Hoshi

Warmer territory above

Note that 2.5M is right into the danger zone. Not top tier and rare enough to elicit deep interest by big collectors, not affordable enough to have a exit market. Nobuhide, while a respectable jo-jo saku smith, isn't very recognisable either.

We've moved from red hot to colder and colder. Soshu Nambokucho. Linked Masamune's Jutettsu. Best answer is still 80% atari.

The answer comes tomorrow. Last clue: Soshu Nambokucho it is. Vast majority have gotten this right, so kudos! But where would the attribution point to? There are certainly competing hypothesis there.

Further clues. I consider a certain number of the Kantei in the thread very close to Atari (80%). It is Nanbokucho, of Enbun-Joji sugata (1356-1368) according to Tanobe-Sensei. Here is a link to all high-resolution images: LINK (will be deleted after the exercise).

Many good guesses so far I’m adding the description. Measurements Nagasa 71.5 cm, sori 1.3 cm, motohaba 2.9 cm, sakihaba 2.0 cm, kissaki-nagasa 4.9 cm, nakago-nagasa19.9 cm, nakago-sori 0.1 cm Description Keijo: shinogi-zukuri, mitsu-mune, wide mihaba, no noticeable taper. relatively thick kasane, shallow sori, elongated chū-kissaki Kitae: overall dense but standing-out itame that is mixed with mokume and some nagare and that features plenty of ji-nie, much chikei, and a faint shirake-style utsuri Hamon: nie-laden chū-suguha with a wide and bright nioiguchi that tends overall a little bit towards notare, that widens along the monouchi and that is mixed with some gunome, angular elements, many ashi and yō, hotsure, uchinoke, some yubashiri and tobiyaki, and a few kinsuji Bōshi: widely hardened and largely undulating midare-komi with a pointed kaeri Horimono: on both sides a bōhi that runs as kaki-tōshi through the tang Nakago: ō-suriage, kirijiri, kiri-yasurime, three mekugi-ana, mumei Keep up the Kantei flow!

For high-resolution close inspection: LINK

Either is has an old name, preserved through provenance, or it doesn't. I wouldn't dare awaken the wrath of the sleeping KAMI by misnaming it. All my swords have pronouns though, which I carve myself on the Sayagaki.

The dark rings are chickei. The patches on the surfaces are tobiyaki, or close to the boshi it is a long kinsuji running off into the unhardened area (inazuma is likely the right designator for this, but this can be argued). Keep the kantei flowing!

Here is a blade for Kantei. Restored and photographed by Ted and Darcy. No measurements, descriptions, just stunning photos. I'll check back in a few days. Good luck everyone. 3 guesses per person, rank ordered from most certain to least certain. Period / Tradition / School / Smith If the board can pull it off, prize for atari is 100$ in ETH to NMB. Photo link

Shodai Tadayoshi, these are commodities in Japan. The smith was one of the most prolific of all times, and only the cream of the crop of his work will pass Juyo - typically special orders by the clan who employed him. You can recognise those special order blades as signed without his official title. And even for these, they'll need to be unaltered and pristine, showing his best effort. Here is one for example: https://yuhindo.com/hizen-tadayoshi/ Now these are rare. So I don't want to be all doom and gloom, but your best bet is to take an iphone, dark room, and beam a light on the sword to get decent photos. Gather feedback, and then decide.

Well yes, experts at the NBTHK, and lifelong scholars such as Tanobe-Sensei do have a stronger word in establishing which blades are masterworks and which ones aren't. Your level of confidence is amazingly high. 3 guaranteed Juyo is something exceptional. You're setting yourself up for dissapointment, and I strongly encourage you to post quality photos on the board so that you might have a second opinion to back-up your confidence. There are some knowledgeable members here with experience submitting to Juyo and Tokubetsu Juyo Shinsa, with varying degrees of success. Shipping, handling and failure fee will cost you about 1000$. Success is an added fee accompanied by a lock-up period. It's not cheap. Good luck on your journey.

If you're going for Juyo, best post your blades here (with decent photos) and we can save you a lot of money by filtering what could pass from what definitely cannot. Free knowledge, make the best of it.

As michael said this is an incorrect conclusion. This take, however, perfectly sums up my impression as well. It's a wonderful sword and I'll be taking bets it passes Juyo over 50/50. 130 swords, I think this is a little bit on the low end of the estimate. I would put it more conservatively at 200. We only see the tip of the iceberg. There are course many variations around Kiyomaro from his different periods of worksmanship (up to blades left unfinished by him and signed by his students).

