Rivkin

Its a late Muromachi tanto. This signature is sometimes faked, but the execution here does not look terribly wrong. Its also a relatively common signature (less so on tanto), and the blade from what little is shown does seem to be "sort of" consistent with Bizen work from say Tembun. Its a well known, but not particularly great name by itself without a more specific attribution. So I personally would not doubt the papers too much. Its possible this would not paper today, but again there is nothing too obvious about that I guess. However the work does not show anything outstanding. The koshirae is nice except kozuka is a throwaway and there is active rust. I would be looking at 1.2-4k for the package, mostly depending on how it looks in hand, are there kizu etc. For burnt papers - well, Japan still has one of the highest number of fires in the world. Courtesy of heating one room in a house with moveable heaters of often dubious safety. Kirill R.

Quite a useful index! If Jussi willing I am sure quite a few people would pitch in with donation to express their gratitude for the work, Kirill R.

I think this is a good tsuba in Hikone style. The composition and very thin carving in places are not of Soten school per se, but related. Its quite possible such can be correlated with a specific artist if one looks through a decent amount of books... Regarding what is and what is not Soten, its something unlikely to ever be resolved. There is thinking that only shakudo tsuba in "Mino-Goto" style can be attributed to the "real" Soten, since they are quite uncommon and relatively old. Everything with warring figures/sages/processions signed Hikone Ju... was made in significant quantities, and its impossible to understand which were by "the first generation". It was a popular product, also if memory serves right, adopted as official style by Ii Daimyo and thus carried on all clan's swords. Shakudo ones are 20 times more rare compared to iron ones and tend to be premium grade. Kirill R.

Bad polish, and on top of that its one of a more popular styles which complicates things. No sugu boshi, so shinto is unlikely. Shinshinto would be someone extremely conservative like Aizu Kanesada and also I think unlikely. Most likely its about tembun in Muromachi. Unfortunately almost everyone was trying their hand at something like this at the time. The peaks lack any periodicity, no two are alike, they seem to have well defined nioi guchi, which is not that typical for Mino, but more Bizen-like. Yet the peaks are a bit too togari-like, in places are very wide, and nie heavy, pointing towards Mino. So unfortunately with these images I would go something like Mino, Kaga, Bizen. Kirill

Thank you very much, I did not know about this one... Kirill R.

I've seen many old swords that were carried during the WWI and went to museum collections immediately afterwords... Quite a few have condition issues diminishing the value to collectors, sometimes to the point that were such offered for sale without their provenance they would have been rejected loud and clear by every member of the discerning public. Swapped and replaced parts, mismatched serial numbers, brutal and erroneous repair, ersatz modifications to make them look like a newly adopted pattern, or simply choices made by the original owner because that's what he liked. Things seen by collectors as either shady manipulations by unscrupulous dealers or something "that had no valid reason to exist in the first place". Yet this is the actual military life. With Japanese antiques I personally tend to be a bit concerned about the strength of provenance, since its a country where professionals prefer to resolve the disputes by appealing to sensei's judgement rather than to the original period documents, and what is accepted today as such and such might face scrutiny a generation later and suddenly you have nothing to show for it except that based on someone's words it was at one time accepted in this catalogue... But for this object it does not seem to be a strong objection. Would love to own this object at a lesser price, but personally don't see the sum demanded as unreasonable. And I personally really appreciate Tsuruta san offering such items in the open. It is not common. Kirill R.

A good general text, but if I remember correctly its a little old. Everything prepared before 1970s, i.e. before the full texts of all known Heian to Kamakura+ documents were released as book series, will differ substantially on pre-Sengaku issues. Kirill R.

The one I strongly support as the starting point is "Routledge handbook on premodern Japanese history". Its a historiography based review which goes through almost all substantial English publications till the early 2000s and gives a very decent summary of each. In Japanese there are substantially more niche publications, like those dealing with specifically market for raw materials or military training manuals which have no English counterparts. Unfortunately, more often than not non-Japanese Ph.D. thesis on such subjects are amateurish, a product of ninja to be getting into the grad program at Central University of Northern Burgundy and then blessing us with a combo of wikipedia and "well, it makes sense if this was done that way". But for both basics and general studies, English is an excellent choice Kirill R.

I don't know what to say... This needs papers. To me the signature looks gimei. Very good fuchi-kashira. Tsuba is likely Nagoyamono but very good for the type.

These were common before torokusho system became the standard (1951-1953). Some were issued by police stations in very poor English as early as 1945-1946, some by non-government societies or prefectural authorities. From the beginning of the occupation you could still own a sword if it was certified as art or of important historical value, so these papers were produced in considerable numbers, but most were discarded when the system became formalized. Regarding the signature - while yasurime has some shinshinto tendencies, I would vote by default for late Muromachi. Maybe its Ise Masazane, in which case its not a bad school and the blade is worth looking over. Alternative maybe is Kanabo school... I am personally too lazy to look through examples of their signatures to see which matches, but the blade itself can reveal more. Kirill R.

