Rivkin

Late Muromachi Mihara. I would argue for 1530-1570 period, though in the latter portion larger kissaki is more common, so probably 1530. Somewhat earlier shinogi zukuri waki would tend to be somewhat less chubby and more slender,

Yasurime can be shinto. Regarding the price, the issue is the same as bringing a dealer's sword to a sword club - what are the chances of getting an honest opinion? I've sold a dozen pieces to Eric over the years, I obviously not going to badmouth his goods. And vice versa - if you bring up a sword from an unknown dealer, chances are people will badmouth it simply because its a competition they don't want. So in questions like that, one is mostly on his own. I would certainly take all opinions with a lot of salt. This sword will paper, and its pretty much known how it will paper, so the risks are probably minimal on this front. The price is not really high in terms of nihonto prices.

I can't kantei shinto (don't know much about it), but I can throw couple of guesses. Its mostly straight with taper - its unlikely to be earlier than 1650. Would love to see yasurime and coloration of the nakago in detail, because nakago shape is something along the lines of what became more popular from 1665-1700 onwards - long, with pronounced taper. I would even think about shinshinto, but kissaki is a tad small to be characteristic to the period. Hamon is sort of typical for the period, jigane is too tight, nie is too large to be the first tier work, but it is something that can be easily appreciated. Looks like it has a long Edo [??] yakidashi, which is not too common and an unusual hakikake boshi, so I would go through references trying to find such specific combination. Chances are you'll get an exact name out of it. P.S. I personally would not call this hamon doranba, its almost more like somebody copying Kotetsu or his circle rather than Sukehiro.

I am very sorry to hear that. Bill did a very good job running the show; not in the least because he had a capacity for seemingly effortless dealing with a bunch of otherwise problematic people, myself included. He will be missed; when the temporary measures we all endure now are over the world of sword shows will still never be the same.

Ara nie is something quite uncommon in Kamakura period; there were some smiths who forged in nie, but none with such hamon, so I would say its safe to say its Muromachi. Nice blade, lots of ware, signature is poorly photographed to the point that its difficult to resolve first kanji. If its Mino Kanemitsu, it probably has decent chance to paper. Otherwise - may be not.

Unfortunately cameras can greatly distort things like taper. The first picture in the thread looks like Kambun shinto. The last one less so. If it has no taper, it can be late Nambokucho, probably Tegai school. There is an additional issue of it being suriage, so one does not 100% know how much the curvature/tapering is affected by that.

Usually organizers of shinsa in the US do accept mail in swords for an additional 100 or 150$ per item. That's the easiest way. Alternatively you can send a blade to an agent in Japan who will paper it for you. 99% of what people think is really important turns out to be fake junk. Unfortunately. Regarding confiscation worries, I would avoid sending chokuto and chokuto koshirae. With the rest, few have the relevant experience. Maaaaybe there is an issue if its something along the lines of the earliest known signed and dated Bizen or signed ubu Munechika. Everything else is of little concern.

Pre-Muromachi fumbari is indeed lost when the blade is shortened, since it concentrates right next to nakago. Basically in continental chokuto you sometime see an extremely rapid (over the space of 1cm) tapering, and in Kamakura Japanese blade it can taper over something like 15cm. In Kambun period tapering is much more gradual, and it should involve the entire lower half of the blade. Some argue it can't be called "fumbari", but then again on earlier pieces tapering can also be somewhat more gradual. If one goes by sugata here, I would say its Kambun Owari in Yamato style. But occasionally one does see similarly shaped blades in Muromachi times, they are just very uncommon.

Forging does look like Yamato and Koto. Sugata is unusual, with such unusual fumbari (no, not the Kamakura one) which continues all the way to kissaki. This unfortunately most likely excludes pre-Muromachi examples, and the hamon is a tad too wide and rough for earlier work. Kambun shinto would be a good fit, but with such forging I would argue its from about 1500. Can be Shikkake, but I would argue for Sue Tegai. Or maybe even Mino Kanenobu, they forged in Yamato style at the time. Its in more than enough polish to paper. Polishing expenses... Up to 4-7k depending on exact length, the need for new shirasaya, habaki etc. Price of such sword in full polish - below investment. I also would be concerning that it can very well be Edo Kambun Owari school, which forged at times very similar to Yamato, and had rather rough (un-shinto) jigane. http://sanmei.com/contents/media/S19795_S2068_PUP_E.html

Hirazukuri, late Muromachi... It can paper, its just not a pricy item. After Oei Nobukuni's are not that important. P.S. I had better names from this smith papering. But what he sells is usually not in polish and has forging flaws.

Congrats, interesting read!

It might sound like a cheap shot After seeing the papers, but I think this is classical later Mizuta work. Strongly nie-sunagashi based gunome with nie actually "separating" from the base of the hamon. Interestingly enough, ko Mizuta blades, each one I saw had unusually strong hada, but also each one was in its own style.

There are green paper Ichimonji with Kanzan's sayagaki which repaper as shinto Ishido, and far less often, but sometimes, one does get NTHK/NBTHK difference on those, but I don't think anyone from shinshinto has this distinction. Whatever the reason, they all were "Bizen inspired" rather than an accurate copy of Ichimonji jigane/hamon.