I am completely in awe and would buy this in a flash.

You need TH before applying to Juyo. These are the rules. Exceptional sword or not. There was a point in the past where they would accept Hozon before Juyo, but times have changed. This should fly through Juyo (but you never know, strange things can happen, the machi okuri is of course the main issue here) and will sell on the Japanese market for 15M yen+ in a blink (pretty neat ROI right there haha). Japanese dealers LOVE Masayuki/Kiyomaro. They go fast and make good margins. There is a die-hard group of wealthy Kiyomaro collectors in Japan who unite every year at his tomb, and there is even a dealer specialised in his work. A Masayuki true daisho was sold by Iida last year for close to half a million dollars: https://iidakoendo.com/4947/. Pretty impressive ROI if you ask me.

About 100-200 surviving examples is a fair guess including Masayuki and Kiyomaro (his later signature and style). About half of them are Juyo. Two are Tokubetsu Juyo.

Where can we bomb their sites with reviews? Their poor clients should be warned.

Nice work!

You are right. Slippery slopes are real. I should be a little clearer here. Amateur dealer polish done for cheap is not professional polishing. It is amateur. A professional polish runs 3-6K USD. Saito-san is recommended for Soshu-den. Sashikomi psyops aside, this style of polishing is suited for flamboyant hamons and like you said, typically bizen-den. At the end of day, go with what Tanobe-Sensei recommends. Don't roll dice with these things by going with whatever you hear from your fellow collectors. There are very few polishers capable of pulling off a correct shashikomi polish. It's almost a lost art. Dodo-san is one of the few. Polishing is like surgery. You need to find the best surgeon for your case. The top polishers are hyper specialised and in high demand. Gaijin-friendly Japanese polishers are typically not recommended for venerable masterpieces. The notion that polish gets improved by the use of Uchiko is one of the biggest PsyOps from bad polishers for clients seeking cheap remedies for complex problems. No, you cannot improve a polish by a top polishers with Uchiko. The whole notion is preposterous to begin with and It saddens me that that many still cling to these beliefs.

There is no correct use of Uchiko unless you're a professional polisher. Full stop. There is only an outdated tradition which is causing lasting damage to blades and creating a need for re-polishing to correct the mess and damage these ancient treasures. It's a destructive practice. Play with it on rustbuckets, sure. Use it on your monosteel cutter, that's fine - but don't touch an ancient and venerable blade with that stuff.

Almost certainly not Gimei. One of the great Aoe smiths of the Kamakura period. Close to ubu and long with a beautiful signature. If this one polishes right, it'll fly to Juyo and beyond with high colours. There is some bad flaw in the kissaki and who knows what else the polish will reveal. It can go any direction. I would think it's 90% Juyo (unless hagire) and 30% chance Tokuju (if it polishes right). Perhaps Japanese buyers fought this battle. In any case, it's a treasure. I hope that if a foreigner bought it, he will have it restored by the right artisan. The price reached on the curious koshirae though...what happened there I don't know. Now that one is the real lottery ticket, who knows what that wak is, and the fittings themselves are strangely exotic and could indeed reach back to the momoyama period, I have no idea.

Surprisingly cool for something on Ebay. While unsigned soshu work from the Muromachi period aren't highly regarded (and discounted heavily) - the fact that it is a katana-size Naginata Naoshi in full Hitatsura makes this a rarity. But I do have a bad feeling about it. The Koshirae makes me pause. That's the Ageho-cho from the Taira clan, first time I've seen it on a Koshirae, and it's clearly not an old koshirae. I would ask the seller to inspect the Menuki, they do look like they could be solid gold dragons, or some cheap cast plated dragons and this whole set the fruit of an elaborate dress-up party we see so often on YJP! - so buyer's beware. Something doesn't feel right here. This is likely a hobbyist koshirae project from the 20th century, but who knows...just be careful out there, this is a Japanese dealer, and problem-blades are sold on the foreign market for a reason. Treat it as a grenade with the pin removed. The seller has information asymmetry on his side and close geographic and cultural contact with the world's best experts. We do not.

Do not go on auctions when you're a beginner. You'll get burned. Go with some of the excellent and trusted suggestions above, we have good consigners and dealers in the Community. As always money is best first spent on learning and then buying (but we all kinda go the other way around about it...)

Run away from this Shinto nightmare... Good you came here. I wish you the best in your search.