IanB

Piers, I promised I would post a picture of my cartridge box and have at last managed to do so. I think the kamon is that used by the Yendo family. The bamboo powder flask came with the box. I am also including a picture of my two guns. The top one is a Sakai gun that was a Christmas present from me to me some years ago (beats the heck out of getting pairs of socks ). It was one of three in an auction sale, only one of which had been cleaned. Mine was covered in that very hard green corrosion but has cleaned up well. The other is absolutely plain so it might be a munition gun. I bought this one at a sword show in SF many years ago. Nice thing was that having toted it across the Atlantic and cleared it through customs, I found it was found to be loaded. The barrel on this, which is filed round on top, is covered in minute plugs. It must have been one of the worst bits of iron imaginable, but someone thought it worth spending hours plugging all the faults. Ian

Brian, A very obvious answer is to suggest what parts of a sword, blade, tsuba etc to illustrate when they make enquiries. Needless to say I would be willing to help. Ian Bottomley

No sorry. I wish I had photographed many of the items I have owned and traded over the years. Ian Bottomley

Even better to my mind is the term 'Battle ready'! Is there a military action going on somewhere where the sword might be used in anger? I've also noticed the use of 'Fully functional' - again, who are the head-bangers this kind of description is aimed at? :? Ian Bottomley

All, I've never pretended to know anything about tsuba, but I think you might have missed something with this pair. It would have been wrong to comment whilst they were sale, but now the sale has ended, I think the buyer has obtained a bargin. The shakudo based tsuba had superb nanako and showed considerable wear on the turtle and elsewhere - so much so that the details were worn away. Yes its possible that it was modern and could have been aged deliberately, but I don't think so. The other tsuba, of shoki, was not done in metals but in lacquer. If you looked at the oni, the details are not modelled with cuts but with applied trails of lacquer. Another give-away was the gilding on the seppadai on the reverse, the gilding had strayed slightly along the edge. Whether it was lacquered on metal or wood - who knows? I think you might find the signature is that of an inro maker or similar. Ian Bottomley.

Mark, Ah, you are the one who beat me on that one. I'm pleased it went to a good home. I was just as intrigued by the silver kamon inlaid into the saya. I suspect you have bought a nice sword there. Ford - a tameshi inscription has by definition to be later. It may have been to enhance the value, but again that is true of all tameshi inscriptions. I feel that the addition of the kao suggests it is probably perfectly authentic. I wonder if the tester used silver or gold inlay in a similar way to the Honami use of gold or lacquer for their appraisals - to indicate two different circumstances. I cannot see why they might need to do that since the result of the test forms part of the inscription. Ian Bottomley

Piers, You lucky man. I have a similar cartridge box but with the innards missing. Mine looks as if it originally had partitions. Now here's a bit of useless information. At one of the great Paris expositions in the late 19th C. there were some of these exhibited at the Japanese pavilion with hinawa ju and powder flasks. One Parisian guy was so intrigued by the way they were constructed, by folding and sewing, he decided to have a go at making luggage the same way. His name was Vuitton! You might note that even his trade-mark leather is printed with stylised kamon. Ian Bottomley

Brian, Takayama, up in the mountains. It has lots of antique shops and has an entire area into which the authorities have moved old buildings to give you an impression of being in an Edo period town. I would also visit Nagoya, if for nothing else than to see the Tokugawa Art Museum. More National Treasures than you can shake sticks at. Matsue - a rinky-dinky little castle that is all original, antique shops and lovely scenery. Tottori - sand dunes and the Watanabe Museum. The latter has about 480 armours on show, forests of yari and standards walls covered in jingasa and examples of almost any weapon you can think of and many you can't. Ever seen a folding yari? They have a section devoted to items belonging to the Ikeda family with some really good things. Finally how about Seki ga Hara? There used to be a 'War Land' theme park there that has to be the ultimate in bad taste, but the little museum attached has some good stuff. Enjoy. Ian Bottomley

Most of the hachiwara I've seen have had spurious Masamune signatures and dates on them and then, rather incongruously, the real signature of the smith who made it. If memory serves, I seem to recall that the couple I have owned over the years have been by Mino smiths. I also seem to remember that the tangs were filed up in a rather decorative way at the end. What does puzzle me is the odd decoration of the mounts of many of these things - rather indifferent carved and then covered in garish red or gold lacquer. Not at all the quality you would expect. Could it be that a lot of these (mounts at least) were made in the Meiji era? Ian Bottomley