Definitely Edo period, but need two more pictures: detailed macro shot of hamon (with a camera looking from a side) and boshi. Then one could possibly identify the smith and date very accurately.

I'll throw in a very controversial statement: Its exceptionally rare for NBTHK to classify any koto nijimei as gimei. The reasoning is that you can't prove that the tanto signed Kunitoshi was made to fake the Rai Kunitoshi and not by some later person, whose name was indeed Kunitoshi. One can argue that nagamei is factually wrong, but doing it for nijimei is difficult. The papers issued would simply note that its a Muromachi (for example) period's Kunitoshi, even though one can reasonably suspect that it was made to be fake - but it is an old, Muromachi period's fake. So I think this one will paper with >90% probability. Such reasoning aside, it does appear as later Muromachi example with genuine signature (Uda?). Unfortunately with those, sugata does not get one to a very precise dating/attribution.

Its hard to be absolutely certain, but there is a substantial and mostly uniform curvature - something that completely went out of fashion around 1630-1640. Kissaki is small, nakago is smallish compared to nagasa, so its more or less typical for late Muromachi. And not Momoyama Muromachi, but more along the lines of 1515-1550. The negative is this being a period when a LOT of swords were produced, or rather unimpressive quality save for but a handful of names. Actually were it post-1560, I would have far better expectations regarding its quality.

One of the cases where I have to start with a disclaimer that my opinion on this topic is likely to be uneducated, erroneous and subjectively personal. I think these two blades are very different and "Den" here has strong connotations. The underlying problem is Sa school excelling in basically every single style of their time. They can be strongly Soshu flavored, Bizen, Rai or their old, provincial Yamato-sort-of style. Frankly speaking the last option is the least impressive, but every seller of such items always insists it still has some connection to Masamune and O-Sa's fame. Which it does not - its just a provincial style, and more often than not - a coarsely forged one. Within "Soshu works" you also have a big spread - from things that are almost Bizen, some could be mistaken for Chogi's school flavor, with ko nie and nioi and very sparse usage of any distinctively nie based activities, to the works where the foundation of hamon is sort of in nioi, but there are lots of nie activities, sunagashi, very often there is inazuma etc. Interestingly enough, the hada can in both cases can be either more or less pure itame or large featured mokume/itame/nagare based. The work on the left is in more Bizen-like style. Jigane is probably very good, but its mostly nioi/ko nie and will not have strong Soshu feel to it. Its a style which is distinctively Sa. Its also much harder to photograph and thus pictures might not reflect the real quality out there. The blade on the right is late Nambokucho, of distinctive later style, sunagashi dominated with somewhat rougher nie. It will be much brighter, but I wonder whether Sa Yoshisada is a strong attribution here. I feel today such items would have a strong chance to be attributed as Sue Sa, or something similar. The ones with stronger nie and masame would even go Mino Kanenobu. I think most learned collectors today assign lesser value to this type of work, though I personally like it a lot. Here is an example. Still of the two blades I would take without question the one from 65th Juyo session. Later Sa works can have rougher jigane, and I suspect the 15th session examples is like that.

Late Muromachi, Kaga.

I think it depends on definition of Ichimonji. Typical Naotane Bizen has distinctive mokume hada and is in very uniform ko-nie with sunagashi. It does not exactly match any particular Ichimonji style.

If its a traditionally made sword, there is no indication of it being tired. It should survive plenty of polishes.

That's an interesting example. The polish is completely non-traditional, and one has to wonder whether the forging is also so. The style sort of emulates Nambokucho's Omiya, but there is coarse variation of nie size, with larger pieces shifting towards the ji, something one expects to find in late pieces, etc. etc. It could be a decent shinshinto example, butchered by polish, or it could be something completely non-traditional, but reasonably well done.

Very personal opinion: Wakimono are often quoted as being a problem for gokaden, but I don't feel that way. Many if not most of these schools were founded as provincial, Yamato-based shops, around 1300 or so. Attributions to these schools tend to be "soft" and are often attributed differently by different shinsa, but they are more or less all within the same class - 1300 to 1400, provincial work. Provincial school make a comeback around 1510, and with basically similar issues. The bigger problem is that Bizen, for example, being the largest workshop of the land, from time to time forged in every possible type of hada and almost every hamon known in Japan. There are ko-itame, itame with nagare, mokume, masame and even matsukawa-flavored examples. There are suguha in nioi, ko choji, choji in nioi, choji in nie, midare or gunome in either nie or nioi. There are blades that look like Rai Kunitoshi, Yamato Taima and whatever else. Kantei-ing these 1100-1300 blades can be a nightmare, especially as we outside of Japan are relatively seldom exposed to those. You can substitute such details with something along the lines "Bizen is choji in nioi with itame hada" and that's going to match roughly 30% of Kamakura examples and probably as high as 70% of Muromachi. And then you put Tomonari, Ayanokoji, ko Aoe, Rai Kuniyuki next to each other and it sort of dawns on me (don't know about others) - these people must have known each other's work more than just a bit. Some of it does converge towards the same kind of aesthetic, which is period rather than region based. Same way you have later Nambokucho blade, and you can have heavily Bizen leaning Sa or strongly Soshu leaning Chogi or even some Kozori signed piece - and you clearly see they were influenced by the same, period-based, Soshu-Bizen aesthetic.

