Rivkin

Suitable for iai - just swing it, not worth looking at; or simply too modern For a Martial Artist - not worth a proper polish; or simply too modern Known for their sharpness - these are old but, not art swords Kirill R.

Prewar, my personal take is that the "paper scare" does not really apply to signed blades as much. With a very few known exceptions, signed papered by NTHK NPO will repaper with NBTHK if submitted, and the seller can even be asked to guarantee it, again if it is required for whatever reason (15k I guess suggests a Juyo candidate, so maybe that's the game being considered). As it is, probably the blade is simply located outside of Japan and well, NTHK is more accessible there. The paper scare comes in when you have a school (widely defined) and there are two masters, A and B and there is a big price differential between them, and one group papers it to A, another to B, and well whom do you trust.... and the honest answer can be that A and B probably left too few signed blades so it is hard to be certain where one begins and another ends. It gets kind of ugly though when 10 years difference in dating can shift the price by 10x. P.S. And buying unpapered blades is also ok as long as you know both the sword and the school quite well. P.P.S. Only a very brave person will guarantee that the blade will repaper for certain after the polish is redone. Especially if it is done outside of Japan, or by aggressively self-advertised Japanese expert. This one is just asking for trouble. Kirill R.

I get little excitement from either Naotane or Naokatsu to be honest, if not for the horimono I would not even pick one over the other. A very bright work that stands out from far away but dims down when looked closely at. Here is Naokatsu, modern papers. Hada - poor. Dense itame with almost no nie. Ha - bright large patches of nie which are supposed to emulate things which are done with very fine (and bright) ko nie in classical Soshu. Everything looks forced as if someone drew Soshu oshigata in clay and then heat treated it. And having done with essentially modern steel the near-perfect heat conduction just can't do fine details. Kirill R.

I don't particularly like or know shinshinto, but there couple of points I see there - Honjo Yoshitane was a great carver, and for me a reason to own Naotane blade would largely be in one of those huge horimono sculptures. Also some of Naotane works have a clear, well defined hada, which feels less of a case with Naokatsu. But 2nd generation Naokatsu can be exceptionally similar to the 1st, but I remember is rated less by one rank. Kind of like Sai Jo Saku Tadayoshi, Jo-jo-saku Masahiro, Jo-saku Masahiro II - a typical progression rating of reduction in rank by Fujishiro, despite that they sort of all signed for each other[?]. And here is 2nd generation Masahiro. Very fine nie that sparkles like crazy if photographed at a large angle, excellent hada in ji nie, deep black utsuri. A blade of tough fate, as I guess because the way Fujishiro ranked the smith, first it lost solid gold mounts, then it lost solid gold habaki (and for some reason also green papers) which was replaced by a wooden copy and finally sold like this. Brrr-brrr! P.S. like Oei Bizen and Ishido. Kirill R.

Neither is particular bad or distinguished, so I guess its up to wheather you truly like something. The mounts do look a tad like possibly recent assembly "on a budget" just so that the sword is sold as a whole rather than bare blade. Its sort of allows it to dig deeper into martial arts market - and if you just want the blade is something that can be avoided. For 5k usd you can start seeing good things in shirasaya, but if you know what you are looking for and lucky - takes time I guess. With a US seller you usually get at least three days of inspection period to return if you buy online. In Japan I would look at Aoi Art, since it is a good shop that does deal in this price level-has koshirae kind of things. Kirill R.

Valric, my very personal take on this - complicated theories designed to explain a simple fact that for whatever reason Fujishiro rates highly Sengaku period works. He is not charitable to Oei Bizen, where the best smiths as far as I remember still do with Jo-Saku rating, but then he gives Sai-Jo-Saku to Sengaku personas who can not be compared to either Sukehiro and Hizen Tadayoshi on one end and frankly the best of Bizen early ...mitsu on the other. Maybe customers in his shop wanted swords of "real samurai", covered with smell of blood and intestines. And were ready to forgive quality/artistic issues, because its practical. Just as they paid big money for Munechika because he is thought of as the oldest, not because he is artistic. Maybe for some bizarre reason he evaluated Morimitsu against Chogi, but Sukesadas strictly against their contemporaries like Fuyuhiro, this being context explanation. But that's just what he did - some Sengaku ratings are unusually high. Might be just because he generally valued founders like Umetada Myoju almost automatically to Sai-jo-saku rating. I on the other hand could never figure out Mishina's fascination with Kanemoto, but I guess its Kabuki-martial arts heritage. Kirill R.

