Peter Bleed

The stuff inside the tsuka cover is - I'd bet the officer's name. The pistol collectors seem to kknow how to trace these, but that is outside the sword collectors understanding. This name might be some like Kataoka Hideo. I know what you paid for that insight, so I know what it is worth! Peter

Gary, The woods are full folks who will offer help. It seems to have already started for you! My advice is to find some people who share your interest. Contact them. Meet with them. Look at their swords. Show them you swords. Be nice, moderately trusting, and competely honest. Do not sell your sword. It is truly collectible, but it will also provide the basis for chatting with others. I would NOT be in a hurry to buy anything BTW. There are lots of swords. be patient - unntil you come across a Sendai Shinto by Kunikane. Those you should sell to me, cheap! In answer to your question, that line you showed on the mune (back ridge) of your sword is NOT the hamon turn back. It is a conventional line the polisher put there. Good eye, tho. The Tomoyuki line was a group of like a half dozen generations or smiths who made swords in Bungo province in the 16 and early 1700s. They were well respected. You have a real samurai sword there! There are LOTS of books and you have already been given solid advice. Reading John Yumoto won't hurt you a bit. I also think it is worth going to your local library and getting Robinson's Arts of the Japanese Sword - or even his older Primer. He has a very handy chart of the characters you will need to learn. It may seem daunting, but they are arranged in order of stroke count. That chart is really handy!! I hope to see you at one or another of the sword shows. You are off to a good start. Peter

We would all love to be able to sit down with Tanobe-sensei or another accommodating expert and say, "What do I have here?" I'm sure that some serious collectors - people who spend a LOT of dough - get to do that. For the mass of us, tho, this doesn't happen and shinsa offers the best alternative. A couple of recent experiences illustrate what might be the best that can be expected of the shinsa process. 1. I recently got the papers - Tokubetsu Hozon, thank you - for a big tachi. I could read only "Osafune" in the mei and "tenth year" in the the date. But as a well made, 28" ubu tachi, I got my hopes up. I am sure that if this sword was shown to the right folks in Japan, they COULD read the signature and say more about this sword, but that didn't happen. The NBTHK c/would only certify the parts of the Mei/nengo that I could read. They also recognized it as Kozori school work. That is what the papers say and I had to be a bit disappointed when they arrived. I was disappointed because this was not the conclusion I had been hoping for. As I have examined this blade, tho, I've decided that the Shinsa results were all right. This sword is not "important" but it is a good old weapon that fits into a particular pigeon hole. So there we are, . . . next blade... 2. Several years ago I fell heir to a real dirty gunto that I cleaned and cleaned to discover a katana-mei right at the jiri that said "Izumi no Kam". The other side in a very different hand said that it was a Kunisada shortened by somebody named Tsugutoshi. The nakago had a good look so I go it polished and I liked it, but I couldn't be sure because I have never seen another Kunisada in hand. I submitted it to shinsa because I needed a expert judgement. They gave me a positive assessment so I was happy. A negative reaction would, of course, have been just as useful. If all you want is a pat on the head or assurances that your sword is "nice", shinsa is a waste of money. If you are prepared to use the kind of reactions a shinsa can provide, the process can be informative. Peter

And that is exactly what this origami did more me. It caused me to scratch my head, get out some books, and learn how to embed kanji in text. I also think I "uncovered the reasons" behind the paper. They screwed up. This origami did not depend on the team's judgment but rather on their knowledge of local historical details. In my opinion, they gave a bad answer to a bad question. They might want to be a bit embarrassed, but I do not offer this as a criticism of the Shinsa process. Peter

Gary, Steve is right, this is a nice looking rig. I'll be if you get a couple of easily available books you will read this signature and find it is quite collectible. The important characters are the last two. The ones above that say "Fujiwara." I would NOT recommend submitting it to shinsa til you've done more research. Peter

Eric, I just made so bold as to call Mr. Allan, nice guy, and very welcoming. The book is available for $48.00 from castle-thunder.com. That site has a picture of the cover, but no interiors. It is soft cover, 210 pages. Most pages have pictures of guns, marks, or copied photographs, many in color. Lot of Japanese marks translated. i think it is fair to say that this is AMERICAN research, based on bangers found on this side of the pond. It is NOT Japanese. forhat reason, I find it analytical rather than simply descriptive. Japanese researchers tend to let the fact speak for themselves. There is plenty of description here but it is hung together very well. Now, I do NOT have a dog in this fight, but I am sure that you will get $48 of value out of it. If you buy it, find it wanting, and ship it to me, I'll give you the 48 bucks. If you LIKE it, you can buy me a drink in Frisco! Peter

