Rivkin

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.

Thank you, that's a "new one". In my opinion, I am afraid this is called "a specific postal employee following instructions". Something I very personally never encountered until last year. For a while I had difficulty sending anything large as books etc. because someone local kept rejecting them with a note that x-ray view was "obstructed". Fedex to Europe is expensive as hell, but they tend to be more predictable. Otherwise I would try to have a talk with a postmaster, maybe after asking someone in the UK for a one page summary of the laws and their applicability. Kirill R.

Was it returned by UK customs or by airlines? If by airlines, unfortunately this is completely random in a sense that there are some international airlines that just don't carry any "weapons". Its not UK specific. One can mail a blade to a gun friendly country and still have it rejected because in between it was attempted to be loaded onto a plane which refuses weapons. Fedex has its own planes, so it tends to work in such cases. If by customs, this is something new, as before in my practice the UK customs were just contacting the recepient and informed them in serious voice that they need to talk. Kirill R.

In Japan they do a lot of "cheap polish" where you get full daito serviced for 100,000-250,000 yen, and the quality is in general acceptable, but internationally including Japan the price is more in 400,000-600,000 range. This generally precludes polishing anything save signed ubu to first tier smiths etc. Kirill R.

Nakago has more shinshinto (if not more recent) look - deep, widely spaced yasurime, light patina which is very patchy at the top. However, if the drawing you made is correct, clustered choji with points looking towards each other is basically Muromachi Bizen trait. It was not really popular in shinshinto, you usually see there larger choji, and if clustered, then actually more spreading out rather than pointing towards each other. I would check boshi, if its pourely straight then early Edo until about Joji it is. If its certainly not suguha, then conversely you can practically speaking cross over the early Edo as a possibility. Judging by shape it theoretically can anything between the late Muromachi and shinshinto, though some periods are more likely than others. Kirill R.

I have a split reaction on this one. On the one hand throughout the Taisho and early Showa all major Daimyo collections published more or less complete representation of what they had, and such tachi as in the video above are there in the sales catalogue of Satsuma, they are in Owari Tokugawa collection, they are in Marquis Kuroda exhibition etc. etc. All are curved, unlike the original type, because they don't house special parade blades but more like national treasures from Heian and Kamakura periods. With mounts of gold or in the very least quality gilding. Covered with personal family mons, high class nanako, top class makie. These are probably the most gold-burning items you find in these collections. I don't see anything suggesting these mounts were somehow adopted to some specific standard corresponding to a specific kuge rank. Promotion within court ranks was a norm, were there a need to receive a new set of mounts to mark it, we would first find all the mounts for different ranks in such collections, and more likely gilded than pure gold. But that's not we find there - we see just very few top class mounts with artificially "ancient appearance" and that's it. Parade blades of weird shape is also just not something we see in the Edo period, and nakago here is quite telling. In marriage gift requests there were records for what is being assumed somewhat expensive mounts with the blades whose price suggests its a tsunagi of sorts. I sort of assumed those were just good mounts for circumstances when the blade is of no consequence, but... Kirill R.

A pride of any true collector to popoo someone else's find as an obvious fake. I am sure there is a consideration that such items were used in Edo period, but I am not sure how realistic it is. I think its a great buy for what essentially is showato money, and these things can be quite well made and they are not modern at all. Its also possible to relatively precisely date makie if there is a good photograph. Early Edo will have a tiny bit duller black, some argue it even has a tint of color to it, round makie gold particles, Genroku+ makie will have elongated particles of very bright gold color, Taisho+ tend to be more yellowish by comparison. Etc. Etc. But regarding the Imperial Household koshirae, I have very limited experience. But it tells me a few things - they did use real gold when it was called for on the highest caliber items, they did high quality guilding, were not that much into pure brass as gold replacement. They did not go for exact copies of older styles, the work also often reflects some of the techniques and craftsmanship you see on period's buddhist wares from Kyoto area. I had some discussion whether these could he household koshirae papered to a specific smith, and the general agreement was - its not well researched, there are some clearly Goto pieces, but much of tachi koshirae was probably made by someone local who could have been even outside the "commercial" market, so exact name is not something readily offered. I will throw another curved ball - today you can use any mon you like, but during Taisho 7-5 kiri mon and the kikumon were still more exclusive to the household. That's what you do often see on the household or kuge items. Actually if you have Satsuma sale cathalogue, the first page of sword section has a great image of "real ritual kazari-tachi". Its not an exact copy of old style, you clearly see its adopted many Edo period's elements, and well, its gold. Kirill R.

I can be greatly mistaken, but I think such imitations of Nara to Heian period styles came in vogue during Meiji and even more so in Taisho and early Showa. Quality varies a lot but quite a few are exact copies of early examples. I would check kokuho and bunkazai volumes to see whether this one is an identical copy of one of those. Kirill R.

With signature the window is enough in 80% of cases. You get sugata, signature and example of what the work is. Without signature, I still regularly see blades pretty close to zero polish (just visible contours of hamon) being papered. The papers will be to the average matching school from the period which matches sugata and hamon. You can get something like Yamato Tegai or Uda out of it. Not say sue-Sa. Kirill R.

Thank you! Always love to photograph good pieces, and Ichimonji are the most difficult ones to work with. My photoalbum is pushed back couple of years I am afraid, but my photography technique improves in the meantime. Maybe not my place since its not my money, but I think the condition will not terribly affect the papering chance of the blade. The work is visible, shape is distinctive, if they accept the signature that's it. Kirill R.

These are intriguing mismatches. Not pretending to be an expert, but as personal point: Ko-Mihara vs. Sue-Bizen I would check kissaki size and kasane vs. mihaba, as well as whether ha has distinctive masame (strong point for mihara) or more itame based with ashi (Sue-Bizen). Motomitsu vs. Hokke - same point, is there masame in shinogi ji and ha? Yes tilts towards Hokke. Everything school from Kamakura period can be very close to one another. If the measurements are well within expected for mid-kamakura, then ko-Bizen vs. Aoe vs. Ayanokoji vs. even Rai can be a single feature-based distinction. For the polish, unless its a very high level attribution if kantei features are visible, especially if signed, good to do. Kirill R.

There is NTHK NPO next Sunday (Sept. 13th) in Tokyo, which is a one day affair, compared to multi-month NBTHK process. They will also put the sword's period on the paper. My take - the blade shows rough large feature hada, which is consistent with late Muromachi. Hamon has crab claw-like "choji", which is also more of a Muromachi feature. The shape can't be close to Kambun, likely Tembun to Keicho, and more likely later than early within this range. Stoud blade with uniform curvature and almost uniform width. The nakago finish is more along the lines of the early shinto. Tensho to Keicho is the best fit. This being said, I don't really deal with signatures so it might not fly. However, multi-generational ones from the period are typically given significant allowance for variations if they match the period. Kirill R.

Without comparing the mei, it looks like something from Tensho, probably no later than Keicho period. Even if the mei is not exact to the books I personally would feel a strong possibility of it being real. The signature matches the work, the period. Kirill R.