Alex, I thought about your question a little more, and I would say that while there are quite a few rating systems available and they are obviously all made by experienced people and since they are being used, one can assume they are "ok in general". With a reasonable assumption that some of the names are elevated based on being on demand rather than being that good, or that some of the more rare shinto-shinshinto smiths could have been "default rated". And it does not tell you the spread of quality for a given smith. But also, it goes back to how traditional Edo period art history functions. It is extremely genealogical. The appraisal unit is not school but individual, with little regard how certain the related attribution can be. And the lineage's founder is supposed to be great, the following generations sort of carry the spirit but are not as strongly emphasized. So all school founders - Sukesada, Umetada, "Masamune", Munechika receive substantial boost to their ratings, but if you a student of a well known smith you need to be more than just very good to be rated higher, plus in koto you might get robbed from your best works by them being reattributed to the father, and in shinto you might have been signing by him for couple of decades. I do feel that especially within Soshu a lot of great works were sort of downgraded because Soshu Yukimitsu, Akihiro, and many others get this "later generation" look, too close to the "founder". Same goes for Bizen, with O-Kanemitsu for example. And with Sukekane, he "descends" from Jo-Saku Sukenaga and while it can be argued that quality-wise they are similar, the later generation effect might have plaid a role in a downgrade here. Kirill R.

A lot of post-koto work struggles with hada I guess. For the ratings, my take is that they appear in heavily dealer-dominated communities. Makes it easier to sell - its rated such and such, so it costs this and that. It is one of many things where I am glad I did not start with nihonto - I am still free to enjoy my personal tastes. They are not as much smith-based but more along the lines what does the very best of the school represents. I find this approach to be more useful personally, if just since for much of good work reproducibility of papering is low/diversity of opinions is high - Soshu blade dating from around 1340-1350 in my experience can just keep papering to a new name each time. And the spread of quality-condition for the names like Hasebe is just humongous. I personally place the early Soshu (not strictly Kamakura, but generally pre-1380-90) as the first class swords above all others, save maybe Shintogo Kunimitsu who is on the level of his own in Yamashiro. A step below, in Yamashiro (very widely defined) you see some really interesting works from time to time, like ko-Aoe. At about the same level I would put Bizen's Zo and his relations. And for me that's basically it when it comes to what nihonto is all about. Nothing original about such placements, its almost a cliché. The rest is quite frankly so much mix and match, it just hard to put some rating and say - Osaka is better than Kyoto. You can have uninspiring early Sukehiro (one of objectively the best Shinto smiths...) and next to it a distinguished blade by some little known 2nd generation Jo-Saku… And then you have schools like Hizen doing quite convincing hada works, but you get really impressive hamon with the best of Sukehiro. How many points each is worth? In Sengaku for my taste Nosada is the most interesting one, but I do not get the argument that Tsunahiro has to be below Muramasa or even Sukesadas. The thing is that Tsunahiros produced and signed a lot and both Hikobei and Yosozaemon Sukesada signed so few they probably just used generic signatures on everything save custom made pieces. But Tsunahiro's Juyo will look quite respectably by comparison. And again with rankings there is this funny thing that Tsunahiro tanto+ almost never (or never?) gets ranked as Juyo without horimono. And then you place it next to Kanemoto, and I really have no idea why Kanemoto is considered to be on the level of Kunisada and above Tsunahiro. But he had very good marketing and still enjoys quite a following in the martial arts community. Art market I guess is never 100% only about the work itself. Some names get good recognition through mass media others don't. Just personal rumblings. Kirill R.

Alex, I think a more potent issue is that it's impossible (and arguably unprofitable) for a smith to maintain the same quality for lifetime, and some do have noticeably greater excursions. Hasebe, Hankei? Ratings themselves are sort of East Asian thing. No one cares if Colosseum has a Unesco status, in all countries I live I have no idea which restaurants are Michelin (I suppose not the ones I am eating at). But in Japan you are bombarded with recommendations that are rating based. You have to see this temple because its Unesco World Heritage, you have to stop eating supermarket sushi since there is some super-exclusive SA-AA+ rated a year in advance reservation place you can have access to, etc. Its a long tradition, and one can say much of Japanese Art and Poetry was purposefully arranged so that the topic and means are narrowly defined and thus all participants can be more or less objectively rated. Another thing is that historically in Europe a merchant deciding to rate Durer Jo-Jo-Saku and Van Dyke Jo-Saku would be in no uncertain way told to mind the station of his class. In Japan if you read even Edo period documents, there is completely different level of respect towards antique dealers and their opinions/ratings. With Fujishiro, there is much that reflects desirability or collectibility rather than pure quality. Muramasa is the most widely recognized nihonto name, but putting him at the same level as The Sadamune, whatever the context is, it just means the quality is not the only factor by far here. There are also plenty of cases when a rare Edo period smith is given default rating like Chu-Jo-Saku or even Jo-Saku, and then you see his work, and its certainly Daimyo-custom-made kind of things (like a copy of famous Masamune) and is very good. He might have actually signed by Jo-Jo-saku's name from the same family almost all his life and thus had no reputation of his own which Fujishiro could have relied upon. Still the ratings "sort of" make sense in many cases. With Yokoyama Bizen it looks very bright and big, but I guess the rating had in mind that its not very involved. Hada is undistinguished, the ha lacks any substructure. Its a kind of blade that would be rated very highly when it sits across the room and you see it for a minute, but myself after having it for a month its just does not offer you anything new. The expression remains very basic. Kirill R.

