IanB

Chris, Yes that explains it. The lower part of the zunari peak has been cut away and the remainder hammered outwards to attach the new peak to. The fact that it was a zunari explains why it looks too deep. You often see this trick done with 6 or 8 plate helmets, and surprisingly with a lot of Muromachi akoda nari kabuto, but I don't remember seeing a zunari that has been given the treatment before. A very interesting helmet - but still ugly. Ian Bottomley

Uwe, I know exactly what you mean but as far as I can see the bowl does look to have some age. If you look at the flange of the koshimaki just above where the fukigayeshi should be, you can see the iron has the normal layers of kokuso and tonoko under the tetsu sabi nuri - I cannot see that a faker would bother to do that. It is not the work of a professional armour for sure, the bowl is too deep and the arching koshimaki prevents both the top plate of the shikoro and the peak from fitting properly - in fact I would guess the shikoro is off another helmet. Amateur work or made by someone 'way out in the sticks'. I saw an armour in Matsue castle that was if anything even more ugly than this. Ian Bottomley

Chris, Certainly not a modern reproduction and probably Edo period, but odd. The pronounced arching of the koshimaki (the plate that runs around the base of the bowl) over the peak is far from common and might give a clue as it its maker. Get your friend to have a look inside and see if there is a signature on the inside of the back plate of the bowl. Ian Bottomley

Darius, I would add to what Steve and Robert have said by adding that there are a very few kanji that are easily remembered and which will identify the parts of a signature. I know there are exceptions, but what follows works the vast majority of times. The smith's working name will be two characters, either at the bottom of the signature or followed by saku　作, tsukeru　造　or saku kore 作之 - all of which mean 'made' or 'made this' . Higher up in the signature may be ju 住, meaning 'living at' or sometimes 住人, 'inhabitant of', both of which follow the smith's address - so above either of these will be a province or province plus a town name. All the provinces have two character names but were often abbreviated to one kanji plus shu 州. So if you see shu then you know its a province. If there are more kanji above ju, there will be a town name under the province name as well. Finally there is kuni 国 which sometimes follows the province name, written as a box with all manner of ticks and lines inside. Again it tells you that the two characters above it is a province name but it is often used as part of a smith's name, but that will be below ju so it shouldn't confuse. Hope that helps. Ian Bottomley

Rob, I answered a similar thread on the Armour Forum about mon, so I thought I would respond to your quest in the same way. I have owned an armour for almost 50 years that gives a considerable amounts of information about it. On inscriptions inside the helmet, on the mask, on the sleeves and on the side of the dou it records that it was made by a Ki Yasukiyo living in Nagato province in 1847 and that he was a pupil of Myochin Muneyasu. It also states that it was made for a samurai / retainer of the Chohan called Nakagawa Mochinori. Now you would have thought with all that it would have been easy to find out more, but it was decades before I did. Yasukiyo was totally unrecorded in any literature I had access to as was Nakagawa Mochinori. The big break came when a diary of Myochin Muneyasu came to light which recorded that Yasukiyo was indeed a pupil who was 19 years old when he arrived at Muneyasu's workshop and that he studied for 3 years before returning to Nagato. Clearly he was already an armourer beforehand but had been sent to Edo to learn the latest styles and techniques. The armour is a very high quality and must have been expensive yet Nakagawa Mochinori, who must have been a person of some standing in the Han, remains a total mystery. The mon on the fukigayeshi of the helmet is of two dear antlers, but this is normally listed for the Kondo family not Nakagawa. On the textiles is the same mon plus another of a four petalled flower with sword blades between, all in a circle. This I assume is Nakagawa's secondary mon but again not listed for Nakagawa. As it happens, there is a vast body of literature about the Chohan, its politics, structure and its involvement in the overthrow of the Tokugawa, but nowhere can I find anything about Nakagawa Mochinori. I keep looking but it does show how difficult it is to track down the user of a particular mon. Ian Bottomley

Of course its a pig - I'm going blind in my old age - I took it for a fat puppy. Help! Ian Bottomley

