have to be dated as otherwise one has to deal with the question "I think its later Muromachi". But dated blade like this is an exceptional find. So its most likely Bizen blade, which is of the order of 90% of preserved signed ubu Oei daito. In Japan in the first tier shop getting 25K USD for those is doable. In the US I think 9-15K is more of an expectation. And it will not sell in a moment.

My very blind guess would be 11K USD.

Ogh, these are major blades. and really good images.

I don't think he appraises the items as Momoyama period's. More like Kambun to Genroku in poor condition.

Its a nice Soshu tanto. Hitatsura has characteristic "comma" shape, which is indicative of late Muromachi.

It looks like I am going to make it. As always, if you want to have a high grade blade photographed, I should be able to do it in my hotel room. You get to keep the photos and I get to consider them for a (hopefully coming) photo album of nihonto masterpieces. Here is an example shot at the last Chicago show.

It appears to be the same old story. All pre-10th century iron swords found in Eurasia are basically random. Some show evidence of lamination, many don't, some were clearly hammered a lot, others don't, some are 0.4% carbon, others zero, the silica has any shape and size you can possibly imagine. Its not mathematics so definitively proving something on the basis of such data is hard, but the scientific community is 100% tribal. So in Europe such distribution is attributed to someone digging out the material out of what looks more or less like tatara and thinking - this piece is good and I'll laminate it, and those we never had luck even heating well enough, so I'll just shape it somehow as a stick with a (sort of) edge, and that will still be useful and sellable. Though admittedly full of holes and slag inside. If you want to publish an article in proceedings of Chinese Conference on Archeology, this will not do. The distribution observed is the result of intrinsically different methods used to produce the material itself - some is wrought iron, some is cast iron, some is pig iron which was decarburized etc. etc. etc. You have to pick the side where you want your tenure. For the dating, the most basic (and common) method for pre-mass literacy eras is establishing a set of "proved" sites where you have coins or writings and then you say - the site nearby has more stuff on top of it, so its older. Textbooks give you some idea how to convert centimeters into years. Precision is about 200-500 years, mostly depending on how close are the "reference" sites. In pre-Heian East Asia, where material culture can be rather conservative and writings are not often found (and often doubted), establishing such reference can be difficult, and dating can be quite a bit challenging... So maybe this particular case is more "datable", maybe its not, but in general every method is bound to give you a _range_ of dates. Replacing it with a single number is strange, but some people do it when it supposed to be "the oldest" of its kind. You see in publications bronze swords dating 2000-2500 BC, and then suddenly "sword, 3350 BC". Because the author promotes the find as the "oldest known". I had numerous dealings with Japanese institutions which had rather run of the mill circa 1800 Indian or European blades or mounts (apparently the desire for new things was not just shinshinto), and they wanted a nod that yes, this is Japanese imitation of European or Indian work, produced for the Otomo Daimyo (Shimazu, Hizen etc.), because it is from Kyushu and we know that the find's date is definitvely 1560. They have zero interest in this not being the case. One told me Indians could not produce it because they don't use chopsticks so the finger motorics is lacking to make a fine inlay. After having a Japanese girlfriend who did not want to learn swimming because "Japanese have very heavy bones and always sink", I was not surprised. But its really not Japanese problem: Scientists in the Academia do generally dislike error bars or admitting the unknown. If it says you'll all perish in plague, you'll all perish in plague unless Professor gets the funds to save us. All of these does not mean frankly that the statements made in the paper are "bad". Its just a complex question by nature.

I can only add that I had experience with a shinto blade being issued "no judgement", which is common when what is submitted is signed by the likes of Sukehiro (i.e. the most faked name), the work is good, but the signature has a few strange points - and much-much later it was resubmitted (by someone esteemed in nihonto circles) and passed. With this level they do want to find more or less an exact match in the records. It can be a biting experience with smiths like Shinkai, Masakiyo and others who changed their signature and "transitional types" are somewhat lesser known. With chujosaku its a bit more relaxed, and with Muromachi lower grade items more so.

Not being a specialist on Nobuyoshi by a very long shot... If this was a european auction house they would provide a similar signature upon request in an established publication or database, but we deal with different standards here, so we can only guess. Generally signed items are checked with some rigor against the published examples. With two or more generation smiths one tends to assume somewhat greater variability as "normal", much more so if its Muromachi. With "chujosaku" smiths one typically does not apply the same level of scrutiny as with jo-saku and above. Generalities aside, what can be relied upon here is that the "tempo" of signatures is actually very similar. Distance between kanji and between lines of kanji, the number of distinguishable strikes per line are similar, the pressure points are similar, and most importantly this "tempo" remains consistent throughout the signature. Usually with gimei there are weird pauses where the signer looks at the template in front of him and adjusts the chisel a bit for the next stroke "to get it right". If he does not do it, the whole signature will be more and more divergent from the original towards its end, if he does you see a discontinuity in the execution. On your photograph the signature looks extremely slanted, but on the papers its much more straight, it slants just a bit, so some of this is probably a distortion due to using a wide angle lens against a curved object like nakago. The signature is a bit condensed, and many dislike condensed signatures as a reflex, especially on wakis, where unskilled gimei artist can fear there is not enough space so overcondenses from the beginning and then has to continue like this till the end), but the examples you compare against are also condensed, so it seems to be his writing style. That the individual lines point in different directions is not a definitive proof of gimei for the majority of signatures.