Eric, I do have a copy of Banzai SP 10. It is useful and handsome, but I got it thru a friend so I am not sure how to get it. I suggest that you contact the publisher Francis Allan, 20 Courtney Place Plam Coast, FL 32137-8126, (386) 445-4225, the_allans_fcla@yahoo.com I imagine that others on this Board would be potential buys Best of luck. Peter

Eric's list was so dazzlingly wonderful, I hesitate to even try to improve it, but there is one more publication that deserves to be mentioned. Japanese Imported Arms of the Early Meiji Era 2011 Koss, Joseph P, editor, by Francis Allan Chip Goddard Takehito Jimbo Doss White Stanley Zielinski Banzai Special project #10 ISBN 978-0-9614814-6-9 Peter

Those line look to me like the result of having been wrapped with tape or something. I'd bet against a hagiri. Instead the blade has been ruined by the deep rust pits and generally terrible condition. It is a goner IMHO. Peter

I agree with Grey - it was a Grey't assessment. The Jakushi guard is nice with lots of the good original Nunome. Nice. peter

Well, gee. It sure looks to me like Dewa ju Naomasa. Look at Hawley NAO84 Peter

Sword collectors have often discussed the inconsistencies of Shinsa assessment. The fact that experts can – and do – disagree seems well established. I want to describe an instance that goes in a different direction. This case demonstrates that sometimes experts screw up! I think it also illustrates when and why a shinsa judgment is worthwhile. I will try to avoid specifics. I submitted a blade to this particular team and I REALLY liked their assessment. Self-interest keeps me from criticism! I also have to believe that working on a Shinsa team is tough. Maintaining the flow and doing the necessary work involves lots of detail. Mistakes can creep in. Furthermore, with something like 17, 000 recorded swordsmiths, nobody can recall all the potential details Since I collect swords of the Sendai Han, especially blades by the Kunikanes, my friend Tim Ott thought I’d be interested in the papers he got on a sword he had submitted to shinsa. The origami Tim showed me was for a sword signed: Sendai Ju Kunitomo　仙台住国倫。That signature is NOT listed in any source I can find. BUT, if you look at the image of the nakago on the origami, the sword in question is certainly, signed 仙台住国友, Sendai Ju Kunitomo, as in KUN 1328. In fact there were two generations that used this name. The first of them was a Kanbun era student of the second Kunikane. Now that‘s pretty interesting, Kanbun , nidai Kunikane – wow! The Sendai Han Tosho Meikan, shows that there was a late shin-shinto/meiji era smith who signed “KUNITOMO” 圀倫, but note that he used an odd Kuni and the Tomo shown on the origami, not the one on the sword. His signature is not on this sword. But wait. Remember that there were 2 main swordsmith lines in Sendai, The Kunikanes and the Yasutomo安倫 line. There were nine Yasutomo smiths. They used the TOMO shown on this origami 倫, but remember that is NOT the TOMO 友that is one this sword. And the broth gets a bit thicker. The comments box of the work sheet seems to have a note to Kanbun (1661) but it was crossed out and replaced by Tenbo (1830). There is also a note saying that this sword was by a “later generation.” Well, gee, there were only 2 generations of Sendai Kunitomo 国友, and they worked in the mid-1600s. My personal suspicion about what happened is that when the Shinsa team got a sword signed “Sendai Tomo-something” they confused it with the Yasutomos. They did not look at it as closely as they should have. They did not check the meikan. They took a hip shot and they got it wrong. They liked the sword – it got 76 points – and initially somebody thought it looked like a Kanbun Shinto. But confusion won out so this paper adds little value. In telling this story I am not trying to be critical of this shinsa team or the shinsa process. We need them both. What this case tells me is that there is a limit to what a sword owner can expect from a shinsa. We can’t expect Shinsa teams to know details of every sword maker. We should do our own research and form an opinion about the quality of the items we submit. We should go to shinsa with specific questions in mind and hope that they can provide a useful answer. There are worthy swords that don’t require shinsa evaluation. Peter

