IanB

I have a tsuba with three Date kamon applied in shibuichi. There is the usual 'sparrows in bamboo' kamon plus one with the circle crossed by bars as on this gun, as well as the mitsu tomoe maru. Since the 'sparrows' kamon was used by the Date family itself, it maybe that the circle and bars was used to identify clan equipment. Ian Bottomley

Ron, This is a Riman kyu or kago kyu invented by Riman Hayashi. What is missing is another arrow with a hirane (shield - shaped head) rather than the small points of the rest. Ian Bottomley

Grev, Agreed a great day and such a pleasure to meet like-minded people. Sadly I didn't buy anything but that is not a problem. What is important are personal relationships. Ian Bottomley

All, Armour was designed to fit on a human, not on a wooden stand so the latter should be shaped as near as possible to the human the armour was designed for. You can obtain the major dimensions such as the width of the shoulders by measuring from the outside edges of the shoulder straps and adding about 3" on each side. If there are kohire, they will give you the amount. For the height of the shoulder bar measure from the shoulder straps to the bottom of the dou and add about 6 - 8" to the base of the stand. This allows for the lower abdomen and the botton when seated. A big fault with most stands is that the head is positioned centrally above the body. Look at a real human from the side and you will see that the neck bends forward and the head is positioned more to the front. This means angling the helmet support forward. It is details like this that add to the realism of the armour when mounted. Ian Bottomley

Peter, That is wonderful - thank you. What is a surprise are the prices. $500 was a heck of a lot of money at that date and even the price of a more common item was high enough. Ian Bottomley

Matt, Depending on where you live in the UK, do get in touch with others collectors / enthusiasts - they know where to go to see things such as the arms fairs and the dealers who specialise. There is in fact quite a lot of swords out there when you know where to look. Echoing Michael, go along to a ToKen meeting and meet fellow enthusiasts. I can assure you the Northern ToKen would make you welcome. Ian Bottomley

As one who lived through the era when long swords (always 'executioner's swords') were about 30/- (just over 1$ today) and short swords at 1£ (always 'harakiri knives'). At arms fairs they were generally piled up under masses of bayonets and you were looked at as being demented for showing an interest. Then the price started to climb when the first books in English such as Robinson's 'Arts of the Japanese Sword' and Yumoto's book on swords appeared. At that point you could have sold empty Japanese match boxes! As soon as swords started being imported from Japan they reached dizzying prices in the major sale rooms who, 15 years earlier, would not have sullied their catalogues with such 'rubbish'. One leading auctioneer in London described armours as 'a beribboned mess' and it was sold by the tea chest. Now the prices are spoke off in hushed whispers and if you have to ask the price, you cannot afford it. There is one factor that nobody has mentioned and that is the effect of the trade dealers. Quite often new items to the market get knocked down at auctions or enter the trade at bearable prices. It then changes hands within the trade, each dealer adding their profits until the price becomes too high for someone not in the trade to buy. And here I am not knocking the dealers, they have living to make, but it is small wonder that the young, setting up a home and having kids, are not collecting - basically the prices have just risen too high. They were high for me at 30/- but I could afford to acquire things by saving. Imagine having to save $5000 to buy something that isn't essential to your household - its a big ask. Ian Bottomley

Christian, They are available on the internet, but I make my own. Try ebay - there is usually someone selling them. Ian Bottomley

Fred, Not Muromachi Jidai I suspect but just possibly Momoyama Jidai. I have always believed, and still do, that the whole namban tsuba fashion kicked off from war trophies collected during the invasions of Korea. Some tsuba have every appearance of having been taken from Chinese swords, having narrow rectangular seppadai that are decorated - sometimes with hitsu ana punched through the original, pierced decoration. Had they been planned as Japanese tsuba from the start, why would they not have regular seppadai? John Lissenden had a namban fuchi (and possibly the matching kashira) and the Royal Armouries has a namban kogatana, both of which have iron panels fretted with tendrils in the usual way and then applied to gilded bases. The latter has been made to fit a tanto mounted for the Matsura of Hirado that has a modified German blade and a saya covered with Dutch leather. This compliments an armour in Hirado made up from a Dutch pikeman's armour - presumably parts of a gift when the Dutch were made to leave their factory on the island and move to Dejima in the 1640's. This suggests the production of these items continued well into the Edo period. Ian Bottomley

