Rivkin

I don't have the encyclopedia but any think book by Markus I ever had the privilege to read was a Marvel. Highly recommended irrespective of one's level of knowledge.

Brutally shortened. Otherwise looks like late Muromachi Mino.

Many options. I like this piece. Armor made from swords.

I don't want to comment much on Sadamune-Hiromitsu since it will just be borrowing from Dmitry's rather long book section... and I don't understand the issue thoroughly. On the time per blade, an observed and commented on NBTHK session in the US was not greatly different from how such are done in Japan, which in turn was not that different from NHTK sessions, which one can observe... There are obviously people FAR more experienced with them, but here is my take. The pace is professional and unless its signed and dated Norishige they don't pause and awe even for the blades which would cause me to salivate... I saw Rai and Shizu blades handled in about 3-5 minutes and ugly like hell average pieces given the same time. Opinions were stated from senior to junior members, which is contrary to my experience of how typical Japanese government panel functions, but I guess senior-to-junior order is much more expedient. The senior person does thorough look up of the blade with one or few fixed lights, then others pick it up, they state couple of opinions. No real discussion. Three phrases from the senior, one-two from the junior members. 3 minutes, maybe 5 in total. I saw them getting stuck a few times when the signature was iffy and they went for the books and there was a long argument. One of the blades was upper grade shinto guy, but another just average Muromachi piece, they were just concerned that the details in this long signature were highly atypical and argued about it. I think there is general feeling that gimeing the right signature or passing gimei is something much more likely to come back and hurt them. A spread in opinions on mumei pieces is expected to be large. In regards to signature appraising changing from TH to Juyo - one of the big reasons we will not see an open database-check-you-certificate ever, because if such is done someone will do the statistics on attributions like Takada, Uda and will find out the percentage of those shifts a lot with time. Many will dismiss it in a sense you are not suppose to own mumei Takada (that is if you are a cool collector), but there are similar trends with other attributions, signatures included. Sayagaki was refused to Juyo blade - on account of it being "well known gimei" from the prospective of the sayagaki-shi. If one ever invites Nobuo Nakahara o-sensei (I should be hated in Japan, perfect nobody dissing both him and Ogawa Morihiro), he will discover all his Juyo are gimei, and it can be scientifically proven on the basis of nioi-guchi alone.

I don't see it as an exclusive mark of lesser schools. It is an accurate statement, if one has in mind something like lesser Muromachi pieces, which often tend to be the same and are objectively difficult to distinguish by school. Well, so is Soshu 1370-1390. Plenty of Sue Sa, Shizu, late Naotsuna which are almost the same and the attribution will always float. Dmitry has a signed Sadamune daito in his book judged to Hiromitsu. Its exceptionally unusual to judge signed blade with an old signature to the same school, same period, but another name. Did not want to set the precedent of signed Sadamune? Sadamune daito always being difficult to judge? Maybe. I always disagreed with most of what Darcy wrote on kantei. "Den ..." is usually a minor hedge applied by default, but with a major early Soshu name the intent is different. Den Masamune tends to be a Nambokucho blade, or some other big issue, irrespective of setsumei. There is a reason in a list of swords you would see simply "O-Kanemitsu" but if its the first rank Soshu, they will add specifically "kiwame Sadamune", i.e. underlining its not "Den". Even if its "kiwame Hasebe", i.e. there are still two options . "To ga aru" - by default assumes its gimei but the signature was added pre-Edo. etc. etc.

Yes, and a lot of it is checking there are no fatal flaws. Most kantei is obvious. Its usually wrong to expect them to spend hours looking at all angles to catch a glimpse of the one sparkle still seen in unpolished blade. Unpolished blades are always judged conservatively. Both NBTHK and NTHK usually do take after-questions, the answer will typically be one line pointing out to one-two kantei feature. "Kasane is too thick", "Jigane is zanguri". The important part for some in Japan - you can sit down with a shinsa member beforhand. Or submit through someone whose name by itself turn heads. What surprised me a bit seeing shinsa as an old fashioned institution... There is a Confucian concept for a panel the voting starts with younger members or in a discussion the senior members are not supposed to express their opinion until many of the younger ones do. You do see it done here and there in Japan, but shinsa does not seem to work in this fashion; one, less often two, people can be the decisive voice.