An overlooked element of John Yumoto's little book are the several pages of kanji variations which show exactly the diversity that Gabriel mentioned. Sometimes the old stuff is worth remembering. Peter

I see it as 5th year second month, but, hey. . . Peter

This is a nice looking, even interesting, blade, but - you know - $4k got lots of interesting, safer bets at the recent Chicago sword show. At the show (or Tampa or Frisco) you LOOK at them, right there (!), and ask for help. Is eBay the place to take these likes of risks? Peter

Ron, I can't make this one, either. My Chinese is not good enough! Peter

As usual, Arnold has asked an interesting question. I certainly do not know the answer. Still, my interest in the swords of the Sendai han disposes me to suggest that this question does not have an easy answer. A small cluster of smiths made swords in Sendai throughout the Edo period. At any time there were on the order of 6 or 8 smiths in town. At the same time, Sendai was a "castle town" full of under-employed samurai, many of whom survived by making those low-end kodogu that got shipped to Nagoya or wherever. This was not a community that had lots of "merchants" - let alone "rich" ones. I have found/seen several short swords made by these smiths. In fact, I think that shoto are more common than daito. Just as professors need tweed sport coats (even in Georgia!), it may have been that there were katanas to be had during the Edo period ( think War surplus), but that sometimes a working samurai had to order a new wakizashi. And those guys were poor, so instead of getting something from a trendy smith in Edo or - dare I say it, Hizen(!) - they might go down the road to the local guy. Peter.

Maybe this is old news, but I just discovered a site called japaneseweapons.net It seems worth being aware of. Not terribly original, but it has good stuff on tanegashima and more recent arms. Peter

Let me add my thanks for the presentation of this article. My University has a Center for Digital Research in the Humanities with some very nice, - big - scanners. I look forward to exploring this technique! Peter

Brian, I agree that the range of pan attachments I described certainly reflects the long history of use/adjustment/repair that these guns experienced. At the same time, I think they are not simple field expedient repair. They reflect the reality of gun usage. I also did not wish to suggest that Japanese culture has "no rules." Obviously, the Japanese have lots of rules and regularities. Peter

I am glad, indeed, to see this topic reprized. Ron's initial discussion was informative and interesting and got me to go down and look more closely at my small collection of hinawa-ju. I don't consider myself a tanegashima collector. These are just some items that appeared and stuck. All have intact pan covers so I had never given any thought to ama-oi. After looking at them, I tried to submit a reply to the earlier thread, but as sometimes happens, my ju-ju wasn't right or the the NMB gods were not with me. My original message did not appear. Please let me try again. Among my guns: 1 has a hollow brass pin of the type Ron shoed us how to replicate - 1 has a nicely form solid iron pin with a round head. 1 has a rather more simply from short, straight iron pin, and 1 has the pan attached with what looks like an old, 'square' Japanese nail which is bent at the bottom, and 1 has the pin attached with a headless square nail that is bent top and bottom in an "S" As I said, all of these guns appeared to me in this condition. None of them look like they were modified after the left Japan. The condition they are in looks to me to have been establsihed in Japan. If there is a take away message to all of this, it may be that in tanegashima - as in so many other areas of Japanese culture - there are standard ways of doing things, AND exceptions. Again, thanks for an interesting and informative thread. Peter

I just checked the one example I happen to have and it is a "lefty loosey, righty tighty" just like they taught us in 7th grade. When it come out (or break off,) we are dying to hear what it was that Chris Bowen thought was worth acquire - - with the tsuka on! Pete

The sword looks pretty hum-drum, but the pistol could be pretty collecible - with an early date. Peter

John, I believe that there are some true experts in the world, but they are rare and hard to find. The next step down is terribly easy to reach. You can become that kind of an expert by showing up with a little brass hammer, sucking your teeth a lot, and becoming capably of saying things like, "I think it is Kane something". If you can avoid all of that, the good part is making some friends, developing a reputation for good companionship (and honesty), and getting lucky. Relax, have a good time. And best of luck! Peter

I wade in to this discussion naively and - probably - unwisely -but, . . . This image appears to me to be OVERLAY" (ie nunome) not INLAY. There also seem to my naive eyes traces of the head remaining on the edge of the guard. This looks like what might have been considered "normal wear." Peter