Rivkin

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.

The one in the book is original, authentic Hasebe for which sayagaki was originally ordered. I feel it is kind of rare situation I guess where the piece is actually copied rather than something is being created "in a general style of". I actually wanted to buy the copy as well, but it did not work out. Kirill R.

Since we seem to combe back to subject of forgeries, horrors and problematic sayagaki, here is one. Original Kunzan's sayagaki with a substituted, probably Edo copy, of Hasebe blade in hitatsura. Actually the copy is very good, except the hada is a dead giveaway, being featureless tight itame. Kirill R.

I think number one problem with trying to buy an old blade instead would be that hitatsura, even more so than other advanced Soshu techniques, prefers o-tanto, wakizashi format. About 10x times more risk that blade simply blows up compared to almost any other heat treatment pattern. A huge difficulty when making a truly long blade. In ko-waki at 1.2 there is a myriad of choices, beginning with Oei Hasebe (one can even get Nambokucho Hasebe, but the condition will be an issue) or late Nambokucho Hiromitsu line (forgot the name, Motomitsu or something). At 2 we might enter lesser Hiromitsu or Akihiro blades. On younger end, at 400-700k there will be Tsunahiros, Shimadas et al. But any quality hitatsura in daito scale is probably going to be so rare one sees them once a year. Kirill R.

Sorry, I would restate: Its a very bright blade that will impress beginner a lot. Very few smiths today work with hitatsura and there are some interesting details here. The choice of forging and tempering techniques is however quite basic and created a product that lacks depth, subtlety and long term appreciation. Kirill R.

Two big negatives: a. Dense itame without much expression - a bane of all modern production. b. Hitatsura does not have internal activity and is done sort of nioi with ko-nie boundary. The boundary is very sharp (i.e. matching the dense itame) without much activity either. Kirill R.

I feel it depends on definition of authentic. Most Ieyasu-period appraisals to this name were not and will not be publically re-evaluated. Around third of Masamunes from Ieyasu collection are not polished, very many from similar period collections are burned. There are many Masamune that look substantially different in period or craftsmanship from what one expects with circa 1330 Soshu. This includes probably the second most important Masamune - Fudo Masamune. Are many of those Edo period pieces - no. Kirill R.

Its hard to judge by these photographs. Its even hard to exactly determine which of Hizen styles is used. But the better of Hizen blades in Soshu style are first class. They are not uncommon with o-kissaki and cut down to the point of passing for Nambokucho ones. https://page.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/auction/q283519169 I've seen some of them with Honami papers to either Sadamune or Masamune. Personal feeling - modern attributions are reasonably solid, plus minus generation in Hizen. Same for Rai style, its relatively distinctive. Nosada can pass for genuine Rai, Hizen generally does not, too bright, too "glassy", distinctive hada. All of the opinions presented are personal and erroneous. Kirill R.

Heavily depends on date/polishing. Gendai and shinshinto tend to be reliant on larger nie crystals in which case modern LED works well and halogen might get better results than incandescent. With older swords LED is still an option, but requires a lot of fine tuning. By default incandescent is the best. They still sell them in photo-stores or for photo needs online. Moonlight can also work well if one wants something "natural". Also gendai-shinshinto can be viewed well with the blade between the light source and the observer. Older swords tend to be viewed at large angle from the nakago, while pointing kissaki towards and slightly below the light source. Kirill R.

Involved question! I think for pre-Tembun blades there could be just a note made that the signature requires further study in Juyo zufu without the blade being rejected - meaing the writing is old, but can be not contemporary to the blade. If they feel that the signature is actually from Edo period, they will reject it even if correct. Daimei can be applied for Edo period works, but I thought only to the cases where such collaboration is well established (for example, between 1st and 2nd generation). Possibly Kiyomaro-Kiyondo can be one of them, but I don't have any experience... What I do know is that tosogu where signature is 100% of the actual maker's name, but is quite unusual - it is typically rejected. I had encountered quite a few pieces with signatures or writings that were added later, and the shinsa does not want to create any future misreadings vis-a-vis what it considers the authentic signature, and rejects in case of doubt. P.S. However I had shumei and kimpenmei blades papering with a note that the attribution is not correct, but also heard many more stories about similar cases being rejected. Kirill R.