Dee, I am afraid your netsuke looks like ivory. Bone always has small dark flecks in it that were the channels for blood vessels when it was living tissue. The two other possible materials would be stag horn, which has only a skin of dense bone-like material around a spongy core, the other being 'vegetable ivory' which is from a type of nut and lacks the subtle patterning that ivory has. I'm afraid I cannot help you as to the possibilities for disposal, but I deplore the destruction of works of art in the name of conservation. Having said that I deplore even more the killing of elephants to supply Asian carvers, much of whose output is utterly banal. Here in the UK ivory items can still be bought and sold if they were created before 1947. Admittedly it isn't always easy to establish when something was made, but the fact that your netsuke has developed a crack suggests it is probably of some age. I wish you well in trying to find a home for your puppy. Ian Bottomley

Jussi, Not 'Hisayuki' but Tomoyuki 友行 I think. A smith who signed with the same signature on Richard's blade was working in 1394 but that is way too early. A far more likely candidate is a smith working in 1688 who usually signed Hoshu Takata ju Fujiwara Tomoyuki, 豊州高田住藤原友行 is a better bet. Ian Bottomley

Well done to Mike - a really nice job. Ian Bottomley

Rob, For most of the time during the Edo period the armours would not be on show but packed safely away. Most of the traditional stands I have seen are terrible for anything but short term display with no real support for any of the parts. It was recommended that during the humid season they should be unpacked and placed out on the veranda covered with a cloth to prevent them going mouldy. When travelling it was required that all but the lower ranks of samurai be accompanied by a retinue that included an armour bearer who either carried the gusoku bitsu on a pole or with shoulder straps. There would also be a spearman and groom to lead the horse. I suspect that in some cases the armour box was empty unless it was intended to be worn. Armour was displayed indoors on occasions and what is not generally known is that the wife of high ranking people like daimyo also had armours that were displayed alongside that of their husbands. I once had the privilege of seeing the store at Sendai Museum and there was a row of armours belonging to the daimyo of the Date family together with the armours of their wives. I doubt the wives ever wore them, they were there just as symbols of their presence. Ian Bottomley

Kurt, Since nobody else has stepped in I will. Kogatana are made by welding a piece of high carbon steel to a piece of iron, the steel being on the lower side of the blade. Apart from the advantage of not using much steel, this structure is to some extent self-sharpening since the iron wears faster than the steel. The reason why only the underside is polished is because you cannot get a hamon on the iron so there is no point in polishing it - it is just filed up. Ian Bottomley

Ed, The ho-o bird is exactly the kind of thing Unkai Mitsunao used to apply to his dou but I don't think it is by him or his immediate successors. He was an Haruta smith working in Kanezawa for the Maeda in the early Edo period and his work shows some very definite and often very odd characteristics: Almost invariably there will be a waist-plate that is often shaped to look like stylised clouds that will either be covered in leather or lacquered in a different way to the rest (see Luc's example shown above). The waki ita under the arms are sometimes curved, again like Luc's, and fastened on top of the nakagawa rather than being laced or riveted inside. There is often a strong Buddhist theme such as the backing washer for the saihai no kan on the breast that is often shaped like a lotus and the use of Bonji on the fukigayeshi of helmets. All of the Unkai do I have examined have had the interior finished using an open weave cloth glued onto the surface and then lacquered in either gold or red rather than byakudan nuri. Your dou might well be Kaga, as suggested by the zaboshi, but other characteristic such as mokko shaped kohaze and the shaping of the upper edges of the plates (other than that bordering the vertical edges of the backplate) are absent. So what, it is a lovely dou no matter who made it. Ian Bottomley

Further to Peter's comments, the Japanese also made flintlocks, snaphaunces and even wheel lock guns, the latter being very ingenious with a spiral spring inside a hollow wheel having a steel rim. None of these were made in any numbers because there was no real need in a time when the Tokugawa regime imposed a rigid peace. One triple barrelled snaphaunce with a mechanism that was distinctly retrograde came out of Mexico City with very faint Tokugawa kamon on the barrels. We know Hasekura Rokuemon Tsunenaga visited there and that the Tokugawa provided the bulk if the gifts and I suspect this formed part of such a gift, having been disposed of as basically ineffectice. What is interesting is that during the late 16th and early 17th centuries the English gave richly decorated flintlock guns as gifts and sold a considerable number of similar pieces from their trading post on Hirado, and the VOC gave the shogun pairs of flintlock pistols, yet not a trace of any of these guns seems to have survived in Japan. Ian Bottomley

Randy, What a wonderful find and an amazing price too. Not sure about rifling - more to do with points of aim and positioning of sights I think. Nevertheless a valuable source of information. So many Japanese seem to have been totally incurious about how things were designed and made and anything written is a real bonus. Ian Bottomley

