Rivkin

All sword publications always suffer from one big issue - there are about 3-4 people who can write something rather than rehash something already published, and these people tend to have uneven output. Plus today they can reach as wide an audience through a personal blog (Markus Sesko). By comparison a periodic publication has both a more limited audience and substantially lower average quality per publication. I am all for nihonto journal as free, open set of papers collected on a website, but with no more than one issue per year. Otherwise I don't see a point. In terms of books, I would love to say digital as it saves tremendous amount of effort on the publisher's side, but... I don't think digital only is a good option today except for strictly reference volumes like Markus' swordsmiths for the time being. Maybe the best case is having a limited print run (250 copies) plus a digital version. On Societies... In my opinion, they should focus far less on titles, on being called a sensei, on publications and events, and more on looking at blades. First and foremost organizing shows of good blades or tosogu. Sadly this is something they least appreciate. Working hard with members or doing infinitely harder job of getting through the screen of museum nonsense is not their forte.

That's a classic Takada signature I would think - bold, large, deep and centered and a classic Takada name. Not being a specialist: Their work just varies a lot and thus can be difficult to pointpoint to a specific generation. Nambokucho ones typically have strong Yamato feel, but in ko nie, with lots of variations of hamon which you can probably call gunome or midare, and masame is not particularly strong. In early Muromachi you would expect more of the same, but even a tad less nie(some are pure nioi based with relateively wide and white nioi-guchi) and with somewhat larger featured jigane. Those would not be pure suguha. The problem is that occasionally they would decide to do Bizen imitation or something else, but here we talk about suguha so it makes things easy. Then they started to churn out a lot of blades around 1550. To be honest, almost everything signed is actually good quality, unsigned things attributed by NBTHK are absolutely random. The issue is that besides Yamato-Soshu stuff which was their early tradition they started to do full blown Soshu pieces and later also Bizen works, so at this point the style is complicated. But then the story goes some of their own worked with shodai Tadayoshi and you clearly see the very best examples after that time are all pure suguha and very bright and consistent itame with ji nie, very close to Hizen but tends to have distinctive "scratched appearance". They also made effort to show some nie at habuchi - either as hotsure in which case jigane has nagare or as Rai-like round ko nie foam, in which case the jigane will be pure itame. Hope that helps.

Nothing authoritative about my statement, just I guess, but: I would argue by statistics one almost never sees the works predating Otomo Sorin (i.e. 1550s). There are mumei ones attributable to Bungo of Nambokucho, but then you have a long lull where you find exceptionally few blades. Nijimei ones tend to have very large characters. I am too lazy to look into reference books, but the ones I remember had visible jigane and were not in pure suguha. The passion for suguha begins later and dominates the works only of post-Hizen Tadayoshi generations. At the same time you start seeing a shift towards denser and better itame-nagare. On the other hand, later into shinto they are seldom nijimei. By default for me a nijimei like this is between Eiroku and Genna. I would ask a few questions - it is pure suguha? If yes, its almost certainly not earlier than Eiroku. If it has norare-midare-gunome-whatever you call it, can be earlier. Does it have hotsure or well defined nie crystals at habuchi? If yes, its late. If no, likely earlier. Is jigane somewhat wide featured in place, possibly with shirake utsuri, with not a lot of hotsure? If yes, likely early. If jigane is bright and itame dominated, with very well defined Rai-Hizen-like dashes in nie - certainly late.

Hi Joe, I will be the voice of .... (bad things) by stating that the signature might be false. The nakago is atypical for the school, so is almost everything about the writing. However, it looks like a genuine late Muromachi period blade which might as well have Soshu like hamon. Not much is seen on such photographs, but there are a few reasonable possibilities regarding the school. Is habaki a wood integral to the tsuka? Some people believe this tends to correspond to higher end, often Muromachi though blades. Kirill

I am very sorry to hear that. Larry had it tough for quite a few years, but kept on going with Minneapolis sword show and his dojo. He will be missed.

its very periodic which after 1500 is sort of mino. jumyo was a bit conservative in this so it survived into shinto like that. to be honest i would say its just older.

Yes, Jumyo comes to mind.

Senjuin attribution should not be an issue here. For pre-late Kamakura items there are no alternative Yamato mainline attribution, so one has to decide against Kyushu (Naminohira, Sairen) or ko-Hoki. This does not look Sairen, really a stretch for ko-Hoki, the hada with ayasugi-like masame can pass for Naminohira, but they tend to have much flatter ha. It feels like a typical mainline Yamato and thus Senjuin. However, Senjuin attributions are often considered somewhat weak simply because not much is known about the school and in many cases it serves as default attribution for Yamato without Senjuin-specific traits.

