Rivkin

Saw maybe once or twice packages at high level where koshirae matched the blade in quality. Otherwise if one wants to collect quality things, koshirae and blades will sort of have to be purchased separately. There are some exceptions, like Shimazu sale was filled with blades with koshirae, but I also saw Daimyo catalogues where all blades were separately in shirasaya, and all mounts separately as is. It feels like there is a notion that can be substantiated to an extent through historical documents that blades and koshirae in Edo periods were considered as separate entities with separate values and were seldom combined as a "package" - either of the two was just a holder for the one with a true value. Kirill R.

The signature is written without any elegance and with an uncertain hand, and also some really weird cutout made in the nakago just above it. I would say not only the signature is bad, but also the nakago is essentially damaged in this appearance. Kirill R.

I have to readily admit to limited experience with Naotane so I can't comment on whether there was a change, and Naokatsu died younger almost at the same time, so there is this factor as well. But on the other hand there was a large group of smiths working in roughly the same general style, even Kojihei somewhere around there and so on. And big name smith are very seldom known to officially retire and stop signing blades, the blades signed with the year of smith's death are not uncommon, so the question of how much the "school" was taking over the orders from the "master" is probably always something that keeps popping up. Kirill R.

I don't know by heart whether its documented, but all chances are at that age and beginning considerably before he was not the one making them. Simply because his signature commanded higher price than Naokatsu's. Kirill R.

There are very many alloys that are blackish and are historically found in Japan. Tin-rich alloys can be very dark, but the color is permanent - this one is common with Kofun since they naturally retain more tin over long periods. Sulfur alloys (related to modern niello) can be blackish. Finally, shakudo is a huge range of alloys of copper with some gold (usually 1%), silver (usually 1%) and if the piece is late - likely arsenic, that was oxidized by boiling in urushi... There is no guarantee even if top quality shakudo is left in the air that it will result in production of 5-10 nm particles of gold or silver on its surface - and that is exactly what is needed to create the shakudo color. Essentially black is due to overlap of scattering on the surface from very small particles (blueish) with copper oxides' natural absorption spectrum (reddish). "Natural" oxidation will strongly depend on the environment. If your surface particles will end up being larger in size, you will be in a completely different scattering regime (Mie) and the result will be different. Kirill R.

I suspect a typical high quality pre Muromachi blade at this point of time would be mumei, and possibly still longer than shinto katanas. Every single signed piece here is on the other hand likely to be shinto. Just a guess. Kirill R.

I would say the answer strongly depends on the blade's level. If it is upper juyo or strong tj candidate I personally lack contacts which could be immediately tapped, but I would also strongly suggest asking advice at sokendo or some other very top dealer in Japan, and seeing if they agree to find someone best suitable for the particular style and condition. I don't have experience with Paul Martin so can't comment here, but very personally - I would not go with an agent with this particular task. If it is below - Bob Benson, Woody Hall. There are also a few polishers I don't have a lot of experience seeing their work first hand. Kirill R.

Actually found it. Two books (actually pamphlets) by Suzuki Hisashi in Japanese, bones of Japanese, and bones of Daimyo respectively. Daimyo are in 150-160cm range, especially Tokugawas and their class. Wealthy peasants on top of the distribution. Much larger spread of distribution for Nambokucho. It is a well known topic in historical publications. Japanese did extensive jobs studying old remains, and high ranks from Edo period are plainly speaking problematic. Also lots of lead from cosmetics. There are even articles in medical journals on sword wound mortality rates or studies of decapitated heads, or analysis of bones from different historical regions of Japan for different nutrition. Kirill R.

There is a documented weird thing about Edo samurai is that their height was at about 160cm against 170cm country average and kept declining with class. Tokugawa were nearly all in 140s (mistake - in 150s). Strict monastery diet in childhood, and narrow rice diet (with common beri-beri) in adhulthood. A wealthy farmer arguably enjoed a much higher quality of living. Compared to Nambokucho bushi with their 180cm and meat-venison rich eating. Kirill R.