Christian, As Uwe said, Sendai dou are heavy and even the type of stand shown by Guido throws a lot of weight onto the shoulder fastenings. It pays to add a couple of cross bars to the uprights of the stand so the bottom edge of the dou can sit on them and take all the weight off the cords. I also add a pair of padded sleeves to the ends of the shoulder-bar. These fill out the sleeves and the drag of fabric on fabric takes weight off the sleeve fastenings. Also make up a couple of padded cushions and put them under the haidate over the corners of the armour box. In short do all you can to reduce the weight on the fastenings as I notice the lacing is a bit ripe so the various ties and cords will be as well. Ian Bottomley

Oh dear! Talk about drivel. Even the first diagram has terms such as 'mettonniere',' tuille' and 'knee cop' that had fallen out of use when Edward VII was a lad. Other images are equally misleading - Fig. 19 having less to do with hourglass gauntlets than a wheelbarrow. Then we come to Japan and learn (on p.68) that they invested their resources in making weapons, armours and Bushido - the latter being very tricky to make without the right tools and a good stout vise. We also learn that bows were 'usually more than 6.6m long' and reinforced with palm stems' - these 21 foot bows must be a type I have yet to encounter. An excellent example of a so-called dissertation compiled from snippets culled from the internet without a shred of understanding or apparently actually reading them. Ian Bottomley

Ford, Whilst cataloguing a number of mail and plate coats bought by the Royal Armouries I was intrigued by the fact that the plates were polished on the inside (most armour being left rough from the hammer) and that some plates showed areas of grey deposit around the attached fastenings. Knowing that these armours were sewn to padded undergarments, and were covered with rich textiles on the outside, I concluded these deposits were the remnants of tinning on the surfaces of the plates to prevent rusting. As a check, they were examined by XRF and to everyone's surprise the coating turned out to zinc, Not only that, but that the mail was also originally coated with zinc. There then arose the question of when this galvanising was done. The earliest known European use of zinc for this purpose was in 1786 when it was used on iron saucepans (Day,J. and Tylecoat r.f. 1991 The Industrial Revolution in Metals. London, The Institute of Metals.). However, it would seem that zinc had been isolated in India by the 12th century ( Craddock P.T. (ed) 1998 2000 years of zinc and brass. British Museum Occasional Paper) and that the metal was being exported to Europe at least as early as 1620. These armours had been originally trophies from Bikanir and had been captured in the 1680's at the siege of Adoni in the Deccan by Anup Singh one of Emperor Aurangzeb's generals, as attested by inscriptions on some. Other, older inscriptions have so-far resisted translation being written in a language that has yet to be identified. Many showed damage that in some cases had been repaired, implying they had seen considerable used before being captured. It is difficult to estimate just when they were made, but around 1600 would seem reasonable. The quality of the mail in some of these armours was of the very highest quality with alternate rows of links being welded or riveted. Very cleverly the plates were fastened to the mail by links flattened at the joint but not riveted so that they could be easily removed for repair of re-coating with zinc. How they were coated is conjecture but dipping the cleaned metal in molten zinc and then beating them to remove excess zinc as they were withdrawn from the coating bath seems most likely. Ian Bottomley

Alexander, I once tried to make a Japanese wheel lock based on the images and diagrams from the above publication. I had no trouble with the wheel and its release but could not arrange the dog properly. I made the wheel from a section of steel tube with a brass disk set into both sides. This turned on a short spindle fixed to the lockplate and had a spiral brass spring inside that fastened to the spindle and wheel. The same sear as on a matchlock engaged with a hole in the rear disk of the wheel when wound up. All that worked great, it is the rest that I had trouble with. The wheel is positioned just behind the pan and the dog holding the pyrites was in front reaching over the pan to contact the wheel.The wheel has to rotate anticlockwise - but I couldn't get the thing sparking properly and gave up. Ian Bottomley

I must stress that my input has been nothing. - it is Dave who has shouldered the whole burden. What Dave has not said is that much of the material sold by various suppliers in Japan and elsewhere has a common source and there was a possibility of that source eventually closing down. What has been said on this Forum earlier about real silk braid being available from China is I am afraid a load of rubbish. Despite what the company says on their website, what they actually sell is made from artificial silk or rayon. It is such a specialist commodity, it was unlikely anyone else would set up production. At least we have our own source that we know is being produced by someone who knows exactly what is needed. Ian Bottomley