I am beginning to suspect I am royally messed up... Is it Chinese?? I thought it is better than that, but also thought they did not make things that simple in late showa...

Good point, forgot it was shortened... Then can be shinto.

You can see hamon at places, but the hada is essentially a glass-like mirror surface - this is very late. Straight without tapering with largish kissaki - often shinshinto. Nakago looks unusual for the period, maybe a bit earlier.

Almost certainly recent, like WW2 era.

Yep, border of Muromachi and shinto. Could be many things, like shitahara.

I would even go shinshinto, but hard to be certain.

I did not check any references myself, but with Senjuin unknown signatures are quite common. They did not have Edo period's genealogies to back them up, being an outsider group in a sense, while at the same time they are really old, with late Heian swords found here and there. So what would be a slam dank TJ with Bizen or Yamashiro becomes just a guaranteed TH with Senjuin, with not a lot of extra money from the fact that its signed. Funny how a low grade ko Hoki will set you back easily 3 mil yen, while very good Senjuin can be had for under 2.

Its almost certainly not koto, therefore Yamato attribution can be difficult.

The curvature is in the center, chu kissaki... Either the very end of Kamakura, or between 1570 and 1640. Statistically 1,000 times more likely to be the latter.

Judging from hada alone this is something relatively modern, no earlier than shinto, and quite possibly much more recent. There was a movement within shinshinto (Ikkansai and others), who experimented a lot with very high contrast hadas which they could heat treat only at very low temperatures, so you see almost no transition between hada and hamon, while the structure is quite vivid.

At the risk of starting a heresy: jigane has a strong Muromachi feel to it. Kaga Ietsugu is likely one of the least faked smiths out there. Some very early works are decent, but overall its a typical Muromachi period mass production which imitates the works of better known schools. Even without papers I personally by default would treat such blade strictly as shoshin. Even if its not an exact match to photographs on the internet, as long as the general stylistics - signature location, how deep and long are strikes etc. is a general match for the school.

Best wishes, its very interesting. Any star blades - I think I am not alone in now wondering whether one should get a ticket to the east coast.

Kozuka looks high end. Can be Yoshioka. The blade is almost straight, very beefy, some taper... Maybe Kambun shinto. The nakago and the boshi are too most important elements to be more precise in attribution.

Its Bizen Ichimonji style. Kissaki proportions at the very least are not Kamakura, as is shape. There are "crab claws". There a big of fumbari here, but can be distortion from wide angle lens. I think, either Ishido from around 1640 or late Muromachi ...mitsu or Naotane in his Muromachi Bizen style. Boshi would be extremely useful to be more precise. I suspect Ishido, but I always say that. Got burned too many times on those Ichimonjis.

I don't think anybody issues papers to Hosho Sadamune anymore for the last 40 years. The light source is very non-uniform, but besides that I don't see anything super-criminal... On the second blade: there were Yamashiro smiths signing above the ana and towards the mune, though if there is just one ana it tends to be then considerably lower than the signature. By default I would suspect gimei here.

Well, if it were up to me a major sword show would have to have a kantei contest. Two rounds - first something very basic, second with interesting blades. Token fee to participate. With (electronic) publication of the catalogue with quality photographs and discussion of kantei points. It would also include a few select blades awarded "best in show" from the dealers present at the show. Unfortunately, knowing American community I expect they will spend more time devising who is going to be the Lord President of Nihon Bijutsu Kantei Committee and who is just The Grand Marshall of Editing and Publications.

Very Personally: I usually don't partake in kantei like this, because the answer in 95% cases is hidden within the text of the task. You have to learn for which blades the writer points out to mokume or "very dense hada" or some specific term related to utsuri or boshi etc. This can immediately put you very close to the right answer and then you look at oshigata to see if the length of kaeri etc. etc. closely matches any particular name. The good thing it trains one to consider such "small" traits in situ. At the expense of learning in detail how this particular group uses the language and what do they emphasize in oshigata. The bad thing is translating from this to real blades can be difficult, and one can be very dogmatic rather than pragmatic (or probability-driven) in his appraisal. For example, kyo-saka-ashi is something one encounters very commonly in kantei exercises even when working with real blades, provided the organizer has access to the ones that exemplify the style in every detail. And then in real life you are hit with Aoe blade that has it next to Rai blade which sort of does not.