Rob, As a Curator Emeritus of the Royal Armouries Museum, Leeds, and former curator of the oriental collection, let me know when you are coming north and I will try an arrange to meet and show you around. The Museum has 87 swords of varying quality from Juyo downwards. There are also several very important armours and a good selection of other Japanese weapons. Ian Bottomley

Delightful little pistol from an era that deserves more study. Prior to the arrival of Perry the Choshu and Satsuma Hans were buying rifled percussion guns (from a Scotsman if memory serves) and training farmers and other peasants to use them. Following Perry's arrival the Japanese started making pill-lock pistols and long guns - I purchased a pill-lock cavalry carbine for the Royal Armouries collection fitted with an automatic pill dispenser made by Katai Kyosuke who also managed to make the fulminating pills. These same detonating pills were also used in what are known as 'squeeze pistols' or Karashi bo since the pills were likened to mustard seeds. These simply had a lever that crushed the pill when you squeezed it. A week or so ago I saw a gun fitted with a bolt action and I have seen an old matchlock teppo converted with s snider breech. All of this was happening within a few years of first seeing these developments - remarkable. Ian Bottomley.

Whilst never having worked with the European sword collection at the Royal Armouries, I passed the racks that held Spanish rapiers in store almost everyday and you can't help looking. Yes some are pierced with swirling mass of tendrils, but cut in quite thin metal and chiselled to look as if the tendrils pass over each other. If memory serves, one or two had holes in the cup where over-enthusiastic chiselling had weakened the metal and sections had broken away. The pattern on these rapiers differs from namban tsuba in being just tendrils whereas the design of the latter almost invariably consist of dragons or lotus blossoms with the tendrils simply filling in the spaces between. You get a similar design to that on the rapiers engraved on 19th C. shotguns - just a mass of scrolls to fill the space. I suggest you type in 'Tibetan saddles' into Google and look at the images - I think you will see similarities.. Ian Bottomley

Based as he was in Jersey, we did not see too much of John at the meetings of the Northern ToKen Society, but when he did attend his talks were an absolute treat enjoyed by all. Some years ago I had the great good fortune to visit his home and remember the enthusiasm with which he showed me treasure after treasure from his wonderful collection. His passing is a loss to us all. Having been to the funeral of another member of the Northern ToKen Society, Jack Dufton on Monday the 24th of January 2016, I cannot but reflect on the mortality we all face and express my sadness at the loss of two loyal members. My heart goes out to their families and friends. Ian Bottomley

Allow me to add my best wishes for the coming year to those above. Jean, my deepest sympathies - get well soon. again a Happy New Year to all Ian Bottomley

Grev, Here is my take on the subject: Stylistically, namban tsuba are exactly comparable with Chinese metalwork and in particular items from the regions towards the Himalayas - see Tibetan saddles, pen cases and allied items. A good number of Chinese swords have guards decorated with similar pierced, scrolling tendrils. An important consideration is that most Chinese swords do not have an habaki and are fitted into scabbards that consist of little more that two pieces of wood covered in leather of more or less rectangular section, hence, that part that in Japan would be called a seppa dai, visible when the sword is drawn, decorated and rectangular. There exist a considerable number of namban tsuba that have had hitsu ana cut through the original design and have these rectangular, decorated 'seppa dai'. I would suggest these are of Chinese origin, the obvious source being trophies taken in the Korean campaigns and adapted to fit the returning samurai's wakizashi. This flaunting of captured trophies created a fashion trend that was satisfied by Japanese tsuba makers, and probably by workers in the Chinese colony at Nagasaki. These later tsuba have a more normally shaped seppa dai, although still often decorated, and hitsu ana that are integral with the design. Gradually the original Chinese design were expanded to include anything novel and foreign, such as the VOC monogram and copies of small-sword hilts. If I am correct this would date the earliest namban tsuba to around 1600, those of the VOC and small-sword designs to around the mid 18th century. Ian Bottomley I

