Ken-Hawaii

I was fairly certain that I had figured out the Kawazoe portion of the mei, Koichiro, but was completely lost on the Teruhiro part. Thank goodness my son & his Japanese wife are moving to Hawaii in 10 days! She may be able to help on some of these Kanji puzzlers. Hmm, you're right - Hawley doesn't have a smith listed by that name, or even close to the Showa era. Guess I have to do a bit more digging . Thanks!

My wife just purchased a nice Gendaito katana yesterday for use in jodo, & I'm trying to decipher the mei. Thanks in advance for the help.

Steve, several parts of that first group of photos look really strange to me! It's as if everything between the shinogi & the mune disappeared. Did you take those shots? And, if so, what the heck did you do to get that effect?? School-wise, I'd guess Bizen to start off with.

Excellent replies, Richard & Franco!! Everyone on this forum should take these messages to heart.

Can't think of any reason why value would be added just because of the former collection. But the fact that the Nihonto would likely be extremely well-documented might add to the selling price, but not necessarily the value.

Your English is a darn sight better than my Italian, Carlo! You're right that I haven't seen many tanto that weren't cut down from a longer blade. I looked very carefully at the nakago, and it is obviously the original forging. Now if only there had been a mei so that I could easily determine the school & smith!! Any ideas?

You're obviously a more trusting soul than many of us, Jean. I can't remember a time when I had a positive outcome from wiring money anywhere....

Sometimes, you just get lucky. I was in a store this morning talking with a fellow Nihonto collector, & an older gentleman walked up & asked if I would be interested in seeing an old "sword" that his parents had left him. I followed him to his house, & he showed me the mumei tanto shown below. I won't mention how much I paid for it, but I guarantee that it didn't break the bank...! It's in shirasaya, & in fairly good shape except for a small patch of umegane on the omote. I would appreciate any comments on its provenance.

Yeah, but he's charging too much in dollars: about US$500 more, considering the current exchange rate.

Beautiful!! Now I really wish I had studied Kanji harder!!

Hey, Peter, I'm looking at that Naganobu myself!! Just waiting for my wife to say "yes."

Very nice blade, Reinier. Good that you saved up to buy a top-quality Nihonto instead of settling for a cheaper crap blade.

Koichi is absolutely right!! In my wanderings around Japan's old farmhouses, antique stores, & the like, I've found far more gimei blades than real. Not sure why this is so, but as you learn more about what the nakago should look like, Misawa, the quicker you will be able to spot these fakes, which are found mostly in Japan. Now that I think about it, I don't think I've ever found a gimei blade outside of Japan -- wonder why? Get yourself some good reference books (just click on the Suggested Reading link at the top of this page), & start studying!

Wow! That was a really quick answer! Thank you, Koichi-san! :D Now all I have to do is find out a bit more about the smith, & then delve into the details of our new Nihonto.... Not much on the Web on Terukado, either. Ah, well, there's all the fun of sleuthing out another mystery!

Aloha, all: I just purchased this nice wakizashi from Stephan Hiller, & would appreciate some help translating the mei, as well as the shirasaya Kanji. My Kanji reading abilities are pretty poor, & the best I can get from the shirasaya is ?-Kuni-Mori-Suke-Kado (?) on the left, & I'm not even going to try the right or the mei.... My six-year-old grandson can help me once my son & his family arrive in Hawaii next month, but maybe one of you can help a little in advance...? Thanks!

Ichi, I'm guessing that you're probably not married. Husbands stay where wives want them to stay....

Well, I'm not putting my photo on this forum (I want to stay a member!), but I think you've got about 1/3 the amount of body hair that I do. My son is still complaining about what he inherited...his Japanese wife shaves him every week! Ouch!! Yeah, we stayed at the Park Hyatt a number of years ago, although not when we went to Aoi. I quickly figured that we could stay at a nice onsen for about half what we paid there, so that's what we did. But we have family all over Japan, so it's hard for us to just wander off these days without one clan family or another inviting us to stay with them. And we of course need to stay in everyone's good graces. Sigh. Our daughter-in-law explained recently why we're so damn popular: my wife & I hold dan rank in Muso Jikiden Eishin-Ryu Iaido. We're evidently the only living members of the Yoshida clan who are actively studying Iaido, & everybody wants to know what we do & how we like it. The fact that I hold three other black belts (& Linda one other) isn't important - it's the sword that has them so enthralled.

Definitely Aoi. And I think we parked at the same place you did, too. There seems to be an infinite number of Nihonto sold from shops like this. Does anyone have a vague idea of just how many swords were created in Japan?

I hadn't even noticed that part of this forum - thanks! I wasn't planning to buy anything from Thailand, having traveled there enough times to know how many fake items are offered, but it never dawned on me that the seller might be using photos from someone else.... Amazing how the criminal mind works. Actually, I'm really glad that it wasn't a fake blade! Think how hard it would be for any of us to buy a real Nihonto if it was...!

I was just browsing eBay looking for a kabuto, when I noticed that one of the sellers has what looks to be a very real katana for sale (item #140103694274). My Japanese isn't good enough to tell if the NHTBK papers are valid, but this could be quite a bargain if it turns out to be real. Is Thailand (or anyone else) putting out fakes that look this good? Comments?

Eric, I would make a beeline to http://www.satcho.com & check out Michael Harris' vast listing of sword books. He is very easy to deal with, & had ready answers to all my questions. I'm fairly certain that all of the books referenced above can be found on his Web-site. Happy hunting! :D

Probably about two weeks older than when you bought it, Mikael...

I don't think there's any correlation between diamond-size & quality, Jeremy. Take a look at http://www.montanairon.com/tsukamaki.html & you can see that there are many types of tsuka-maki, with the tsuka wrapped in accordance with how the sword will be used. For even more detail, you might enjoy http://pages.prodigy.net/tlbuck/tsuka/tsuka.htm.

Mariuszk, a summary of Japanese sword laws are posted at http://www.nihontokanjipages.com/japanese_sword_laws.html. After reading these, do you really think that the Japanese government is about to toss them all out the window?[/i]

I hear what you're saying, Mike, but as I have worked almost 40 years as an engineer in metallurgy, I'm finding it hard to equate "hard" & "brittle" with "functional" & "reliable." I think I'm fairly familiar with how Nihonto were constructed, but the explanations I'm seeing for hitatsura on my wakizashi have me a bit perplexed. No argument that the ha/yakiba is harder than the mune, or that harder steel means better edge-retention & (generally) a sharper edge. But hard steel doesn't equate in my book with brittle steel, assuming the usual folding of the blade by a competent smith to minimize impurities. I read somewhere that metallurgical tests on Nihonto showed the average ha to have a hardness of up to 58 Rockwell, while the average mune was about 15-20 points softer. That's not unlike many modern-day knives - many of which I have broken in field use. I'm frankly still scratching my head why ashi lines help stop chipping of the yakiba; at most, I would expect a bit more flexibility of the blade, but 1000 years of swordsmiths obviously discovered this by trial & error. So does the hitatsura in my wakizashi help or hinder its usability? It's great for me to explore my blade a centimeter at a time, but if the brittleness of the entire structure might cause it to fail in battle, why would smiths build it that way? I can see that tobiyaki in the ji might be formed from nioi areas of concentration, but is hitatsura just the further spreading of nioi? I'm probably missing something simple here....