Ken-Hawaii

Andy, you certainly gave my wife & me a good laugh!! The do protects the upper chest & stomach, not the back, & the tare covers your cojones, not your butt!! Switch everything around.

They spent a lot of time looking at the nakago, Louis. The sujikai yasurime can be easily seen with the blade in front of you, but don't come through well in a low-resolution photo.

Oops! Forgot to mention it's mumei. And our three former shinsa couldn't agree on school or smith, but did concur it's Shin-shinto.

I just acquired what is by far the best blade for my Nihonto collection. It's massive - nearly 1 kg bare - & gorgeous. I haven't ID'd the smith or even the school for sure, although the kantei at my Japanese Sword Society meeting was pretty raucous :D, so I'd appreciate comments. Here are some photos:

Moriyama-san, are there any places in the U.S. that sell these cabinets? I'm in high gear to buy or build a new case for my Nihonto collection, but the high humidity out here in Hawaii is a definite factor, plus I live right across the street from the Pacific Ocean with lots of salt air blown our way. My wife & I currently use a cabinet like what you see in stores with a removable acrylic plastic front. But with my latest acquisition, we definitely want something better looking & a LOT more secure! I'll post the blade for comments as soon as the transaction is completed.

Jim, to add a bit to this discussion, take a look at http://www.arscives.com/bladesign/swordphotography.htm & http://swordforum.com/sfu/photography/poolside.html. Malcolm has a good idea in using a fluorescent light along the blade, & I use a similar setup with a regular tungsten light on a stand, but stretch stocking or pantyhose material over the end of the light box so that I don't get those harsh streaks from the light-source. Try using a polarizing filter if your camera has the right attachment; you can always hold the filter in front of the camera's lens if you keep the camera on a tripod. I've gotten strobe flashes to work, but it's seldom worth the ime it takes to tweak things. Ken

Aloha, all: I've been off-net for a few months: my dad passed away & I missed his funeral because I was in the operating room for kidney cancer. I'm 63, & looking to make it well past the 103 he made it to! I've been using a sword of some sort since 1951 when dad hooked me up with his Fencing Master. My wife & I have also studied Muso Jikiden Eishin-Ryu iaido for about 20 years, & it finally dawned on us that there were other types of swords besides iaito. We've only been collecting for about six years, but have a reasonable collection, concentrating on Bizen Nihonto. Our biggest problem has been keeping things from rusting out here in tropical Hawaii, but we finally have that under control. I've recommended this forum to all of the other collectors in the Japanese Sword Society of Hawaii, only one of whom knew about NMB. Thanks for all the past & future help!

No luck on my side, Henry. I've tried registering 11 times so far, & am giving it up as a lost cause. (1) the Web script keeps changing my date format no matter how many times I put it in as xx/xx/xxxx; (2) it has also blanked my password in the second box as soon as I type it; (3) it blanks my comments (NOT BRIGHT to have that as a mandatory field!!); & (4) when I managed to get through once on my ninth try, it refused my PayPal payment, & told me I had an invalid login. My time is more valuable than all this!!

I'm 62, & have been swinging swords (Muso Jikiden Eishin-Ryu iaido) for about 15 years, but didn't really get interested in collecting Nihonto until just a few years ago. A good friend who also happens to be sensei of a different sword style took my wife & me home for dinner while we were visiting Japan & showed me a few of his treasures. Wow!! What a wake-up call!! My wife (also an iaidoka) & I decided on the spot that we would begin our own collection & study. So, no sports cars, mistresses (wife who swings swords - remember?), or other collections any more, but a dozen nice treasures of our own. :D

My paper is actually coming together, but I do need some help in one specific area. On the Web-page http://listserv.uoguelph.ca/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind9910&L=iaido-l&P=23876, there is the following reference: I have been trying to find some more info about these swords, but have run into the proverbial brick wall - too many bloody anime/manga/game references to wade through!! If any of you are willing to spend a bit of time finding some "meat" on this topic, specifically the presentation of the sword to Emperor Taisho, I hope to have my first draft done in a week or two, & will attach a link to the PDF file for comments, suggestions, & fireballs. Thanks!