Just to elaborate slightly on Moriyama San's comment: Kenukigata tachi have the hilt forged in one with the blade, rather than having a tang. This thickened iron hilt section was covered by a sleeve of silver or gilded copper to make it look more decent. This meant that the seppa, tsuba and habaki could not be fitted in the normal way but had to be slid up the blade to butt against the hilt. To keep everything in place, the blade and habaki have a hole in them that held a rivet, peened over both ends and hence more or less permanent. I had one of these swords in my care for years with silver mounts. When you held it the hilt seemed too narrow and felt very unyielding. I suspect striking with such a sword would have jarred the hand badly - which is why they were superceeded by the more conventional wooden hilt. Ian Bottomley

The rather sudden departure of Nogami San took us and others by surprise. We even had a bound copy of the newsletters from last year to give to him as we had done previously. We shall of course make diplomatic representations to the new encumbant through the correct channels. Ian

Oh dear. Isn't there enough suffering in the world with having my mug-shot displayed? :lol: Yes, the day was highly successful. Hundreds of people came to view our display, and many even asked intelligent questions. As usual the ToKen members rallied around and put on a wonderful show of fine blades, superb koshirae and some interesting helmets and armour. Apart from a real clanger dropped by yours truely I was proud of the effort. One of our members had emailed me that he was bringing a Gassan Sadakazu blade that I somehow read as Sadakatsu and stuck it in the display case alonside the blade without even looking at the signature. Very embarrassing. Ian bottomley

Piers, Moriyama San, I think the archery sets that have been illustrated are far too delicate to have been used in a public attraction. The bows in the illustration are what I would describe as hankyu. I've never owned one but I remember seeing one in the collection of Jack Flinton (a famous old archer back in the 1950's -60's who had a house full of archery equipment from around the world). His was made like a normal bow but rather garishly lacquered and about 4 foot long. The bow in my set has a section of about 8mm x 6mm near the grip, tapering down. It is also embellished with ivory where the sections fit into the silver sockets (that above the grip is silver on the back and shakudo on the belly). This suggests a very expensive item rather than something to be used by commoners. Ian

Piers, I will now try again to load the images of my little archery set. Success :lol: Ian

Piers, Sadly I cannot remember where or even when I saw the print. I'm not sure how rare these are. I have one, there is one in the Royal Armouries collection and I remember at least one other in the collection of a famous old archer, Jack Flinton. I was wrong about the purple stripes, That must be the Armouries set. One of my arrows has a blue dyed section on one fletching - presumably to show which is the 'cock' feather. I have just tried to load some photos of my set and failed. I suspect the file size was too large. I will try again later when I load some file sizing software. Ian

Piers, The little archery set is in fact a palour-game. I don't know what it was called but I have seen a woodblock print of it being played in the non-operative part of 'a house of ill repute' by the ladies and a customer. I have a set, not as grand as yours, but with the fittings for the bow half in silver and half in shakudo. The arrows have little flat heads which were either dipped in ink or rubbed with chalk to leave a mark on the cloth target. Intrestingly the fletchings are white with purple dyed stripes and the arrows have different numbers of gold lacquered rings to differentiate the players. Ian Bottomley

All, It seems that the UK customs are now getting the hang of the new legislation. Having just bought a katana blade in shirasaya I decided to circumvent the official path whereby they seize the goods and send you a letter to that effect. As soon as I had bought the blade I wrote to them enclosing a copy of the eBay printout showing all the details of the transaction and stating that they would be getting a parcel with the EMS number. I also enclosed a copy of the page from Hawley with the smith's listing. Bingo!! The plan worked a treat - no letter of seizure and the sword released and charged correctly within a couple of days. Ian Bottomley

Piers, There are illustrations of these rain protectors in the catalogue 'Military Accessories of a Daimyo Household" No 10 put out by the Tokugawa Art Museum in Nagoya. Two have hinged sides so that you could prime the pan and get at the serpentine without remocing the cover. There is also a famous book illustrated by Kuniyoshi showing gunners with rain-guards that are like rectangular boxes without a front or back. Ian Bottomley