Every appraiser in every time suffers from the same great temptation which has nothing to do with his knowledge. He has a blade which can be treated optimistically and given a great name or treated pessimistically and given an average school. It can be Etchu Tametsugu or plain Uda. Go or Naokatsu. If he gives it a good name, the submitter will say "finally I found a smart person who understands how great my best blade is". And he will bring back his business many times over. The problem is he will also drag his blade to every damn club, boasting how he found this unpapered blade and knew its something special, blah, blah, blah. And a lot of people will say "John's papers? He must be taking bribes to call it Go. Its just not at the level". So if you like the money you judge optimistically. If you are afraid of your friends shaking heads and pointing fingers you judge conservatively. In theory there could have been people who ignore everything except what they see in the blade, but they don't exist. One has to remember - in a modern society most people simply don't have any opportunities to develop qualities like valor. This is not something you just get from birth. Conditions of the most people are too stable, predictable and can be improved solely by satisfying slightly superior members of the same occupation etc..

Kantei is an interesting thing. I would argue its pretty easy if what you try is to get a general perceptions of the blade - quality level, period, general school. To go beyond is both very difficult and usually very uncertain. In books it sounds like you can easily distinguish sue Bizen Kiyomitsu from Tamamitsu from something-mitsu, it very seldom pins down in practice. Also when one invites a high level person to judge a collection, unless its filled with signed shinto pieces, you almost never get an exact opinion. They will stick to period-general school-maybe couple of names format. To put it bluntly - here is a basic waki. There are two important pieces missing - boshi and nakago, which one always has to include when asking for the opinion. But even as is - its mino-ish. It can be Echizen Seki. It can be Mino Seki. It can be Jumyo. Does it change anything? No. Its the same group of schools. The differences are minute and in most cases unimportant. It could even be in reality someone in a completely different province imitating the style. Does not matter and will not be traced back to this one lad.

Plot deepens while the mania for finding exotic non-Japanese origins for Namban tsubas is progressing. Happy to see Tibetian being added to the list. Java, Vietnam and Russia obviously was not enough.

My opinion is simple and arrogant: Unfortunately almost everything concerning namban tsubas being "really" reworked european or reworked chinese or vietnamese is more bizarre than its not. The curvature is wrong (too flat), the mimi is wrong, the manner of carving is wrong, unless in almost all cases we are talking about Japanese imitation or something inspired by outside influences. And I thought the square ones are "supposed" to represent altered smallsword-European items, Chinese ones tend to be rectangular, sometimes large enough to be actually filled in with copper rather than expanded? I've seen couple of Hizen tsubas which indeed looked very Chinese and probably were reworked Chinese examples... Kofun and earlier Nara will be rectangular, whether continental (very rare) or Japanese, but I guess its not about those?

NBTHK papers are generally extremely non-informative and more so when it comes to Muromachi pieces. The signature is genuine and that's about it. Not pretending (or pretending to be) an expert, I've seen his works. The first generation can be quite good. When you see all the masame it can be though he was Yamato, but I've seen works which were actually strongly Aoe influenced. The key is that he did dan utsuri at times - black midare utsuri followed by nie utsuri followed by bo utsuri. Just like Aoe, the nie utsuri section can have ware since its one long pack of masame. His jigane tends to be much rougher than Aoe though, and hamon lacks the bright refinement of Aoe. Nevertheless the work is quite decent. I don't know based on these photographs which generation it is. There is a lot more masame compared to the first generation, which was a bit more itame heavy, so I thin its indeed second or third generation. Then ofcoarse even early Muromachi Bungo has full Yamato, full Yamashiro (suguha+shirake utsuri+itame), full Aoe (Yamashiro-like but more dan utsuri config) and full Bizen (choji, possibly utsuri) options. Its really difficult to judge. This seems more Yamato-based style though utsuri work is nice.

To me it looks like the beginning of Muromachi (-1500) and either Tegai which brings forward but a few or just one "typical" name, or Naminohira.

