Rivkin

Most of the photographs I take with someone else imply not displaying them in other means rather than publications. But there are obviously photographs which I use for other means as well. I have to admit one of those below is from the blade I tried to purchase on this message board. It did not work out in the end, my fault, but I took a picture when unpacking it. So here are six photos of five blades. All are influenced by Norishige. I think kantei-ing them more or less accurately based on such small segments alone would be extremely difficult. In fact one of the gentlemen here is not in a Meikan, which would ruin any fairness would this be a kantei competition. On top of that in roughly half of the cases the work is somewhat atypical (i.e. better than average). I can add however that one of these was favored by Kanzan Sato. But could be a nice opportunity for the willing to look into the interpretation of this school over the years.

I will be a little argumentative here - your other photographs are very good. Here its very hard to say anything without seeing the boshi at least, a little bit more of ha would also help. The shape is dead ringer kambun I guess. Hakikake is common in Horikawa school, which however tends to come with Keicho or Kanei shape, which its not. One of the reasons I don't like and don't do shinto kantei is that it requires one to memorize tons of small things with little to no structure. We are looking for someone who did hakikake and utsuri, a very rare combination. Can be Edo Ishido. Can be Dewa no Daijo Kunimichi. Very different styles, but without seeing a bit more of those togari-or-choji, hard to say at least for me. Kirill R.

Looks like Etchu. Maybe Tametsugu. Kirill R.

Not bad for gunto mounts. Feels late shinshinto. Bizen style. Very hard to throw an exact name, but if required, can be Toshimitsu. Kirill R.

I feel there is a huge difference between mumei swords attributed to Bungo and those signed by Kambun era smiths. Motoyuki was a very decent Soshu smith, Yakinaga did impressive work in suguha, there was even a good done Bizen a-la Ishido Korekazu. The attributed pieces however tend to be... Kirill R.

The gentleman in question is Bungo Yukinaga. Kirill R.

I also would probably guess Hizen, but it was mentioned only 220 times or so. This school is much more popular. Kirill R.

Well, here is another brain teaser, equally malicious to the last one. Except here the work is a very typical style for the smith, though I particularly like the quality of this example. It is signed. The smith belongs to the school which is for some reason one of the most often referred to by its name on the forum! Actually I did a few searches and it came out as the most often referred to, but by a small margin I did not try very hard - so one of the most. Anyone cares to make a guess?

There are indeed nastier collecting areas than nihonto. And far more dangerous ones. Nihonto is special in a sense that 99% of expert-researchers at worst are translators of papers and basic Japanese books, at best are capable of memorizing kantei features without giving much thought to whether these rules actually have a solid support in terms of signatures/provenance/other data. In no other collecting area a dealer with a website filled with translated pages from here and there would be automatically lauded as an Academic Intellectual. In no other collecting area the most important publication of a year, if not a decade would be something like if you take papers of this color, and the length of a sword is such, and the length of a signature is such, you can then get papers of that color. Kirill R.

Nihonto community at its usual. What puzzles me is how addicted it is to words Academic, Scientific, Research, Study. Otherwise it would be interesting to read seminar's publication, if it exists (probably it does not). Kirill R.

Rumor-wise I heard is that non-public guidance for basically all countries is to make sure the packages are held for at least a month at a warehouse. EMS from Japan is now being slowly loaded on container ships. Kirill R.

To me comes as classic Mino, looks like late Muromachi to early Edo. Sorry, did not notice the yakidashi -more likely early shinto then I guess. Kirill R.

They are definitely similar to 17th century European works, but my guess is there are too many small differences. They are flatter, uniformly patinated to black (as Namban Japanese works tend to), with deep cuts which go through the entire object, rather than at least big portion of the lines formed by more shallow engraving. If those were European, one would indeed expect to see more "unquestionably European" guards, but 99% of the type are all "sort of", and are too similar to one another rather than to any random selection of period European works. Were there loads of such items in Indochina or China or anywhere else on the Continent, the continental theory would have been an interesting alternative. Kirill R.

The international air mail is stopped officially to most countries, and for the remaining it defacto stopped functioning sharp about 10 days ago. Everything before went through smoothly, everything after gets stuck. I suspect because this is a severe cut down from a much longer sword, what was there could have been a kinzogan mei or alike to, say, Masamune. So it was removed during the polish even without submitting it, as nonsense to begin with. I like uda for it because of utsuri, nagare close to ha and nie forming long, narrow stripes. P.S. I thought Showa 31 is 1956. Kirill R.

Looks nice for the price. Late Muromachi. Maybe Uda? Hamon looks tired and not very distinctive, which might be the photos. However good luck getting anything in the mail from Japan today. It is non-functional. Kirill R.

I feel these terms are more commonly used in the US compared to Japan, in part as they tend to mean somewhat different things to different people, but here is a personal opinion: Soshu very seldom works out in sashikomi. Bizen with long choji and prominent utsuri can be easily denigraded by careless application of hadori. And very often - it is. Even in the hands of people who are part of the top 10, or even top 5 polishers in the world. Kirill R.

Interesting hosho interpretation: http://nihonto.us/TAKAHASHI%20HIDETSUGU%20JL.htm Feels like it goes back to some Naotane's school works and then Sendai at earlier times. Kirill R.

Suishinshi Masahide I guess... But that's his personal statement. Might be applicable to Sukehiro's style, might be not. Kirill R.

I don't think this particular claimant means that, but there have been studies which demonstrate much tighter material property distributions and much smaller grain size for shinto. Shinto is not as good looking, but good looks in nihonto do stem from inability to transport heat fast, so that extremely non-uniform formation of martensite can happen. Kirill R.

Thank you very much, gentlemen, much obliged. To be honest, I still need a bit of luck to produce good images and there are couple more people who use a similar/related technique. This being said, the recent travel troubles for me mean collapse of all agreements to shoot kokuho in Japan, and knowing the Pain that went into making those, I am worried the chances to have it rescheduled some time in the future are problematic... Kirill R.

Well, hopefully that's a more rewarding market, and they probably do read more compared to nihonto experts... But the problem with ALL these books is that they ALL use photographs from DNP. You can have publication rights to each for 100$. Any kokuho. But... The photographs were taken by museum photographers who could not care less for the fact they photograph swords. Administred by curators who in Japanese museums are certainly not sword people (even in sword museums!), but graduates of general-venue curatorial or art history studies. The quality is abysmal. Only the most brilliant Soshu gets through the foam of poor technique employed. DNP is what resulted in tons of books publishes, since its actually very cheap to publish a nihonto book with the very top grades. And it destroyed quality sword photography in Japan, at least in "official venues". Kirill R.

True said! Oracle bone script imho. Thank you for a nice show. Kirill R.

I don't know what the article is about, but I very much doubt its a traditional Ainu weapon. Feels like late Edo, or more likely Meiji to Showa gimmick signature, maybe by a part Ainu Japanese swordsmith. Plenty of hirazukuri waki found in Hokkaido and further north and west, none are signed. Kirill R.

I don't mind basic questions. The bane of internet societies is the lack of deep questions. Or having 15 answers which can be replaced with a simple "Dude!". Kirill R.

I spoke with couple of people mass submitting to NTHK NPO as well as had a phone call with someone who is a part of the organization. Obviously there are people far better informed at this point, and the statement below is NOT TO BE TAKEN as official information, as its not in their materials that we all see, so it is just a rumor, but: As part of regular shinsa (don't know if it includes the US shinsa, but it might), NTHK NPO no longer assigns scores above 78 to blades. Also, the score of 78 is capped to no more than 5% of submissions. Kirill R.