Hoshi

Confession: I discovered thanks to Darcy that what I always thought was Utsuri was, in fact, the darker antei part. 'shadow of the hamon' is a very bad way to describe Utsuri because it makes one think it has to be the dark part. In fact, 'reflection of the hamon' is the better descriptor to avoid misleading guys like me. This means that what I said above applies to the 'antei' not the Utsuri. The antei is the area of transitional hardness.

What surprises me is the primitive nature of the procedure, there is a niche here for a business. Business model idea: Koshirae bottom-feeding company that provides sword outfitting services to dealer for cheap. Buy by the Kilo, sell a service with a margin. For instance, AOI loses money (via labor costs) by playing musical chairs with Koshirae and sometimes have to delay listings because they don't have an immediate fit. Some of their swords end up with none at all, which isn't good for business. Finally they end up with piles of Koshirae which takes up inventory space and thus costs rent, and lately they've been giving up on some swords and had Saya's custom made. And while they do go with the cheap guys it eats into their margins. This could be made more efficient by centralizing the harvesting and re-outfitting process: appraiser for tsuba and menuki auto-swaps, automated Koshirae fit prediction by renting an X-ray scanner, in-house artisan to make 'quick fixes' and tier-based services to dealers, etc.

https://yuhindo.com/osafune-kagemitsu-tachi/ I tried to preface this post with a description, but words just don't fit to describe this beauty. The interplay between hamon, antei and utsuri must be the work of Gods if there are any... Truly a sacred object, and one that hovers close to the Apex of Nihonto...

As Ray said. I will add that Kencho is vastly underrated in Fujishiro, at Jo-Saku. When counting his Juyo/Tokuju blades, he's at JoJo if not midway to Sai-jo. He is considered superior in skill to Chogi with regards to some of the hamon complexities he could produce, but is priced about halfway to his master.

I recall we discussed this particular sword, which is no doubt top end for Naotane. It appeared on AOI soon after the TJ results in which a naotane sword passed, joining the very elite club along Kyomaro. It's quite clearly an attempts to test the market given the TJ results with a new, much higher price point for a good sword by Naotane. For that price, we're into high tier Koto territory.

Thank you Jussi, interesting numbers. It's really too bad we don't have these going back longer in time. It's hard to make out trends glancing over at raw data but I see a strange slump in submissions between session 56 and 61. It's not a once-shot anomaly, but something which stands out as a multi-year dip and I wonder what caused it. No other trend jumps out of the picture to me. This is something which would be worth producing a proper chat for, provided the numbers all the way down to Juyo 1 are obtainable.

From what I've gathered in my studies, Utsuri denotes a particular steel structure of intermediate hardness between the brittle edge and the soft interior and back. I do faintly recall it entailed a second, softer quench, which also had the effect of stress relief.I can't recall the specifics but it was clearly a functional innovation. I'm sure someone here can say more about the technical details. Bizen steel is reputed to be quite soft, I do remember polisher testimonies which state that utsuri areas are of 'intermediate hardness' and I think this fits well with the idea that to maximize structural soundness you want graduated transition between brittle and soft, and I think this was the function of Utsuri. Now, it could be specific to Bizen, not in the sense of the innovation per se but in the sense of its necessity given the raw materials that this school had to work with. Perhaps the unhardened part of the Bizen steel was so soft that this led to too much bending - so rather than to change the procurement of raw materials, they implemented a second hardening stage to palliate for the deficiency of their ore and this led to Utsuri.

Very interesting. Do you have a source for this? This is fascinating but I suspect it's exaggerated and that the data, if any, is very weak, but I may be wrong. However, Diet + Genes = Height is a proven scientific fact. Nambokucho swords are heavier, larger, longer, and all together require a more muscular frame to use effectively. If the Samourai class and in particular the Tokugawa were short during Edo times, it makes sense to 'regulate' the size of sword to prevent their opponents from having a reach advantage, at least psychologically. Reach is a monumental factor in battle, and perhaps the single most important one when it comes to single combat.

I don't understand the appeal of these sorts of tsubas very well. These strike me as unoriginal productions from a popular template. 1. It's a copy from an original design. There are a lot of them. 2. the original design is excellent and the inventor deserves high praise. If the copy was in a way better executed than the original, I would understand the appeal. But I looked up the original maker and his work in this design is superior. What am I missing?

Very interesting conversation, thank you. It's been a long plan of mine to create a quality piece of furniture to exhibit bare blades. My initial plan was to keep blades and fittings in different environments, because they have different needs in terms of humidity. I never reflected on residual micro-pollution from air quality and fine dust, however. This is new to me.