I would say gokaden is nearly as helpful as it is confusing. First and foremost, roughly half of the blades currently on the market are shinto. Which is, except for Ishido Bizen and a few other subschools, is a tradition of its own. The sixth tradition. So you have a classification which is from the get go fails with half the blades. But it does not get any easier as you go into details of what should be describable by gokaden. Pre-mid-Kamakura blades, no matter which school they are, ko Bizen, Yamashiro or Yamato can look quite similar. Many will belong to subschools which are not clearly gokaden - like Aoe and ko Hoki. Even though ko Hoki often looks more like "mainstream" Yamato compared to, say Hosho. And Hosho school never had mainstream-like Yamato signatures, its not clear if it was in Yamato region, it has a well defined style of its own - but its in the old tables as part of five mainstream Yamato schools, so it is there. Rai Kuniyuki forged most of his blades in wide, nie filled hamon, which can be mistaken for Bizen Tomonari , but is completely incomparable to almost anything ever done in later Rai and Awataguchi, i.e. the works which sort of define Yamashiro style as it is. Soshu tends to include Awataguchi smith Shintogo Kunimitsu, whose works were never mistaken for any single blade produced by anyone else within Soshu school, but can exclude Shizu Kaneuji, on account of him going Mino. Hasebe, who is very central to Soshu, is often instead delegated to Yamashiro, on account of him having Yamashiro-lineage name. Gokaden is blood/province oriented classification. It fails utterly in shinto, when style dominated over blood. It fails with ancient swords, which were all forged in rather utilitarian style, which has rough itame-nagare hada and rough nioi with elements of nie hamon. It mostly fails at the time when everybody was trying to be Soshu. It constantly includes things that are not really that similar - Yoshii, Unju and Osafune under the umbrella of one "Bizen school", while sending works of exceptionally similar smiths to different schools because their blood is unrelated. In reality if you want to understand Koto you need to get accustomed that there were about 25 more or less prominent schools/lineages, each of which cannot be completely defined by gokaden. Even if it resided in Bizen or Yamashiro. Ayanokoji usually does not look like Rai Kunitoshi. If you want simplification, there were only 4 styles which were constantly imitated throughout Japanese history. Ichimonji, Soshu, Rai Kunitoshi/Awataguchi and Yamato Tegai Kanenaga. If you understand 4-10 masterpieces from these traditions, you can understand 50% of nihonto aesthetic.

Its a bit complicated question. Which I think only true bigot can try to answer. Classifications of historical weapons are somehow extremely sensitive to how society interprets the relationship between an artist and a community. For example, Russian books usually correlate any observable developments to Imperial edicts. Whether its bayonets, machine guns or kards, they will be described as "the pattern following the edict 471". Even if the object was arguably made in some secluded cave in India. In case of Japan one has to keep in mind that in Confucian spirit the laws had a tendency to remain active "on paper" pretty much from their enactment till Meiji revolution. The earliest legal codes defined a relationship between a person and the state as being intermediated by clan's head. Each person is registered with a specific clan name, and its your clan head who pays your taxes to the central government and arranges for legal permits. In East Asia pretty much everything requires a legal permit. Scroll forward to Edo period, to practice any craft you needed a permit, which was obtainable more or less exclusively by inheriting it from your father, all the way back to someone who received from any top government official, either Imperial or Shogunate. So every Japanese genealogy of every craftsman goes back all the way Kamakura period or earlier. If your ancestor was given a license to smith by none other than prince Shotoku, nobody could question your legal qualifications. If it was some northern Fujiwara administrator - the legitimacy would be insignificant by comparison. Also, with heavy emphasis on reincarnation it is actually suggested at times that these later craftsmen are direct reincarnations of the earlier generations. But with a Confucian sensitivity that the earlier generations were obviously less corrupted and thus in general superior. Good thing about such classification is that obviously most craftsmen learned their skill from their "parents", often adaptive ones. Also such extended family members do tend to have common traits. Bad thing is that everytime there is a fashion change and everybody in Japan starts to make more or less the same thing, you can't explain it unless you have a father figure who plainly fathered them all. Or you don't even try to explain it and are satisfied with attributions that jump between schools that are supposedly completely unrelated. The classification is more vertical then horizontal. For example, there is almost nothing in common between Nambokucho and Momoyama Bungo - except the names.

The photographs are very poor but it seems the work is not typical for Kanemitsu. Regarding the papers, with really major names one typically has to assume repapering green will yield something lesser. The problem is that with signed blades the lesser attribution is gimei. There are exceptions, mostly with blades that's been in the US for a while now etc. This being said, I actually don't know if the nakago here is the one pictured in the papers or it was made recently to look the same way as in papers. Which is hard to do with newer papers which have actual photographs.