Shish, wrong topic - this concerns koshirae Juyo. Very personal opinion - these gaps are not well defined and are very context dependent. Juyo shinto is likely to be the first class blade. The cutoff level is very high. Juyo koto can be more of a mixed bag especially in later 70s. Very personally - don't like quite a few Takagi Sadamune, Yamashiro in wider definition (Mihara etc.) that were papered back then. Tokuju is the level where you get consistently great blades with no admixture. Juyo koshirae is a very high level. Matching high class work created as a whole by mainline Goto. Not common at all. Very small percentage of koshirae is papered. But regular papers are more or less easily attained. Kirill R.

The seller seems to offer 3 hozons and 1 th, which is just somewhat uncommon. In Japan about 20% of blades sold have green papers - one can just monitor auctions for a year and do statistics. No, stores that specialize on Juyo do not sell those, neither do they sell NTHK etc. In practical life I personally encountered substituted papers just three times. One was supposedly mainline Goto menuki with photos of very similar piece, but microscopic differences which where not visible online. I don't think its really a common problem, but it certainly does exist. Kirill R.

...having the quality worthy of preservation as a complete koshirae, signatures if present should be genuine, no modern elements? I always felt it was a very liberal standard, but on the bad side - the appraisal, except for those cases when all fittings are clearly done by the same hand, its almost always a level below in detail compared to when you submit a kozuka or fk by itself. They can simply avoid commenting on kozuka. whether its say kyo kinko or waki goto, and write instead - kozuka of shakudo with the image of .... I often see documents which simply state what the set consists of, rather than actually trying to provide an attribution of each piece or give a hint when this koshirae became a set. So you hope they would state yes, we confirm kozuka, fk and kogai forming a set by the same hand with only fk being signed - and instead you just have renumeration that fk is signed, and kozuka and kogai are made from shakudo. Kirill R.

Very personal opinion - the fear was always regarding specifically mumei o-suriage blades with non-distinct squarish nakago being married to a very poor condition blade, with sort of similar nakago, which could have been slightly reshaped - and with papers to say Yamato Shizu or some early Yamashiro it is then suddenly worth much more. Not something that can be done easily or in large quantities. Faking papers "from zero" is even more difficult, with their watermarks, special paper, distinctive calligraphy, hidden database but against which the paper's content can be verififed by phone call and origami number... There used to be examples of fake Juyo papers posted, but I guess you don't really see them very often. And again, how would you inject those into circulation - any ebay dealer with those would be outed in couple of weeks. It would have been much easier technically to fake Tanobe-sensei's sayagaki - and you don't really see such examples either. Very personal opinion what is much easier to fake are some Jubi papers, its a one-off operation, and not all Jubi were well catalogued. What you do see quite often at auctions is an item selling once, and then in couple of years it is on sale - with additional old origami from Edo period appraisers mentioning some big daimyo names. Kirill R.

Surprising this lot is so far very reasonably priced. One would expect papers with unsigned and not particular distinguishable nakago to be in higher demand. Diversity is our strength, so almost every possible issuer for every possible personal preference. https://page.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/auction/d340899177

Amazing, thank you very much!!! Kirill R.

Not pretending to be an expert, but suguha yakidashi, straight hamon in boshi suggest shinto, Bizen like hamon could point towards something related to Ishido, but given the time period it is not that exclusive… Hamon does not have a lot of activity, which is ok for shinto, but its very uniform and glossy appearance might have been exaggerated by the "polish", which seems to include a tad more acid than needed, while the ji was not really worked at all. Good news - it seems to be a real old sword, with possibly attributable school. Bad news - it feels someone prepared it as a "package" recently, with poorly done tsuka, "polish" and there are some quality issues with the blade. P.S. "sashikomi" is a very American term, which in my experience is basically misleading. Kirill R.