Very nice find, Alan! Those links definitely appeal to the engineer in me! And I was also aware of the blades made by Yoshihara (I have several of his books), but he hasn't answered my e-mail as yet. I'd heard about the kaab meteorite in Mecca, too, but kinda' doubt they'd let me in to check it out.... This is a very slow process, I'll admit, but I'm not giving up on my quest to write that paper. Please continue to send me these tidbits so I can press on!

I'm not sure it's the heat treatment, Chris. I got the following e-mail from Dan Fronefield, who makes some absolutely gorgeous knives from meteors (http://meteorforge.net): "In talking to my fellow knifemakers, it seems that nickel increase hardenability...not as much as manganese, but I believe it does this by stabalizing austenite a bit.. In doing so I believe it acts to "even out" cooling curves....and therefore the activity in hamon. As I said earlier, I can get hamons, but they are fairly flat ... looses the "wow" factor. That makes me think that lack of hamon activity might be a good "tell" for a Japanese blade that was made using meteorite. I can't say that I've ever seen one with no activity, but then it would be rare to see such a one in published books on Japanese swords where only the best are shown. I did spend a number of hours in a Japanese sword museum in Tokyo several years ago, but I just don't recall the trip well enough to remember what I saw." I'm still working with Dan to figure out if there's some way to create a katana blade WITH hamon & WITH meteoritic iron. I'll keep the forum posted.

Thanks for the reference, Grey, & my apologies for the late reply. I have a fairly severe neck injury, & have been laid up for the past 10 days. Can't use my computer very often because I don't hold my neck right, according to my doctor.... I'll order a copy of that book tomorrow, as it may help in my quest. Chris, did Rick tell you that adding meteoritic iron will likely wipe out any hamon? Something to do with excess nickel. :?

Never mind, Ford. I found the book on the Satcho.com Web-site: Japanese ART & HANDICRAFT H. Joly and K. Tomita (r.1976) Originally published in 1916 as a limited edition of 175 copies, this is the renown "Red Cross" catalog. As a fundraiser for the British Red Cross, this loan exhibition combined outstanding examples of Japanese paintings, prints, drawings, sculpture, netsuke, lacquer, inro, and metalwork. Sword fittings in particular are well presented taking nearly half of the book. 1,376 Items are illustrated in 162 b&w and 8 color plates. Each item is described and extensive documentation is also provided regarding the history of the major schools. 395 pages, 10¼ x 12¼" hardcover Of course they don't have any copies available right now.... One more item to find.

Ford, are we talking about the same Red Cross as we have in the U.S. helping people in disasters? The content in your scanned page sure doesn't look like it! Can you please give me a cross-reference (ISBN, etc.)? This snippet does look very promising! I've been checking out the Indonesians' use of meteoric iron, but haven't found a link between them & the Japanese as far as metals transfer. Now I can check out what India did in the same period. :D What's another few hundred million people to filter through...? :? Mahalo! (Thanks!)

Wow, that looks very interesting, John. Thanks for digging that info out. No links to it on the Web, of course, so I'll take your advice & try my local bookstores. I had an interesting conversation with a Buddhist priest I know who also swings swords. He has seen several blades with meteoric iron in the Japanese temples he visits, & has promised to copy down whatever information is posted with them the next trip he makes. There are evidently quite a few Japanese religious sites that have either meteorites or objects made from them - I wonder how things like that fit into the Japanese psyche? Thanks again for helping out.