Brian, There is such a book. It dated from around 1910, there was an inserted slip describing a recent fire at Nikko Toshogu. It dealt with key-fret patterns and how they could vary in complexity. There were also sections on typical Japanese lacquer designs and textiles. I gave my copy to the library at Nikko Toshogu Shrine since so many of the examples were copied from there. I cannot for the life of me remember the title or author. Ian Bottomley

Reinhard, I sympathise with your views to some extent, but there is another aspect. What may be 'flavour of the month' now, will change in due course. Although it is a little off topic, I undertook a bit of research once on Indian long guns because the Royal Armouries had a large collection of them. By and large they were of almost no interest to most people and are common enough, but almost no research had ever been done on them, even in India. By photographing their stocks and sticking them on a map in the location they came from, I built up a picture of where the half dozen or so stock types originated from. Had these weapons been disposed of, the associated information would have become separated and lost. Similarly, the Royal Armouries holds thousands of Napoleonic period bayonets, apparently all alike, but in reality the product of many workshops and all subtly different. Someday someone will do the research on them and add yet another piece of knowledge to the ever-growing catalogue. Ian

It is indeed sad that so many wonderful items are languishing unloved, and in many cases unwanted, in the storerooms of museums. However, don't blame the curators. They are constrained by rules and regulations and its their reputation and job if things go wrong. As things stand, museums within the UK cannot dispose of objects without a vast amount of red tape. Remember it was generally some previous owner who donated the object and their wishes should be respected. Similarly, offers to clean and repair objects might well result in the permanent wrecking of an object by well-meaning but irreversable treatment. A curators job is to preserve for future generations and by and large they do a good job. I must admit that museum professionals do tend to regard non-museum enthusiasts with caution. I myself have had to disillusion quite a few 'Japanese sword experts' who visited the collection I looked after. In most cases they came from the martial arts world and were convinced they knew all about swords. The very best occasion was when an 'expert' complained to a Gallery Host that an item was wrongly labelled. She called me down from the office to deal with the matter. The gent in question then started berating me over the description of a nagamaki and said words to the effect that had I read Ian Bottomly's book I would know that this description was wrong. I derived immense pleasure by holding up my ID card in front of his eyes. Ian

Yes, the picture used in my book is of the room in Snowshill in the days when it contained 26 armours and masses of other stuff. My association with the place goes way back. When I first saw the Japanese collection, which was acquired mainly in the 1930's and 40's, it was in a bit of a state. He had set up the display on dummies knocked up by his gardener and based on a Japanese made figure. Back in the 1960's some of the better armours had been loaned to the Tower of London (about 8 I think), so I guess there are 34 or 35 in the whole collection. By the time I first saw them, parts had become dispersed and mixed on various figures and many were pretty dirty. These were sorted out and a complete catalogue of the armour was produced. There were also numerous swords, yari and guns as well as oddments like saddles and stirrups but I never really came to grips with these. I do remember a couple of daisho, tachi and one rather basic no-dachi. When the Royal Armouries moved to Leeds, the entire Oriental collection came with it, except for the Snowshill armours that were returned to the National Trust. As far as I know these did not go back on display but were put in storage. More recently, as I understand it, the house was deemed unstable and was closed whilst floors and so on were repaired. For reasons of conservation it was decided that a part of the collection was too delicate to be placed back on display, which is why they are now in storage. As for the Royal Armouries staff cleaning the place, it did not happen whilst I was a curator there although there may have been some dialogue between conservators of the two institutions. It is perhaps worth saying that the guides at these places are volunteers. They are given guidance as to what to say but I suspect enthusiasm occasionally takes over. Ian Bottomley

Steve, Just to add a little to what has been said. Your tsuba depicts the attributes of Guan-yu, a gunbai fan, a book and his favourite staff-weapon with the blade issuing from a dragon's mouth. The fuchi/gashira obviously depict military objects; a face mask, a sode, a saihai and a horse bit. Ian Bottomley

Sorry Rob but the Japanese smith didn't sign his work. It is rather a narrow tang anyway. Ian

Fully agree Brian, wootz is a minefield and no Japanese swords were ever made from it in a way that retained its structure. As for the aiguchi, that is made from a European blade. The only treatment given to it by the Japanese was to cut it down into an elegant shape and differentially harden it. I've been looking for my copy of the ToKen Exhibition catalogue hoping to photograph the picture of the sword and failed. If anyone has a copy they could scan the image. I have the Arms and Armour Journal but feel it inappropriate to copy pictures from it without permission. Ian