Rivkin

Yeap, that's the mid-grade unlucky scenario. In principle being determined in naming the species and within the range of possible should be enough to get one off the hook. Its also one of a few cases where titles do help. Worst case you can ask someone with titles to write something on the case. Still there are cases when they just destroy the contraband "material". Customs is plenty much a random affair. In 95% of cases everything goes smoothly, and then there are 5% when suddenly there is some random claim. Import duty, registration with IRS as potential commercial material, registration as potential important cultural property being smuggled, endangered species, ivory trade - take your pick. They are usually just someone in customs not dealing too often with swords/antiques/etc., first day on the job, bored and just checking the corresponding "to investigate" item. Kirill R.

Ouch, you probably should. Fish and wildlife are the worst. They can take a stand that its basically your duty to prove this particular same does not come from endangered species - because frankly they are not specialists on anything except enforcing certain rules. For example, they will routinely demand something made from walrus to be destroyed because its "elephant ivory" etc. Kirill

Ok, continuing along the same lines - some Kanesada and other late works appear to be in o-maru boshi, plus the nagare close to ha is relatively strong. Could it be that with their bo utsuri they were copying Enju rather than Rai? I don't think they distinguished the two well enough until relatively recently. Kirill R.

Thank you very much, I appreciate it - I did not pay attention to nie utsuri, indeed it appears to never be on the later works. To be honest on quite a few Rai blades its also not that easy for me to see nie utsuri. Kirill R.

I have to admit to being puzzled by one matter and hope to be enlightened. In later Rai imitations one often sees much effort being expanded to create strong, vivid, high quality bo utsuri. You see this well done in Kanesada, not really in Hizen I think, but also present with a lot of other people who worked in Rai style after the demise of Rai lineage per se. In Kunitoshi-Kunimitsu lineage, and maybe the blades I've seen were "wrong" for this feature: if utsuri is wide it had somewhat uneven upper edge and was not as pitch black/high contrast as when executed by Kanesada. Is this true, and then basically later works differ in that they put such an accent/effort on creating very strong and very straight utsuri? Never mind multi-layered black and white utsuri as per the example below - its extremely beautiful but probably unique.

Current government issued guidance is no public events till May. All conferences are online only. Kirill R.

Personal potentially erroneous mumblings: Definite no on Kamakura. However it can be a very much cut down (thus no hi) Nambokucho shape of 1360s (below). I am a bit worried about it retaining such large sori if its so cutdown though. But indeed the shape is not unique and even occasionally in shinshinto you see "reproductions". This would put the issue of age towards the work itself. One thing that makes me a tad optimistic is that hamon is narrow. Edo period was not fond of those, old blades often are. Also, I think boshi shows some wavyness so its not strictly suguha (needs confirming). If its true, then shinto is unlikely. Overall, a closeup good picture of the work can reveal more - Nambokucho or not. As valid alternatives I would say Momoyama - they actually made wakizashi purposefully shaped like this. Maybe shinshinto.

I don't think kasane is a strong point here, I have a few koto ones this thick... But nakago could tell a lot. Deep, well spaced yasurime=shinshinto. Anything else I personally would go with later Muromachi. Kirill R.

Rough jigane with Masame, periodic gunome, typical Mino, late Muromachi (seeing nakago would confirm the age)... I don't think any shinsa will go further than just copy the signature and declare it authentic. There are plenty of unlisted smiths. Also late Muromachi had Mino-Bizen styles going around quite a lot. You see Kaifu blades which are Naminohira, but there are also Mino ones. I am sorry to say something quite controversial, but I don't know why such blades need any papers. Its like one constantly see people showing with pride TH to ko-kinko, and I always have the question "what else did they expect?". Ok, maybe a small chance for ko-Mino. Kirill R.

Can be simply Yamato Tegai from the very end of Nambokucho. Hard to say without seeing large pics of hada. Kirill R.

I would think about the whole Ikkansai lineage, beginning with Ikkansai Yoshihiro, but there were many others, even Naotane's take on Hosho has very thick dark and white lines that are clearly forge-wielded, Kirill R.

Its very difficult to state anything definitively but I would lean towards shinshinto. They experimented a lot with different hada being obtained by a combination of steels, with very broad, long, high contrast but devoid of ji nie, or on the contrary - with much black ara nie structures. Kirill R.

I personally don't think Aoe is in the cards here. More detailed pictures of just single area showing hada would be very helpful. A guess from a non-expert who wishes to be corrected as always: Hamon is glassy with very little vertical variation and tight nioguchi, there is masame in shinogi ji which sort of suggests shinto , but the hada is quite coarse and large featured which is quite unusual for shinto, and strongly hints towards koto, and possibly later Muromachi. Mino would fit well, but suguha Mino like Kanenobu etc. tends to be with stronger yamato flavor and more nie. Echizen Rai.... does not exactly feel like it. Sue Mihara tends to have very prominent mokume and overall quite standing out hada. Sue-Bizen... Lots of maybes without better pictures. Kirill R.

I might be wrong, but I think there is some confusion here. This picture is indeed can be/maybe likely be early Enju but is it the same sword as in the first post? If not, I would say there is quite a few possibilities for what the blade in the first post can be. Can be Enju, but can be Bungo - they made blades with suguha, utsuri and somewhat tight itame. Without detailed shots of areas where work is visible, hard to tell. Kirill R.