Most likely - yes, don't know about specifically Meio. I can see shirakke utsuri in this case its basically about 1cm wide, vague white band a bit above the habuchi. In most sue-mihara one hopes for a more active jigane, with mokume and such, here its not the case, and its not an exception in any case. It can be Bizen, the style is not overly distinctive.

The criteria for NBTHK Muramasa changed drastically between 1980 and 2000, in the direction of being very conservative. With such pictures being more precise is difficult and daito Muramasa can be difficult to kantei with certainty. This being said, I looked at the link - its in pure nioi. Its certainly will not paper as Muramasa today. Its a late Muromachi work which can be frankly anyone - Odawara, Mino and even Bizen sometimes churning up pieces with such hamon and itame hada is well done but not distinctive. Personal opinion.

Correcting myself a bit - one of those cases when the work does look Yokoyama Bizen and a good one at least to me at least from little seen, but can't say anything about the signature, don't know them that well.

Its a very nice shinshinto Yokoyama Bizen blade, hope for major smith within the group. Good mounts also.

You are not going to hear a lot of stories since the community depends on polisher's business, if not for the polish itself then for bringing items to Japan, papering, shirasaya, cleaning up active rust, erasing signatures etc. "Non professional" polishers are not part of the nihonto community so they are open game, but I've seen very-very many items completely ruined by the professionals. To the point that some could not be papered.

I am probably in the bottom 10% for reading kanji, but yes - generations of Kinmichi and then Katsumichi. The last Katsumichi is unlisted in Meikan, but mentioned here. He sealed by own hand the envelope containing the origami as well, so it is quite likely he did exist.

In my limited experience lower level Bunkazai has a lot of value with paintings and such, many of those in mid level temples still in the area (most important pieces were shipped to national museums and replaced with copies unless the shrine is like Katsuga Taisha); with swords its seldom a consideration, suggesting some history of the local ownership or production... One of the issues I always had with "how to collect" guides, besides that in nihonto for some bizarre reason those are written not by collectors, is the motivation to collect is very mutli-faceted. There was time when I collected difficult to photograph blades to improve my photography skills, then rare schools to learn what they are; seldom such blades are keepers but... I think few in nihonto appreciate historical collecting - unlisted smiths etc., but I personally like it a lot. I also like objects with Edo papers or documentation. Here is unusual thing - official genealogy of Rai Kinmichi to Sendai Katsumichi. Thanks to Markus Sesko for helping out with it!

I might be ill informed as always, certainly I am selfish as always, but I am more interested in the fate of Juyo volume full translation. Did any of the gentlemen from the secret internet forum raised this question? Community might consider buying it from the family I guess. Its an important and substantial work, would be unfortunate if it just disappears.

My take is more figure-skating oriented. There are technical elements ranked in terms of difficulty and each school has a required set of those, as evident from the masterpieces. For Soshu one expects chikei, one expects nie to be well defined granulars with slowly varying size, if its very best the nie will have a cloud like appearance with clear gaps within. Personally though I like nioi hamon with inazuma and kinsuji, but that tends to be not the very best Soshu of Go but either early or later Sa. Full cloud based for me frankly can be a bit too much. For Bizen one expects midare utsuri. Bizen is seldom judged by hada, frankly, there are some smiths being exception. Add points for composition, add points for consistency of work.

I was stupid not to read Dmitry's book before compiling the Soshu tables... Since he did very detailed and "unjapanese" effort of getting all dated pieces for every smith he discusses from both major old oshigata books and existing blades. Plus he included "poor attributed" blades like Daishinbo, Yoshihiro's father-son-whatever which might or might not be real. And he discusses a lot of arcane subjects. For example there is an opinion that there are no ubu Masamune blades. Kenge nakago exists only for Masamune and Go and a few blades in Soshu... the ones which went through Honami hands. On Ichimonji my very personal impression: 50% of Bizen Juyo pre-Muromachi aside form Ichimonji I've seen were signed, if only partially. With Ichimonji this drops to well below 10%. Did not check the actual numbers, but that's my gut feeling. Ichi are very often on non-ubu blades. This was done after suriage, and most likely in Muromachi. Moreover a lot fo signed Ichimonji, especially nagamei are tanto and naginata... The worksmanship there is in my experience is quite different. For some reason midare utsuri and all the gorgeous stuff very seldom made it to this format.