Jacques, I admit to seldom being able to respond to your comments due to certain functionality of the forum. Truth is born in the arguments... among friends. Or at least some semblance of such. Not in claims who says "nonsense" or not. Similar courtesy was and is extended to Guido, Darcy, Reinhard and a number of their friends, Currant and others. Every collecting subject has a group of friends-dealers-"did it for 30 years" folks. I do admire their loyalty to one other. Part of my attitude, admittedly, stems from a certain level of bigotry: social, educational, otherwise. Part of it however is admitting inability to address rather complicated technical issues in a format which would be compatible with hostile forum-based exchanges. For example, Chinese claim of decarburization from cast iron being the dominant process is very complex and multi-faceted. The underlying economy would greatly benefit from reliance on excavated coal, which is what we see in late medieval/early modern age parts of Europe when its experimented with or adapted a similar method. Chinese historians do claim transition to excavated coal took places. Carbon dating such blades would be then rather difficult, and this method is relatively seldom used with satisfactory efficiency - for this and other reasons. When it works well, it gives you a reliable range of possible dates, when it does not, it does not. Proving the "cast sword" is cast is a duty of article's author. I can't for the life of me be of much use here, besides stating my opinion regarding the past history of similar claims, for a number of technical reasons, and that the current claim seem to emanate from publications which are technical reports rather than proper journal articles. I personally don't see much evidence the opinions given were defended against a qualified and well, hostile (admitting that in Chinese literature "cast" is indeed one of the key terms), peer review process. The language in which the corrosion report is written, the phrasing chosen, they are unfortunately consistent with a report format, rather than a proper article. Which is what it is. If its indeed cast, the proof provided would be an important milestone for understanding of the early (Chinese?) metallurgy.

The idea that Chinese used cast iron is not new, its been around for a long time, as is the idea that they decarburized cast iron. There are about 30-40 high profile articles on it. It does not mean the iron swords were "cast". That's a claim one seldom finds, and when one does and pushes the author typically there is backtracking to "cast iron". Cast iron will be present in any tatara, for example, though in a small quantity. The issue with decarburization is that the proof which you see in the most recent Chinese articles is based on observing a very wide distribution of Chinese sword properties and attributing this fact to some being made from wrought iron and others from decarburized cast iron. However the distributions shown are continuous (i.e. its not two distinctive groups but a huge cloud of properties where you draw a line separating "wrought" from "decarburized") and there is a myriad of other factors which are evident. For example, some tested blades among pre-10th century finds would be forged extensively, others barely at all (i.e. no real lamination), some are pure iron others are decent steel etc. etc. Its a difficult topic. Admittedly the standards of pre-10th century iron swordsmithing were quite random everywhere and attributing the source of distributions to a single specific factor can be challenging. With all this, I have to admit I never saw a metallurgist article convincingly arguing for an iron sword which is cast, which is different again from sword being forged from "cast iron"

its hard to say much with the images but it looks like shirake utsuri. nie utsuri is generally not indicative of yamato. there is no strong nie within hamon, nioiguchi is wide and hazy. can be second generation zenjo, for example. nio, naminohira are options but certain things are a bit off. not that i know much and the images are unfortunately not truly informative, but still it appears to be enough information to make a general guess.