Steve, Sadly all artefacts, with perhaps the exception of those made from pure gold, are slowly ageing. Our environment, permeated as it is by oxygen and other reactive gases and suffused by light, are having a deleterious effect on all our precious treasures and there is very little we can do about it. Your iron tsuba was deliberately oxidised by the maker and has continued to oxidise ever since. Giving it a rub with the hands will remove some of this oxide layer, and impregnate some of the remaining oxide with oils from the skin, but some iron has been lost from the original surface and is gone forever. Every time you remove your koshirae from its brocade bag the lacquer suffers from exposure to light and is degraded, admittedly by only a tiny amount. Even the hamon on a sword is slowly changing. Martensite is not an equilibrium phase, having been created by rapid cooling of the austenite form and is gradually changing to more stable phases. The rate at which this change takes place is dependent on temperature; the higher the temperature the more rapid the change. At our normal environmental temperatures the rate of change is very slow, but detectable. Very old swords have noticeably softer hamon than new swords. When it comes to organics like tsuka ito or the lacing and textiles of an armour, the rate of degeneration is noticably higher. Many hilts that were last bound in the Edo period are now very delicate and few old armours retain their original lacing for the simple reason the silk is attacked by oxygen and degraded by light. All we can do is to adopt measures to reduce these changes to a minimum, but we cannot stop them. The eternal dilemma of conservation / restoration which is the real subject of this thread is one that only the owner of the object can resolve. Do you leave a tsuka alone that has the ito hanging in shreds or have it rebound? Do you consolidate the dull and friable degraded lacquer on a saya or leave it alone? I have no definite answer as only the owner can decide, but the council of perfection would be to leave well alone unless to do so would cause even more rapid degeneration. Ian Bottomley

Donny, I agree they are not the same, but if you were looking at the Muromachi koshirae from the front, all you would see of the tsuba is the pleated leather 'bag' over it. Your tsuba would not look exactly the same, but again seen from the front it would look very similar. That is why I said your tsuba may have been 'inspired' by the earlier style. Ian Bottomley

Donny, sadly my scanner is on the blink. Maybe someone can scan the image - especially that on p.216. I doubt your tsuba is Muromachi, but perhaps inspired by the leather covered ones of that era. BTW the Edo period is generally taken to be 1603 - 1868 so 265 years - sorry for being pedantic Ian Bottomley

Donny, Your analogy to the gills of a mushroom is apt, although it may also be likened to those tsuba cut with radiating lines invoking Amida Buddha. Although not quite the same, there was a vogue in the Muromachi era to cover entire swords in lacquered leather. I have only handled a scabbard, but that was entirely covered in thin leather that appeared to have been shrunk on then lacquered, the shape of all the mounts being visible. The tsuba on swords treated in this way seem from the images I have seen to be covered with a leather bag that is gathered in pleats on either side, the tsuka being conventionally wrapped. There is a good example illustrated in the Tokyo National Museum's catalogue of the Special Exhibition in 1997 on p.208 / 209 and an even more relevant example on p.216 which is very similar to your tsuba. Ian Bottomley

Not lacquer but covered with thin leather. You can see how the maker has pleated the leather to get it to lie flat. I assume the leather was lacquered before being applied since it hasn't filled the small creases. A very intriguing item. Ian Bottomley

Sadly the piece of apparatus is a neutron beam of the type only available in large scale nuclear establishments. You can get a flavour of what is involved here: http://www.ansto.gov.au/ResearchHub/StaffProfiles/SALVEMINI-FLORIANA. Ian Bottomley

Signatures are not cut but done by chasing and hence are the equivalent of punching. This causes the displaced metal to form the tagane makura on a new / newish signature. Since the metal below each stroke is deformed by the process, it should be possible to detect an erased signature. Mitigating against this is the fact that the area where the signature was will have been covered with coarse file marks and will also be covered with rust. It would however be perfectly possible to use some technique such as neutron spectroscopy - the olny problem there is the cost of each scan. Ian Bottomley

Bojan, The short answer to your question is no. Firstly two of the mon, the ones on the left and right in particular were used by just about everybody and his brother. Secondly, there was no regulation or recording of mon, other than restrictions on their use, until quite late. The mon used by some of the commanders at Seki ga Hara are unknown despite the fact that they were reasonably important people at the time. There was a practice of granting your mon to a subordinate who had been victorious with the result that the 3 - 5 - 3 kirimon, as on the helmet on the right, became so widely used that it didn't really identify anyone. Ian Bottomley

A splendid day meeting delightful people. May there be many more like it. Ian Bottomley

Malcolm, Thank you for posting the video, it was an absolute treat. When you see what can be done with a relatively light weight wooden naginata, you appreciate what a devastating weapon it was. It must have been almost impossible for a sword to overcome the inertia of a heavy fighting nagainata travelling towards you. At best all you might achieve is to deflect its trajectory and hope its destination wasn't on your person. Cheers Ian Bottomley

I too will be there manning the ordinary Northern ToKen table in the first room by the windows. Do make yourselves known if you come. Ian Bottomley