Its much weirded than it looks! The last dated blade by Norishige is around 1330, Shintogo Kunimitsu is from 1331, Yukimitsu at 1338 Then you have Sa at 1341, Kinju around 1346, Akihiro at 1357, Hiromitsu from 1350s, Nobukuni at 1358, Hasebe at 1346, Tagaki Sadamune at 1351. It is almost never admitted but also signed Shizu Kaneuji are very late - either o kissaki, or oshigata dated to 1350s, except one oshigata which is probably 1345. Yamato Shizu is also 1350s and 1360s. Generally you have reasonable number of signatures from 1300 to 1330. A lot after 1345-1350. Almost nothing in between. Go, Masamune, Sadamune and every other Soshu smiths of the period with a few exceptions like Sa has no signed works from this period. You can sort of understand the daito issue, since when it says "there is a known signature" it very often means there are signed tanto, at least for a lot of pre-Muromachi smiths. But many Soshu people are tanto makers (Sadamune, to the lesser extent Masamune), and in nihonto history unsigned tanto are a weird exception but tanto makers who did not sign their works at all are basically unknown - except for Sadamune! It might just be that the signatures were erased. Edo genealogy was very much shifted backward with Masamune conducting his grand teaching in 1310. So Kinju, Hasebe, Hiromitsu and most others had actually first generation which was active like 1310-1340. Which does not match the dated signatures at all. Might be some Masamune had dates like 1340 which is not unreasonable but if he was to be son of Saburo Kanemune who was supposed to be like 1250s smiths in Edo books, Masamune would be pushing close to 100. And without Saburo Kanemune you have this weird thing that all Kamakura smith are either "Hiro" or "Kuni" or "Mitsu" reflecting the two main families there, and only Masamune and Sadamune are aliens. Plus all these unsigned 1330-1345 names are to an extent similar. Masamune can pass as Go, can pass as Sa, very few calmer ones can pass as Sadamune. Might also be than once the style was recognized, the names were erased if it was Masamune-level. There are records of some of the blades in Dmitry's book like a blade with Uda attribution became Go meito after new appraisal - and its not an isolated story, at some point Uda Kunifusa was not seen as sorry excuse for papers as it is today, but it was potential Go material if resubmitted. You would not have to alter too many signatures actually. Taking 1300-1330 as guidance, for 1325-1350 you would have at best 20-40 signed pieces, almost all tanto. I do heavily believe in existence of Masamune-Go-Sa and Sadamune clusters in terms of attributions, but it feels the highest quality works are from 1325-1345, not 1300-1320 as previously thought, the quality is sky high but the real names might have been a bit different.

Its amazing how much is known regarding the matters so arcane, especially in the realms outside of specialized literature...

I guess one can judge painters by how many are at the MET, though thankfully people seldom go down this path. Accepting the taste of J.P.Morgan's generation might be not a bad thing. The worst is one also accepts without trial or doubt the knowledge of past generations. Yasutsuna was supposed to be the founder of nihonto with Amakuni. Every signed piece of his was seen as the treasure among treasures. If Tomonari is a "top smith", it is worthwhile to revisit the question if it is one or three (two, five) generations. No dealer will ever consider this, since every Tomonari he sells is THE famous Tomonari. Masamune jutetsu... Enough said as it is. Nihonto dealers don't want things to change. They sell certainty. Many if not most, surprisingly, can't kantei at any level and can't work without papers. A silver lining I guess is personally I would gladly take the very best signed by lesser known ko Aoe name over any representative-average of either Tomonari or Yasutsuna. The best of lesser Sa does more for me than the worst of spectacular names. Imposed strict hierarchy - this name is great and this one just a single line in every reference book has some advantages. I've met plenty of Nakayama's students. Its a very niche specialty, a mixture of strict postulates and suspicions. They have a strict table of how they judge blades, with nioi-guchi appearance given a top priority. They do tend to have a good eye for anything unusual, but on the whole it can be weird. Yes, the unsigned portion works a bit like magic. Tons of signed Bizen pieces, except in Ichimonji daito. Tons of ubu Mino works - except the earliest. And its not like late Kamakura blades are that different sugata-wise from Oei.