Late Bronze Age swords were generally forged; forged bronze with proper chemical combination outperforms iron but not steel. There is a question whether these were first cast and then forged, and many argue they were. Generally, casting of a large utilitarian object is difficult, cavities and other defects plentiful, even in bronze if its just left as is after casting, the hardness and overall practicality is quite limited. This being said, for some reason Chinese publications on bronze weapons always emphasized casting and downplayed the consequent forging. I am not at all familiar with Chinese bronze weapons to make any comment on why is it the case and whether Chinese bronze age technology was that much different from everybody else's. It is also worthy of note that European non-specialized (i.e. not archaeometallurgy or specialized metallurgy, but rather those of generic archaeologists) publications can simply say "cast sword", and in general it is not sufficiently correct. Moving to iron, for a very long time there was a popular theory of "transitional metal". The notion is that processing iron ore requires much higher temperature compared to bronze, and obtaining cast iron - exceptionally high temperatures (whether it was actually used to produce weapons is another story; for example, in tatara about 5% of output is cast iron), so it is not clear how one would transition from bronze to iron overcoming the need to invest in a high temperature (and larger in size) setup, especially as aside from steel, iron products are generally not superior to well forged bronze. The notion was that there must have been iron which did not require the ore, and/or could be melted at very low temperatures. Meteriote ore is quite pure and does not need much refinement; somebody in the 1960s looked up high Nickel alloys, guessed they have a lower melting point, and postulated that meteorites can contain those (being a Professor of history he did not check with meteorite people), and thus not only meteorite iron could be used as is, it can also be "cast" into weapons. So until very recently any pre-1000 BC iron item was automatically given a description "meteorite iron", and sometimes it was also "cast". Today both are in doubt, as you do need to actually test an item whether its meteorite, and most things tested are not, and certainly "casting" a typical meteorite iron does require very high temperatures. Moving forward to the possibility of having "regular iron" cast weapon. First it would require great sophistication to acheive the temperatures needed. High carbon content can help, and for a while high carbon steels like wootz were believed to have been "cast", which was since then generally disproven. Even with >3% carbon we are way in the upper portion of what is achievable unless there is a massive blast furnace and a significant effort expanded specifically to cast something out of iron. Second, casting would require forgetting that bronze weapons need to be forged to be of quality. If an iron sword is cast and not forged, it leaves you most likely with an object having significant defects, and certainly sub-par performance compared to any decent bronze. Third, there has not been an iron blade which was studied destructively to definitively confirm that it is indeed was cast, not forged. Everytime the use of high carbon steel was identified, somebody always said "it must have been cast", but the consequent tests always showed it was not. So if there is a definitive proof that there is a cast sword, its quite a big thing. If its another guess, then its definitely not. Chinese literature generally uses the word "cast" quite often, and by itself its a very long discussion why, what it means and how its justified.

Japanese is a hard language for me to read, but what I am seeing is that it assumes that its made from cast iron rather than cast as a blade. I might be greatly mistaken, but at least this would make sense. It has been traditional Chinese position that their early steel was produced by going all the way to pig iron(??) and then decarburizing it. It stems from one of their early publications on the subject. Thus the source of the steel would be called in their literature "cast iron", which is then decarburized. It is being questioned by modern writers: though there are some indications of ancient pig iron in China, even then it is still a big question whether it was actually (ever) decarburized to be used as steel. On the internet, there is a relevant discussion here: https://www.tf.uni-kiel.de/matwis/amat/iss/kap_a/advanced/aa_2_2.html Yes, modern Chinese sources do often use "cast iron", "cast sword", "wrought iron" and even "cast sword from wrought iron" as synonyms. The question - how is it discerned that its sourced from a cast iron? Even to state that a particular blade is made from cast iron is intriguing and asks for a question - what is it based upon? What is the proof that something was made from decarburized "cast iron" source? If its cast from iron, its even more intriguing, and begs even more the question how its proven. Does it have very high, >4% carbon content? Admittedly the last time I've read such discussion was from 10 years ago, but there was a lot of scepticism regarding any "cast historical sword" claims, and there was nothing I ever seen characterized as definitive proof that this item was cast. Yes, in Chinese sources the definitions like "cast iron" and even at times "cast sword" were sort of common.

A Japanese national can fillout a simple form on a website of Fuji, TNM, KNM, Tokugawa and a half a dozen of other museums, registering to see in hand specific blades and study them. You have to have a Japanese passport and some minimal standing, though I assume there are exceptions. With Japanese passport and minimal connections at NBTHK you can view in hand swords at MFA Boston. Why on Earth would someone from Japan strive to inspect "Ise Sengo" behind a glass in London???

They are corrosion engineers who cite a non-peer review provincial report as their single source on everything related to sword's attribution. To understand why casting from tamahagane is a bit difficult and quite a bit unproductive, or why dating of archaeological finds is always imprecise one does need a basic knowledge of the subject. There have been long discussions regarding whether the earliest swords from meteorite iron might have been cast - a difficult subject, which might have inspired some archaeologists to rather aggressive conclusions. "Theoretically", 2000 years old attribution is possible. Its very hard to argue for or against any exact dates in Japanese archaeology specifically. Practically speaking, its an aggressive side of possible interpretations and using it for article's title makes it a clickbait. Today there are overall almost no people with semblance of broad education. Archaeologists know how to dig, but copy wikipedia about the weapons they dug out, corrosion metallurgists know how to record numbers from their measurement device, but have zero perception of traditional iron techniques, nihonto luminaries have no cognition of everything and anything besides how to distinguish Awataguchi Kunitsuna from Hisakuni.