Thank you very much! Kirill R.

Thank you very much! Yes, I think that without this sepia tint (which was just trying to make it more lively) and going all the way to balanced b&w in the very least it becomes more print-friendly. I've got a few messages regarding the photography. If there is enough interest I can come to Tampa show next month and bring the setup. Its free, the only thing please tell me which blades you are planning to bring - so that I know there is indeed interest on both sides and which lights to use. There was also a question on tight hada, and while I really appreciate working with things like ko Aoe,it is difficult and will take more time. Not directly related, but still itame and the one I personally like (well the blade was really helpful being great throughout): http://historyswords.com/exsi.jpg Kirill R.

Another one: http://www.historyswords.com/3s.jpg

I've been trying for a while now to develop a technique(s) to produce detailed images of nihonto and particularly grateful for the recent opportunity to work with a few tanto during the lecture and show held by Chris and Joe. Some really interesting works there! Yes, I will need to take out the background, but all other feedback on photos is appreciated. I really enjoyed seeing Uwe's images on my part. But my megalomaniac nature is such that I am also still looking for any possibility to take pictures (which others can use) of first class blades. Especially interested in Sukehiro, Kiyomaro, ko Bizen, Ichimonji. Working with Masamune or Sadamune always helps. Locations in Japan are most convenient, but despite some disadvantages of me leading a simple lecturer's life, especially the US, but also Europe are often visited. Kirill R. P.s. I've uploaded the images but I think they show much better in greater resolution. http://www.historyswords.com/1s.jpg http://www.historyswords.com/4s.jpg

Very interesting ! Puts my database-gathering script to shame. I was guessing from sales about third of swords offered have post-green NBTHK papers (greater portion on higher level, but the overall average number will be dominated by lower pieces). So the total number of swords can be around 0.6 million. Did you monitor against the same sword double counting on Juyo level? I think with 671 swords, it might be that I substantially undercounted the percentage of Juyo being up for sale. My estimate was about 50k (no double counting) nihonto sold in 10 years, which is roughly 8% of the total estimated from papers. If we are to assume about 800-900 Juyo sold, that's very close to also 8% of the total. Which might contradict my assumption that Juyo pieces would be held for a much more significant time period compared to lower grade swords. But then if we are to look at double counting, same sword being resold, it might actually be that we will see this far less on Juyo level. On the hunt - I feel many will answer yes. Yes on some of the favorite pieces not having great papers. Kirill R.

With DaVinci the paper trail going directly back to the artist's time is expected. For those lacking such there will be 20 pages of tests, discussions, comparisons of painting styles and paints used. And you will still always get disagreements in the end. For a Japanese sword there will be three lines describing its geometry+ and one line saying that Sensei saw it, and found indeed genuine and precious. Just an observation. Kirill R.

Coming back closer to the subject of the original posting with a very personal and erroneous take, I feel that a tremendous spread in European art is largely caused by institutional-government holders, which moved out of market the very best segment and even average-best segments. One Leonardo's oil, and very problematic at that, against 100 or so that are not for sale - essentially what is being offered is about or even below 1% of what exists. And even with this there are plenty of economics publications suggesting that the spread was helped in 1970s by influx of Japanese collectors, and in 2000s by the Gulf and Russians. Similar situation to some extent is seen in early Islamic blades historically nearly all taken to Constantinopol and still stored there, those Mamluk blades being sold for 300-500k a piece are a tiny portion that managed to fall through the cracks. If you manage to plunder Turkish government properties, Islamic market will be turbulent for decades. You look at Japanese paintings, there are some really good examples there, but the spread is actually very small. Small community of those interested, small institutional holdings. Japanese lacquer - aside from very old pieces from Nambokucho and a few 19th century names like Shibata Zenshin, 20k USD will be absolutely gorgeous top class work. With nihonto there are not that many 100k+ segment buyers. Most are in Japan. There is only miniscule influx of international presence in this segment from new economies (and old economies are generally speaking retreating from collecting). There are about twenty Russian collectors with serious European paintings in 200k-2mln range. There are probably only three serious nihonto blade collectors there. There is even greater ratio among the Gulf investors. Almost no interest at this level in India. Some in China, but I don't know Chinese market at all. I actually would not worry about 1000-2000$ segment of the market - there is a lot of it, true, but there is also a strong popular interest to support it. Tokuju I guess is also a kind of level where you are probably not going to see them going for sale many at once, and the very best pieces are still covered by strong Japanese economy. One thing I learned to kind of keep in mind with the very top pieces that in the worst possible scenario people take them to a local museum and still get at least the original purchase price taken off their income tax wise. That can set the very bottom valuation level. What I find somewhat bizarre is how few Juyo blades are being traded per year. And they are not hiding in the museums. Ok, antique market always has long time constants - price increasing or dropping by 20% simply does not alter supply-demand, instead you have generation-length waves and its normal to see just a small portion of high end market being traded at any given time. But I would actually be a little worried that one day people holding Juyo for life will start selling them more actively and you will see that international market is certainly not able to absorb them. There are really a lot of such blades out there. You look at their valuation in the past 20 years, and it definitely does not improve. So I do feel there is some potential for further price decrease there, and also for questions raised "how this came to be a Juyo" and "what exactly are the reasons it was attributed as Masamune?". One thing that helped the top segment of European market is that you have dealers, curators, academians fighting in public and it supposed to deliver catalog raisonne where the top pieces are all publicly vetted over the course of decade long exchanges. You don't have this kind of openness in Japanese scholarship. Kirill R.