Lee, as a fellow iaidoka & collector, I would really hesitate to use this blade for iaido practice. As noted above, you might have a quite valuable Nihonto, & using it to train will not add to its value.... I do understand that you don't plan to sell it, but I think you'll find that most of us on this forum are believers in maintaining & preserving as much historical value as possible with Nihonto. Your mei indicate that this blade might be historically significant.... I only use shinken in my SMR jodo practice (modified KSR), but I carefully bought a Showato "beater" that serves my training purposes well without having any real significance. BTW, my wife & I will be disembarking in Burnie on 12/8 of this year, Lee - are you located anywhere nearby? We'll be on the Holland America Volendam on our first vacation in a decade! Can't bring our iaito along, of course, but we wouldn't mind some ideas of what to do for the 10 hours we'll be there. And meeting other iaidoka sounds like a great idea.

Randal, looking at the badly-deteriorated tsuka isn't going to help much, nor are shots of the other furniture. Can you please post a full-length shot of the blade, along with some detailed (i.e., close-up & in-focus) shots of the entire nagasa? The kissaki & boshi are particularly important. It's the details in the blade workmanship that will help us to help you identify your wakizashi!

Nah, Stephen - Hawaii is much greener! :D And who in Hawaii did you have in mind? Bob Benson? Al Bardi has moved to New York, so don't depend on him out here for a few years. We do have Tanaka-san, Matsui-san, & Masaki-san, of course.

Many thanks, Lee. I've left Rick an e-mail. I'm coming up with more info on this topic than I expected. Hope there's enough for the paper, which I'll of course post here.

Many thanks for all those leads, Jeff. I had found the database, but - like you - hadn't find any listings for meteorites in Japan prior to 1849 (& at 7.3 grams, that wouldn't have done much for a blade... ). I wonder why there are so few listed for Japan when other locations have them going back much further? Even the U.S. Has them back to 1808, & I have to think that Japanese scribes kept better "notes" than we did over here! If I can easily locate info on a Shinto blade, there must be more information available somewhere on as memorable an occasion as a meteorite hitting nearby! I'm in the process of discussing a project with Dan Fronefield (http://meteorforge.net) to build a katana using either his or my iron meteorites. Dan has already built some killer knives from them, & we're now trying to puzzle out why the generally higher nickel content has precluded him from creating a hamon. Do you have any idea on why this happens, Jeff? We're looking at the eutectics of pearlite/bainite, but haven't gotten very far. By the way, I fully agree that a Japanese swordsmith would likely prefer to use black sand for his tamahagane, but I was assigned the research on whether meteoritic material had also been used to create Nihonto, & to write a paper for our local Japanese Sword Society (which I'll also publish here if I can acquire enough data). So I definitely appreciate all of the talent & knowledge represented by this forum's members, especially those like you who choose to help!!

Kade, why would you want to use a Nihonto for iaido?? Even moderate practice puts considerable wear on a blade. I use an old, beat-up Showato shinken for jodo waza practice, & it really is showing it after only a few years. There are many custom sword shops with standard iaito blades made of zinc-aluminum or zinc-beryllium; I've used one of the latter for well over a decade, & other than wear-&-tear to the saya & tsukamaki, it looks like new. More advanced/custom iaito blades can be made from pattern-forged steel, too; one of mine almost fooled two shinsa in my Japanese Sword Society. I'm getting ready to order a very custom iaito as a gift to myself ( ), & you can PM me if you'd like info on the shop I found after a lot of research.

What's not particularly humorous, John, is that I'm adjunct professor for two local universities & four community colleges, but none of them consider JSTOR to be worth the price of admission.... I checked out the annual fee schedule yesterday, & am astonished that it's more than doubled in the past five years. But I guess someone is paying those high fees or JSTOR wouldn't still be here.

I was able to figure out the right URL, Steve, so no problem. Except that unless you belong to JSTOR, you can't access the rest of the article.... I'm looking for the same info in another venue.

A very useful find, Steve - thanks!! It's interesting that this particular search term identifies meteoritic iron usage by the Incas, Aztecs, Egyptians, & even the Inuit, but not a single mention of Japan or China. I'm going to have to rethink how to do a more thorough search using other terms. There has to be a ton of relevant info hidden somewhere!