Agreed Michael. This is a classic fail in fraud: deep, clean chiseling of a new mei. The result is that the mei is too deep and crisp and doesn't fit with the overall condition of the Nakago. It ends up 'standing out' on its own and just giving away the gimei without need for further study. This is one of the most difficult part of making a good Koto gimei. Other than that there are clear call backs to the school in shape and hamon. It's just sleepy activity-wise...

Why would someone offer a Muramasa: 1) On a site with low reputation consequences for defrauding someone else 2) While losing tons of money because it has no NBTHK paper 3) When living in Japan with access to the top appraisers just next door Either: 1) The seller is a fool 2) The seller is very pro-social, and has a strong desire to give money to others anonymously on internet 3) ...?

Completely agree Michael. The auction house business model and it's absurd value erosion isn't attractive anymore with the advent of the internet. For example, big name Gimei at the Bonham: https://imgur.com/a/knqYfds

By price-testing I mean they set a reserve price which is too high to mitigate the risk that it may sell for less than desired. Usually these are close to dealer prices, and if you add the auction house commission then it ends up being a terrible deal indeed. There are many reasons to try this and very few of them are legit. A blade is too toxic (has been around for too long and isn't selling, people get suspicious) and a sale needs to be attempted outside the usual channel because all the usual suspects know it's bad. You can try to get gamblers in: don't send the papers, just Honami old paper, set big price, hope for gamblers to bite. If you have a Honami Shizu Kaneuji attribution and NBTHK says it's Naoe Shizu you're far better off withholding the papers and getting gamblers on board. In auctions, people pay a premium for lottery tickets. You're boneheaded and keep thinking you can get more for your blade than what the guys in the business suggest you sell it at so you parade it around aimlessly.

I agree Michael. I think the results of Compton and Museum of Sword fittings made top sellers realize it's not in their best interest to proceed with auction houses. Nowadays it's like you say, top collection just vanish through the back channels. The auction houses get either the problem pieces - this is what we see with Hermann and Czerny, and bonham/christies get the price-testing pieces with very high reserves, such as the Ubu Senjuin or that strange Mike Daito.

I haven't seen a good blade offered on auction in a while now. There is that ubu Senjuin on Christie's which has been circulating. We see 'price testing' blades once and a while, but nothing really special. But nothing new and exciting. I wonder if we will ever see an important collection, like the Japanese Sword Fitting Museum or Campton, being offered on auction. It could simply be that other retail mechanisms are now the preferred route...

Let's qualify this statement before it gets branded on my forehead for all eternity. Emulation in Shinto period, which was a time of peace, is based on attractiveness not functionality. Transition to Muromachi was a period of economical and socio-political turmoil for all sword schools. quantity over quality became an wartime necessity, which is the default hypothesis to explain decline everywhere. The additional contention is that the decline of Soshu is not just a decline in skill, but also one of access to specific types of iron ores which became accessible when its founders moved to kamakura. The hypothesis is that a loss of access to these raw materials forced last ditch innovations such as Hitatsura. Hitatsura is not structurally sound, especially not on a Daito. The underlying premise here is that raw materials had a lot to do with the technological transition from Yamashiro to Soshu methods. Then this brings us to Ted's contention: For Ted, Soshu Hitatsura was applied on thin shortswords, which was the style of the time, to make them sturdy. This gives the method a functional justification. The fact that there are no soshu daito (?) in Hitatsura is an indication that this style wasn't used on longswords. My stance is that even on a thin shortsword, random hardening will make it brittle compared to a more controlled, notare hardening pattern. This is compounded by the fact that these pieces were very thin. I contend Hitatsura was not a successful functional innovation. The lack of daito could indicate that a) they were never popular and/or b) they broke in great numbers. But this brings us to another great hole in knowledge which is the study of regional metallurgy. We have 'blackish' 'greyish' and 'bluish' steels widely documented as a Kantei point, but basically very little idea of why these faint hues occurred. We also have impressions from polishers of 'hard' Kamakura steel vs 'soft' Bizen steel. How much of these variations are due to ore processing vs the ore itself is a big looming question mark. In the shinto period once steel production became centralized all of this is lost. Variability in steel - and access to ore with specific qualities - is in my view a very understudied topic.

From what I've seen it's simply that this board is not the place to sell 10K+ items. Which is a bit of a problem: these items have nowhere to go in terms of sale without being exposed to big commissions.

Kyomaro to Shizu and Chogi, Hankei to Norishige and Masamune... Shizu and Chogi to Masamune... Masamune to Ko-Bizen and Norishige to Ko-Hoki... The trail goes down to Amakuni... And who then came before? Do you really want to know?