Sumegane-like in Muromachi blade: bad, unsightly, detracting flaw. Sumegane-like in early Kamakura blade: an important kantei feature attesting to both age and particular set of schools. Can be unsightly, but the chances are the blade overall has quite a few condition issues. Its kind of like buying a Nambokucho sugata suriage daito in like new absolutely pristine condition. Its either an automatic Juyo or a misidentified and devalued by suriage shinshinto. Having at least some naturally looking wear would not hurt the blade's valuation if its claimed to be really old. Kirill R.

The style of signature and blade is more shinto-like something along the lines of 1650. This being said "Kuni ju" is something quite strange. Almost as if someone not very literate was trying to sign something, but could not figure out where to put kuni, where ju etc. Kirill R

Kambun shinto is roughly 20% of swords available today. And almost nothing of value is mumei, so if its unsigned Kambun shinto, the chances of it being something good are close to zero. O-suriage Shinkai or Sukehiro are practically unknown. Compared to shinshinto, where you can own Kiyomaro, Naotane and Masahide as mumei, since these blades were quite often cut down, to fit the military mounts or for other reasons. In addition, for some reason in Japan there is great respect alotted to Earliest Edo/Keicho period swords, which I don't understand, except for the fact they are just exceptionally rare as swordmaking was for some reason quite depressed then. Umetada, Horikawa, Hankei, Nanki. From Kambun similar respect is extended only to Kotetsu and maybe Sukehiro. For some reason in truly outstanding collections you keep seeing Kotetsu and Kiyomaro. Kirill R.

I am not a specialist on shinshinto signatures in the slightest, but the work is essentially one of the two most common (and the most common among the two) types associated with Kyomaro's school - Bizen choji in nie with extreme sunagashi. Attached is Saneo. These are attractive and easy to appreciate blades, and there is always a market for this school. This being said, there is an order+ price difference between Kiyomaro signed ubu and Saneo, Masao, Kiyondo... Kirill R.

Appears a bit like Soshu-"light" from about 1510-1540. During the Edo period Akihiro was accepted by many as a multi-generational line lasting through much of Muromachi and there were oshigata of Muromachi period Akihiros. But with the new age it was decided that these late Akihiro examples do not show continuity, i.e. you basically have this signature sporadically appearing just when Soshu style gets popular, mostly towards the end of Muromachi, and thus Muromachi Soshu Akihiro were declared gimei. Its not an uncommon re-evaluation, as late as 1980s the end of green paper era marked also discontinuation of any attributions to Hosho Sadamune, for similar reasons. There were a few legitimate non-Sagami Akihiro, but I would feel a tad paranoid here and suspect the signature is not real. Shimada tends to be the absolute default attribution for anything late Muromachi Soshu like these days, save things which bear clear evidence of Sengo, or Mino or Tsunahiro and related lineages. But there is an interesting tid-bit is that since the decision to gimei Muromachi Akihiro is a recent one, and there are examples with legitimate Honami papers, it is possible, for example, to paper something with kimpun mei to Akihiro with another attribution, i.e. without the blade being rejected outwards (personal experience). I don't know if this careful approach goes towards papering signed Akihiro as "signed as", however I don't think such attributions are common at all with Muromachi works. Were it Hasebe with Muromachi period's gimei Akihiro then maybe. I don't think its a stellar example, hada is a bit rough, nie in hamon is not that sparkly, there is no mitsu-mune etc. etc. Kirill R.

1. Its Mito, unsigned. 2. Its copper-based. 3. It has a carving (dragon). 4. It has a hole. Kirill R.

An extremely unpopular opinion, but it needs to be stated. You have to study extensively about 100 swords. It is unlikely you can accomplish this without owning something at one time or another. You have to study for at least a minute to five about 500 and do something that helps you to memorize them. Oshigata, photo, whatever suits you. You have to have someone looking at swords with you, at least in the beginning. To point out what to look at. Books are books. Kirill R.

I was forced a few times to re-register swords. Once the funny thing was that there was an obvious error in the original registration and suddenly it became an issue when exporting. Kirill R.

The coarseness of hada can be exagirated by side illumination, including scanning, so it might be in real life the hada is very much subdued here. The ha is strongly nie-loaded so I thought ko-Hoki when looked at the photographs. It is interesting that one often sees asymmetric hi on only one side in chokuto times, but almost never afterwords. One would think of all asymmetric features this one would have the most sense since it does not thin out the blade too much and is not an uncommon feature coming up here and there throughout times. Kirill R.

Very personal thoughts: [a] The lack of shinogi on one side was experimented a bit in chokuto times, including the continent... b/ I guess "nearly ubu is about as precise on this type of blades as "a little bit machi okuri" - a guess of sorts. [c] I am not really well proficient with such early blades, so how certain is ko-aoe definition here? Is ko-Hoki a valid alternative here? Kirill R.

M bag is a weird beast. It is defacto being phased out by the postal service. 10 years there were select few countries where the rates were about 10% compared to priority airmail, I am not sure if its still true today. Basically you have to drive to the main post office/sorting station in your area (often the airport), ask for m bags, ask for approximate quote, or maybe try to do that over the phone. Almost certainly it will come out comparable to priority or regular mail. Kirill R.