Further to what Uwe and Anthony have said, this is a collection that can only be described as mind-blowing. It is also a collection that has had only minimal exposure to enthusiasts and only rarely appears in guide books. Situated as it is on a hillside above Florence it is off the tourist beat and is quite a walk from the city. It is housed in a series of adjoining villas that Stibbert had connected by specially built halls to make one vast structure that he filled with art treasures. Initially he concentrated on European and Islamic arms and armour, acquiring a vast amount of material, much of which is of staggering quality. When Japan was opened to the West he turned his attention to that source and bought large quantities of armour, swords, lacquer and so on, on the art markets in Italy, France and the UK. What is amazing is the condition of almost all the items in the collection. Unlike the collection in Venice that had suffered from exposure to the high humidity and light of that city, the Stibbert collection has survived in virtually the same condition as when acquired. What is a tragedy to me is that on his death he bequeathed the entire collection to the UK government who declined the offer. As Anthony has said, much of the collection is on open display and hence as a normal visitor you are conducted around by a guide who ushers you from room to room giving you little time to study anything, a situation exacerbated by the sheer quantity of interesting items. Even so, if you are in Florence it is a must. Ian Bottomley

Ron, Peter has it. I have a tanto with a brocade covered scabbard almost identical to that illustrated. They have cut a channel in the wood, pasted the brocade over the scabbrad and tucked the cut ends into the groove. Exactly what has then been forced into the channel to secure the ends is impossible to tell since it is black lacquered. I also do not know exactly how they achieved the lacquering of the brocade. I tried it myself using a brocade with a gold pattern like my scabbard and gave it a thin coat of seshime urushi thinking the gold would shine through the dark brown lacquer - nope it looked like it was covered with tar when it hardened. I forgot to say that I recently had the privilege of handling a tanto with a leather covered say where they had used silver 'Dutchmen' to join the edges on the back. these were double triangular pieces of silver, joined apex to apex inlet into the leather along the seam. Looked fabulous. Ian Bottomley

This armour was originally in the Sir Frank Bowden collection. I cannot now remember what it went for but it was for a considerable amount. Ian Bottomley

Henk-Jan, Further to my last post I have now discovered why the Tokugawa initiated the Keicho Mission to Spain. It all revolves around the fact that the Spanish were shipping silver from South America to SE Asia where they were buying silk and other luxuries from Chinese merchants who would only deal in that metal.This trade involved very large ships that crossed the Pacific to Asia easily but could only return by travelling northwards to reach the currents travelling towards America. Whilst going north, they had to pass Japan and a few ships were wrecked on the Japanese coast. In 1609 a ship was washed ashore in Chiba carrying a former Governor of the Philippines, Rodrigo de Vivero. In talks with the Tokugawa it was suggested that Spanish ships could shelter in Japanese ports if the Spanish established a trading station near Edo. de Vivero though this possible and agreed to take Tanaka Shosuke, a bullion dealer to Mexico to explore the idea. The translator in these talks was a priest, Luis Sotelo, but de Vivero did not want him to go and chose another priest instead. Sotelo reverted to preaching in Edo and on hearing that Date Masamune's concubine was ill agreed to help and did in fact cure her. Date invited Sotelo to Sendai where he spent a year. Meanwhile the Tokugawa cleared Edo of all Christian priests and destroyed all the churches, but allowed the daimyo to continue to allow Christianity in their provinces if they wished. On Tanaka's return, the Tokugawa were told that the Spanish in Mexico had no authority to set up a trading station but sent Sebastián Vizcaíno to negotiate further. He turned out to be a disaster and set off to find the fabled Gold Islands. On his return he finally agreed to take a Japanese delegation to Spain but they needed a translator. Sotelo had in the meantime returned to Edo and begun preaching but was saved from execution by Date and had returned to Sendai. The Tokugawa were then in a quandary. They needed Sotelo but could not sanction approaching him directly having banished all the Christians from Edo. They equally could hardly be seen to sanction a visit to Spain to meet the Christian King. Instead they instructed their Admiral, Mukai Shogen, to meet with Date and order him to organise the mission. Hence the appearance was that it was Date who initiated the mission, but as I mentioned above, the Tokugawa ordered the building of the ship, gave the gifts of armour and provided the escort. Tokugawa Hidetada's letter to Masamune after the mission was simply cover to distance themselves from the event. Ian Bottomley

Hoanh, I once asked Yoshindo Yoshihara this and he said that he liked to make them but people are reluctant to buy them as are liable to crack. Apparently they can be OK for a long time and then suddenly 'Ping' and you have an hagire. I assume it is because there isn't the thickness a shinogi blade has to absorb the stresses. Ian Bottomley