I'll throw in something tangential to common prospectives just for the sake of it. Nihonto is 80% hada; most of what forms hamon is just the hada that was heat treated. Yet shinto essentially all done in just one hada type and there is also sort of one dominant hamon type, we can call it gunome in nie. As a result, the difference between Kotetsu and Shinkai is miniscule compared to Samonji versus Norishige. If you like shinto, its fine, I probably do, but it does not have much if anything that goes beyond its typical "boundaries". Shinshinto can reach the level of early Nambokucho, but the average pieces tend to look forceful and glassy-plasticky. So when it comes to the best pieces, you can take shinshinto and it will be brighter and all elements tend to be very crisp and sharp, or you can go early koto and the same elements will be a bit tired, but they also be much more subtle. The early koto changes a lot depending on the angle of light/view, shinshinto tends to have certain optimal viewing angles where you can see most of the things the blade has to offer. There is this extra level of depth in good koto, and its also a very natural effect, it just what hada does, versus in shinshinto its often clear the smiths really spend a lot of effort trying to get this particular element. So when it comes to my personal favorite swords I have 2 which are shinshinto, 2 koto, and maybe 1 shinto. Kirill R.

Sayagaki tends to be associated with older blades, especially those where there is some doubt or uncertainty with papers; this being said most Japanese dealers provide such service to their customers. Tsuruta-san etc. etc. Kirill R.

Yeap, that's the mid-grade unlucky scenario. In principle being determined in naming the species and within the range of possible should be enough to get one off the hook. Its also one of a few cases where titles do help. Worst case you can ask someone with titles to write something on the case. Still there are cases when they just destroy the contraband "material". Customs is plenty much a random affair. In 95% of cases everything goes smoothly, and then there are 5% when suddenly there is some random claim. Import duty, registration with IRS as potential commercial material, registration as potential important cultural property being smuggled, endangered species, ivory trade - take your pick. They are usually just someone in customs not dealing too often with swords/antiques/etc., first day on the job, bored and just checking the corresponding "to investigate" item. Kirill R.

Ouch, you probably should. Fish and wildlife are the worst. They can take a stand that its basically your duty to prove this particular same does not come from endangered species - because frankly they are not specialists on anything except enforcing certain rules. For example, they will routinely demand something made from walrus to be destroyed because its "elephant ivory" etc. Kirill

Ok, continuing along the same lines - some Kanesada and other late works appear to be in o-maru boshi, plus the nagare close to ha is relatively strong. Could it be that with their bo utsuri they were copying Enju rather than Rai? I don't think they distinguished the two well enough until relatively recently. Kirill R.

Thank you very much, I appreciate it - I did not pay attention to nie utsuri, indeed it appears to never be on the later works. To be honest on quite a few Rai blades its also not that easy for me to see nie utsuri. Kirill R.

I have to admit to being puzzled by one matter and hope to be enlightened. In later Rai imitations one often sees much effort being expanded to create strong, vivid, high quality bo utsuri. You see this well done in Kanesada, not really in Hizen I think, but also present with a lot of other people who worked in Rai style after the demise of Rai lineage per se. In Kunitoshi-Kunimitsu lineage, and maybe the blades I've seen were "wrong" for this feature: if utsuri is wide it had somewhat uneven upper edge and was not as pitch black/high contrast as when executed by Kanesada. Is this true, and then basically later works differ in that they put such an accent/effort on creating very strong and very straight utsuri? Never mind multi-layered black and white utsuri as per the example below - its extremely beautiful but probably unique.

Current government issued guidance is no public events till May. All conferences are online only. Kirill R.

Personal potentially erroneous mumblings: Definite no on Kamakura. However it can be a very much cut down (thus no hi) Nambokucho shape of 1360s (below). I am a bit worried about it retaining such large sori if its so cutdown though. But indeed the shape is not unique and even occasionally in shinshinto you see "reproductions". This would put the issue of age towards the work itself. One thing that makes me a tad optimistic is that hamon is narrow. Edo period was not fond of those, old blades often are. Also, I think boshi shows some wavyness so its not strictly suguha (needs confirming). If its true, then shinto is unlikely. Overall, a closeup good picture of the work can reveal more - Nambokucho or not. As valid alternatives I would say Momoyama - they actually made wakizashi purposefully shaped like this. Maybe shinshinto.

I don't think kasane is a strong point here, I have a few koto ones this thick... But nakago could tell a lot. Deep, well spaced yasurime=shinshinto. Anything else I personally would go with later Muromachi. Kirill R.

Rough jigane with Masame, periodic gunome, typical Mino, late Muromachi (seeing nakago would confirm the age)... I don't think any shinsa will go further than just copy the signature and declare it authentic. There are plenty of unlisted smiths. Also late Muromachi had Mino-Bizen styles going around quite a lot. You see Kaifu blades which are Naminohira, but there are also Mino ones. I am sorry to say something quite controversial, but I don't know why such blades need any papers. Its like one constantly see people showing with pride TH to ko-kinko, and I always have the question "what else did they expect?". Ok, maybe a small chance for ko-Mino. Kirill R.

Can be simply Yamato Tegai from the very end of Nambokucho. Hard to say without seeing large pics of hada. Kirill R.

I would think about the whole Ikkansai lineage, beginning with Ikkansai Yoshihiro, but there were many others, even Naotane's take on Hosho has very thick dark and white lines that are clearly forge-wielded, Kirill R.

Its very difficult to state anything definitively but I would lean towards shinshinto. They experimented a lot with different hada being obtained by a combination of steels, with very broad, long, high contrast but devoid of ji nie, or on the contrary - with much black ara nie structures. Kirill R.

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.