By far the hardest path since its always tends to be somewhat speculative. The last thing Daimyo families wanted is to publish the list of what they registered with the police so one can track what they sold - for the same reason you almost never see their names on nbthk papers. What happens however is one buys a known Daimyo sword with the registration number such and such, and then its highly likely that similar numbers will come from the same family. There are some dealers in Japan who say such and such range of numbers are all from such and such collection. The registration is obviously with the police and most torokusho that are called Daimyo ones are from 1956-1957, the earliest registration dates. But there are also those executed in English by police stations or occupation authorities in 1946-1948, which will actually state the family owning the blade. They are however of almost arbitrary form and the English is horrible. Alas, I personally don't know what are they for Mori. Very important blades you are sort of supposed to find in 大名家・著名家刀剣目録 Kirill R.

There is a range of torokusho numbers that some claim is associated with Mori (I have no opinion on that), but also there are chapters in various books that show the lists of Mori swords. And then there are sayagaki which tend to mention Daiymo attribution if such was suggested when it was written down. There were quite a few books published until early Showa with Daimyo collections, such as Marquis Kuroda exhibit or the sale catalogue of Shimazu, or small format series covering quite a few families - but I am not sure Mori had one done. But there were also very many Daimyo sword exhibits after the war, but none I think Mori-specific. Kirill R.

The state was about 70% in polish on one side and about 30% on the other. There was no additional polishing done. The gentleman is very well regarded, very experienced and his spoken opinions are referenced here. He claimed for certain that nakago was wielded on to pass it as genuine old Rai, remains of horimono was rather damage from kozuka blade, and likely there were fatal flaw or flaws in hamon, but he was uncertain on this point. The lighting was poor (just standard overhead lights) so that was one factor, and the other one was I guess an expectation that people don't come out of nowhere with good swords they just bought on the corner. I don't position it as a criticism of anyone in particular. An example of someone making really bad judgement. I saw worse. It was an unpleasant moment for myself at the time and same goes for the tanto's seller, to whom I retold the speech, but in the end was a nice learning. Kirill R.

Thanks! There is plenty of electronics that uses iron parts hanging in air, operating at 100C, so the corrosion is sped up by what, a factor of >>10 - and not a single part is known to fail for corrosion in 20 years of operation. Provided the humidity is very low, air is filtered and sealants used are tested against gassing off something chemically active. Otherwise it will cease to function in a month to half a year. Yes, different iron alloys have very different susceptability to corrosion, but "historical steel" is not the worst. There are elements like silver which are not commercially usable in air under almost any condition oxidation wise, but iron is not among them. On the other hand when it comes to fittings than air quality can still be an issue. A coal firing electrical plant can easily "restore" the damaged shakudo but potentially even change over time the patina color of yamagane etc. There were so many studies trying to determine why almost all shakudo is 1% gold, 1% silver, copper and some arsenic, and one thing they found that more silver rich versions, while still capable of the basic effect (blackness due to overlap of absorption profiles from copper and Raleigh scattering of small metallic particles produced by aggressive oxidation of the surface) were profoundly more difficult to control in terms of oxidation's impact on silver. Kirill R.

To be honest I don't know exactly. With lacquer the serious risk is that when such zero humidity case is opened, humidity goes to normal and the object experiences rapid change and can warp a lot, potentially cracking. Same reason it is sometimes bad idea to wipe it with a wet cloth after taking out of 30% humidity museum case. With blades... no idea. Also a very quick and dirty "museum grade" test of how bad the air in your place is, is to monitor how long it takes for something made out of sterling silver to darken. There are museums in places where it darkens within a month, and they are more paranoid about everything they have - there are sometimes random generators of things like sulfur particles in cities, and those can be dangerous. But again this manifests mostly outside the controlled environment. Kirill R.

Cameron, to keep the dust away some matter of sealing needs to be provided. It does not have to be at the level of what is colloquiavlly referred to as hermetic, but it should be dust free. Dust and microparticles (they tend to be in micron size range order-wise) like aggregates of salt and water, or "pollution" elements and water are your biggest enemies by far. Otherwise as long as you don't leave a fingerprint on a blade or allow for some similar mishandling the chances of rust just popping up are very low. I had blades for 2 years in a "general" museum with no additional preparation done and no maintenance provided, if only because curators wiping the blades would represent a greater danger to them than just leaving them alone - and they were fine. Yet in Kamakura I would think twice about keeping blades unoiled even in hermetically sealed (sort of) shirasaya. Kirill R.