.... but are not antiques markets supposed to have highly distorted supply because of prevalence of long term collections? Leonardo's very questionable oil goes for 0.5b only because there are virtually none in private hands. Most reasonably prolific painters have thousands of paintings in their name, a few even above 10 thousand. If not for museum storage we would not see very average impressionist works getting to a million dollar mark. There are simply not enough semi-serious collectors to absorb impressionist market which is actually about 100 thousand pieces altogether - out of which only about 1000-2000 are traded actively. There is an argument that before Napoleon art market was even more anemic as there was almost no offer and little demand. With Japanese blades there is clearly a huge distortion between the average holding time of a regular blade compared to tokuju. But then you don't have museums playing a large role. Almost all western museum blade collections are garbage that beginning collector with reasonable funds can outpace in a year. Japanese museums do control the very top segment to a significant extent but don't have tens of thousands of pieces in storage as do western institutions. So in case of really big upheaval I would still bet on impressionists coming down first. But in Japanese market the price levels of 1920s when kokuho could be had for the same price as decent Juyo today are not impossible. On the other hand, Juyo or even no papers whatsoever, the top level pieces in good condition are very rare. Very many of top paper blades are such because they are just really old, or have rare signatures, or simply no one knows why. There are Sadamune Juyo which are such only because the tanto's shape is Kamakura. If we are to see not 300 but all 8000 of Juyo being actively traded, a reverence for this paper will collapse and we will be back to individual per item based appraisals. On the other hand, there are simply not enough serious western collectors to absorb even the tokuju segment at their current prices. Yet one could argue that martial arts/anime segment will be large enough to still actively trade 1000$ blades. Kirill R.

Bryce, there is a greater problem at hand, which is that nihonto was a coveted collectible already in 1550. And for all the chaos of occupation, maybe around 1% of highest quality blades disappeared or went to the US at that moment, so even this event did not destabilize the market completely. So if you are going after something really good the question should be why it is not papered accordingly and does not have a verifiable daimyo history. Which brings you to the problems excellently covered in "Fake or Fortune" series. You basically either buy something that is papered on Juyo-Tokuju level for the money this type of blades command, or you are very arrogant and targeting blades that were probably at some point highly thought after, but recently someone got scared, or needed money fast, or had unwarranted issues when papering etc. etc.They can be absolutely top class things, but there is almost always something about them which is out of the ordinary and complicates appraisal. If you start in addition targeting unsigned shinto blades, you are running against a limited upside (Horikawa or Hankei at the very-very best and those examples are very much seldom encountered), with a lot of questionable examples floating around. There was really not a lot of valid reasons to produce an unsigned blade at the time, so likely you will be targeting uncommon quality cases involved in "attempted frauds". Plus how well can you judge by photographs etc. etc. etc. I would love to be offered real, but o-suriage, Sukehiro. But I am not sure such things exist in principle. It becomes kind of like Chagall, unsigned and cut-down from a much larger original painting. A highly theoretical possibility of such thing crossing your table. But on the bright side yes, you can buy shortened Naotane or mumei Kiyondo at a substantial discount compared to ubu signed version. You might find unsigned shinshinto a slightly more rewarding field actually. I personally feel there was a lot of crookery involved in Meiji period market. Signatures getting upgraded, prepared to be sold to the west, whole bunch of appraisers acting on behalf of shops, clubs, polishers, publishers, even universities and museums writing their appraisals. Complete chaos, but as a result you get probably a greater percentage of quality blades being unsigned. Kirill R.