Good choice. This blade has utsuri, complex hamon with a conspicuous folding pattern. Bizen is a fantastic place to start your journey.

The eternal return to the Ko-Bizen, where the Nihonto journey ends, the last step before enlightenment... These swords must be the close to the top surviving creations of their makers, with the exception of the Tomonari which is priced at a lower level. We just don't have enough information to evaluate the pricing in context. The Masatsune Tachi, also Ko-bizen, fetched far higher price. The Yasutsuna, another venerable blade, fetched a similarly top price. The one to top them all was unsurprisingly a Yoshimitsu Tanto... Now imagine if this selection was presented to you for a Kantei session.

We're talking across each other and there is more we agree on that meets the eye. The next step of this conversation will turn into a dissertation that I don't have time to give proper justice to at the moment. I did employ provocative language to advance a position. I'm glad that stimulated a debate (and triggered some of you ). The fall of Soshu is a key topic in the study of Nihonto and it deserves far more attention than it currently garners. Naturally, advancing a hypothesis beyond the one "in the books" requires a lot of evidence and study to be considered competitive. The next step is comparing dates and places of work, continuity in skill transfer, local economic conditions in the transition to Muromachi and metallurgic comparison of steel from Hitatsura work. It's enough work to write a thesis. But this is a hobby and not a PhD, so I'll opt for discussing this - with drinks - at the upcoming DTI.

This remains an unanswered question and Suguha is a good guess. However, swords have areas which get more stress than others, statistically, because they are the strike zones. A structural engineer would model the stress distribution given the shape and optimize the hamon based on this. It's an open question if the result is suguha, notare, ko-choji with plentiful ashi, etc. But it's going to be one of those. Definitely not wide Togareba, O-Choji, or Hitatsura. Soshu is a short story with a sharp peak and a sudden decline. While the Muromachi crisis is certainly a contributing factor, it does not fit this data. Soshu to Sue-Soshu is simply too steep a fall in quality and occured too soon. By comparison, Bizen to Oei-Bizen is a far smoother transition. Both produced top quality products and Soshu had aquired a great reputation in Kamakura. Why would demand for luxury Soshu swords die off suddenly while it persisted in Oei-Bizen? We need to be a little critical here and think outside cudgel explanations. In my opinion, the key to understanding this lies in the stylistic transformation of the late hasebe/akihiro experiments in Hitatsura and why it was undertaken.

I'd say it's a pretty good start. Let's compare perspectives: What's your theory on Hitatsura and the downfall of Soshu?

Let's break down those broad strokes. Hitatsura was the death rattle of Soshu. During the late soshu time, something remarkable happened: Hasebe, Akihiro, and other great Soshu smiths transitioned to Hitatsura. A style which is functionally unsound. Why move from the 'top product' which made the glory of the Soshu towards a high-risk innovation which looks good, but is not structurally sound? We know it's not a sharp skill drop-off since Hasebe and Akihiro have some great work in classic Soshu We know later work features more Hitatsura than early work We know that the classic Soshu products had a lot of demand because the predecessor had established a solid reputation There aren't many explanations and we will never know the truth, but the best explanation I have encountered is that they simply ran out of the best ingredient with the metallurgic qualities used during the Apex of Soshu. Thus, they needed to source elsewhere, and their methods - applied to this new material - did not yield satisfactory results. The school would simply die off if nothing was done and they attempted a last resort innovation: Hitatsura. This is supported by the fact that if you ask Soshu experts, they will tell you that the steel used in Hitatsura appears, superficially at least, of lesser quality. It is simply less prone to creating activity and lacks the glimmer of the top stuff. The rest is history and the school peters off into oblivion. As for the wide O-Choji. These swords broke a lot. We can see that the top Bizen Smith following Ichimonji slowly reduced the extend of the choji midare and implemented other methods to increase the durability of these swords. You find this in the works from Nagamitsu to Kagemitsu. The transition from flamboyance to a near suguha choji is not just a drift in style, but an attempt to improve structural soundness. Fukuoka Choji midare may be the pinnacle of flamboyance and activity, but functionally it was dubious. Now we can speculate as to why that was. One possibility is that the Ichi smiths did not optimize for the warrior customer of the time as much as they did for the tastes of Gotoba. And unlike the former customer, he certainly didn't swing these blades on Kabuto to appreciate them. As an analogy, think about modern architects who optimize for prize-winning rather than for customer well-being. When the judge is sensitive to a dimension which is uncorrelated to the function of the product, you see these departures.