Cameron, you will get competing advice since nihonto is the field where the number of senseis is large, though the number of people actually dealing with swords is much smaller. The bowls with liquids you see in Japanese museums next to swords is not choji oil.... They are typically WATER to "protect" the lacquered koshirae when its exhibited in the same case as the blade. Which is sort of silly, but the tradition is tradition. Somebody told museum folks the lacquer has to be exhbitied with bowls of water, and so it went. 35-40% humidity, most importantly absolutely no dust works fine with not oiled bare blades in a display case, periodic oil/wipe is required but not too often. Unless you have ocean air, which contains micrometer aggregates of solt and water which will corrode anything rather rapidly. But then you probably have much more than 40% humidity, so it needs to be dealt with anyway. Exotic gas, hermetically sealed display - sorry no museum, no exhibit, no probably places like sokendo that do show unoiled bare blades do that. Way too exotic. Now for lacquer you are better off with 80% humidity, but whether this is required is debatable and depends strongly on what are the pieces displayed. There are museums like kodaiji that do almost 100%, and there are places with more valuable works that do 60%, and there are museums displaying them at standard 40%. Kirill R.

Most importantly do not allow any dust inside to settle on swords, I guess especially they have to be not in oil to be truly appreciated. Moisture wise my experience is 35-40% is fine without producing rust with once a year wipe. Ocean air is absolutely horrible but anything else seems to work. Lighting wise depends on period. Gendai can be easily displayed like you show. Kirill R.

I might be in the wrong here, but I am missing the point. Chiaroscuro in plates used for printing, hair in stamps used for coins or medals routinely display similarly or more technically involved scenes if by such one understands the placement of various elements. Kirill R.

I'll post my horror story which sort of relates to another recent topic of unique challenges faced by newbies in nihonto. My interest in nihonto was on and off for a while, mostly because in the beginning I simply had no money, and then I became disillusioned in what I saw being offered compared to other collectible fields (which turned out in part also being the case of not having enough money), and so on, but at some point I picked a few pieces. One of them looked like Rai tanto and I was very happy to bring it to a well respected person, whom quite a few here would call a Sensei. I have to admit he was very kind during this first meeting, spending about 5 minutes talking about the tanto. Which was his lamentation of the abuse of beginners - the tanto had a wielded nakago, and then he pointed out (there was almost polished over remain of ken horimono) that at some point kozuka's blade's must have cut through saya and made such impression, and then there were obviously multiple problems in the hamon, of likely lethal nature, and so on. I was rather worried, but at the same time concerned that this seemed a rather categorical interpretation of whatever little hints (given the state of polish) that were observable, and I already had a decade of low level experience to know how really and certainly bad things do look like. And having to admit being raised in a community with high (absolutely unacceptable) level of prejudice, I was taught (purely baseless and evil generalization) that people of certain backgrounds tend to be more headstrong and proud of their opinions, even when such are guesses, and they really should not be. Long story short, it was submitted to NBTHK, stellar papers. I would consider the possibility of NBTHK being at fault here, but frankly the blade looked right. Big name was expected by a few simple folks who seen it, with no Sensei added to their name. The moral I guess is that even very experienced people do make mistakes. More so when the blade is out of polish, and probably even more so if its not of the very top quality or the work is of a more calm sort where one has to sit down and look and look at it, for hours if needed. And probably even more so when the person holding the blade is introduced as this guy you never met who just picked up some stuff from a newspaper on the floor setup of a local trash dealer. Never mind a newbie who is trying to navigate through the nihonto difficulties. Kirill R.

Well here it is again. Needs some scrolling down to see "utsuri". https://page.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/auction/v638365361 I sort of inclined to believe its Japanese in origin. Forging is not too bad, but "enhanced". Kirill R.

These are constantly for sale at yahoo auctions. Very distinctive. Kirill R.

I had one of those - these are quite well made, but they are post-Edo you can say art or you can say reproductions. Mine was actually better because the clothing was more detailed. 300$ is their going rate as far as I know. Kirill R.

Nakago looks either older than it should or maybe possibly burned... One possible guess is that straight stick with fumbari is Kambun period, and wide hamon also suggests shinto, and boshi does look like suguha. Very hard to be school specific in this condition. Kirill R.

Wakizashi probably around 1650, school is probably closely related to classical Mino. Should be possible to get the smith by looking who did this kind of 3-2 peaks sequence in hamon. But it has many issues so polish is unlikely to reveal a gem. Kirill R.

I thought basically all schools save for Bizen and to much lesser extent Shizu and maybe Uda died out in Oei for economical reasons. Simply nothing being ordered in provinces and Osafune dominating whatever little market remained. Kirill R.