I have a tendency to forcibly broaden the aspects of the topic, the point was - there is not much to see in western museums unless its tosogu, which is often first class, or select items from the 16th century, when Japan was more active abroad. I am not a rich man, very far from it. I am in a gutter, collection-wise: a dumpster diver who papers swords, which means I'll unlikely will have a first rate collection. I am also not as "lucky" (whatever enters this term) as some dumpster divers I know. Yet even for me neither of the names mentioned on this page is something "unknown", put it this way. These are not per se exceptionally rare items, many hundreds of examples to each attribution. "Ko Bizen" is frankly nowhere close to Awataguchi Hisakuni or signed Yasutsuna, which is the top rate collector stuff and practically impossible to "discover". You can see at any American sword show probably 1,000 blades. Does it enrich one's knowledge? Sometimes, and only because you can actually hold them in hands. Mumei attributed to Unju or Kaneuji, behind glass... Why on earth this would be seen as an attraction worthy of a special visit? Whether to own Masamune or not for the first tier Soshu collector is often a choice. Many do not believe in the name, for them its like buying Go with some traditional pedigree with a significant price multiplier.

The article's title I am afraid suggests its unprofessional in everything except the corrosion. You can't date an excavated sword with a given precision and its unlikely to be that old. Cast swords are (mostly) nonsense. There are old swords made from pure iron though. Next thing we'll see photographs comparing the sword's size to a pack of cigarettes.

Actually upon checking the tropheys from 1807 Russian raid are still identifiable, here are a few cannons:

The only first tier collection of swords in Western Museums, in my unhumble opinion, is MFA Boston. Western collectors in 1900s were fittings (soft metal especially) afficionado and were guided in this direction by Japanese dealers. There are a few good blades here and there, but overall its unimpressive and a first tier private collector (Dmitry Pechalov as an example) will have a notch better set of blades. With Boston, Ogawa Morihiro de facto handled (handles?) the access and despite it being an American museum, the collection is typically not open to non-Japanese, and even with Japanese women there are issues. Before 1900s, the presence of Japanese blades in the West (or the East) was sporadic. Chinese sources are surprisingly silent until 16th century, at which time the units armed in Japanese fashion were acknowledged and openly discussed even in military "manuals" of sorts, and overall between Amur, Kurils and Korea you find a lot of Japanese blades and imitations from 16-17th century specifically. Mostly its hirazukuri ko wakizashi, there are also a lot of tsuba. Vietnam preferred daito Japanese blades in about the same period as well, some made their way from there further to western collections. Since export of blades was prohibited during Edo, this popularity basically came to abrupt end. There were exceptions. For example, Russian trade and raids on Hokkaido from 1779 till 1807 yielded a number of low grade blades, which were sent to what today is St.Petersburg's "Kunstkamera". There are very early (before 16th century) events, but unfortunately those survived as influences rather than specific Japanese pieces. Tsuba and habaki were likely brought over from Japan, tsuba probably twice, as until 14-15th century continental tsuba can be rather rudimental in design, and then we see a sudden transition to a more round, symmetric form with decorations.

Much of pre-Muromachi history and attributions is Edo period's convention, understanding that however is one of the most complex subjects. I believe Sanjo Munechika was active 1070-1100, as per 13th century books, but then you'll see different (usually 10th century) dates in every single modern text on the subject. For the basics all of it is frankly irrelevant. Terminology, sugata, periods, that's about as much as one needs to learn first. Whichever the first book one reads is irrelevant in the long term scheme. Everything else comes after extensive practical experience with blades. Connesuers is rather dry and advanced reference text, to really use which one needs advanced knowledge. Its quite good for kantei, and is roughly at the same level as more basic kantei texts. "Facts and fundamentals...." is really a bad choice as the first book. It shifts people into conspiracy mode when they look at Juyo blade and say "oh, but it has this change of sori which "Facts and fundamentals...." warns us is ....". Its a really complex stuff which actually seldom works in practice. Trust me, even without "Facts and fundamentals...." 99% of nihonto collectors are in permanent state of hysteria - "what if something is wrong with the papers? What if something is wrong with the sword?".

This question comes up often and unfortunately the answer is, paradoxally perhaps, there are no good books for beginners. Any classic textbook will spend pages on what is Awataguchi and what is ko Ichimonji. You'll learn a lot about matters you'll never see and nothing about (crap) you'll see all the time. What's more important there is no book that teaches you how to separate crap from Awataguchi level. Such is life. I would buy any basic book like the one by Kanzan Sato and then jump immedeately to everything by Markus Sesko. Like his kantei series.