Hoshi

It's Oei Den Naotsuna, which means second or third generation. So that's two more notches down. The Sayagaki is fake, that seller only sells fakes. You can't generalized your experience on Sayagaki by sampling from Yahoo JP. That "Hasebe" you mention must have came up in the fakery mill as "MASTER WORK HEIRLOOM OF HIROMITSU" and Hasebe would be indeed, one notch down. The fact that it comes down as Mumei Sue-Soshu is basically third-rate and, I dare say, a disaster. Now you can say the system is rotten and your blade is really a Hasebe, and here are all the anecdotes which constitutes proof, or roll the dice with NTHK, NTHK-NPO, FUJISHIRO, and basically "p-hack it" as much as you can, to use the academic expression, until the desired result comes out. But I don't think that's a very wise path to thread, but the results are interesting nonetheless. The seller that sold the "Masamune" and fakes Sayagaki also makes acid polish on all his blades. And that's something one needs to live with. Extraordinary claims do require extraordinary evidence. I would like to see a few of of those "one notch down" blades you found in Green Papers. It's a very dangerous notion to be promulgating here and the sort of claims which generally serves only the self-interest of sellers of green-papered blades. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. It may be the case you really found some "one notch down" pieces at a fraction of their worth, but that's risky business and not something we should be clamoring in case beginners read it the wrong way without the proper caveats. I'm not sure I'm understanding this correctly. Do you imply here that Juyo Judgements, from the weaker sessions (~19-24), are less reliable than Sato's Sayagaki, which are less reliable than ...Green papers? That's the world upside-down. I mean this with the most respect, and I am a big fan of your books on Eastern Weapons. But some of the assertions you provide here, with the authority you carry from a different field, can lead to substantial confusion among less advanced students, and big mistakes down the road.

I’m closing PMs for this on Monday 18. Thank you for your interest, I'm humbled.

Attribution is the foremost statement of quality. A low quality iron Tsuba won't come back as Hozon Nobuie, nor will a poor sword return as Hozon Bizen Yoshifusa. In some cases there is substantial uncertainty and there are many good ideas on who could have made it, and then it's even more closely interlocked with a quality assessment. What is true is that judgements at Hozon level are more likely to be conservative and broad and map on quality buckets, and its an invitation for further study. So here is another variant of the maxim: Buy (and understand...) the quality assessment, not the paper

Also a good idea Alex. I just want to avoid any frustrations by mentioning that this is not "first come, first served" basis. I'll pick the next caretaker myself from the PMs I get over the next few days.

The time has come to move on. This is the sword described, photographed, and analyzed in this thread: http://www.militaria.co.za/nmb/topic/20477-disputed-attribution-unjuy-korekazutakei-naotane/ I think the pictures will speak for themselves. It's later work which was tampered with to pass as a Koto sword. A second mekugi-ana was added, and the nakago was artificially aged. As such, it isn't anywhere near the value of a signed blade by a top smith. This means it's also an opportunity to own a high-quality blade at a fraction of the price. As you'd expect its absolutely flawless, it has an aggressive geometry, an impressive ~75cm cutting edge, a thick kasane, and a heavy duty feel to it. It was not made for show, but to fight. The hada is very fine ko-itame and there is a conspicuous kinsuji bolting through the hamon. The polish is in very good condition, except for a few subtle scratches in the upper portion of the blade, which I inherited from its previous owner. I had the original copper habaki repaired, restored and richly gold plated, which is now extremely tight and I believe will need some small file work to adjust. There are a few fine vertical scratches on the 24K gold plating (my fault) but it's good work which has been carried by one of Ford's apprentice. The Shirasaya likewise will need to be adjusted for its restored habaki. I had a koshirae made for it - a foolish labor of love as many of you know - and bought tosogu in a matching Gempei war theme to fit its martial nature. I will be keeping the Gempei war tsuba (it is part of a daisho set) which means that the open-work tsuba pictured in the thread above comes with it, and it will need to be fitted with Sekigane to be tight. I also had custom gold-plate seppas made for this set. The Koshirae is a fixer-upper - I paid 1000$ to have it made in Japan. And you get what you pay for, as such - it can only be described as low quality. However, with a bit of adjusting work it can become a tight, fully functional koshirae. The Koshirae is outfitted with ~1800$ of Tosogu, purchased from AOI art, all papered with desirable attributions to schools such as Kaga-Kinko or Goto. I paid 5500$ for the sword and it was acquired in the dealer auction for 5000$ by a merchant named Hataya. I paid 2800$ for the koshirae and an additional 400$ for restoration work. There is a total of 8700$ invested into this sword. I got rid of the green papers after reading all the bad that came from them to our community, so this is really a case of buy the sword, not the paper. We will never know who made it. Could be Naotane, could be Korekazu, could be Naokatsu, could be later, maybe Shigetsugu, and the list goes on. It's the sort of eternal ambiguity that its next custodian will need to live with, but this is what got me so deeply into learning and study in the first place. I want to give this to someone out there who can't afford a signed sword the chance to own something which is quality and will spark endless curiosity and assiduity in study. I'm going to put it up the whole package up for half-price. Flip side is that I won't sell it to just anyone, I'd like to see some history of contribution, genuine curiosity or a sincere motivated pitch in PM. Sword + Koshirae (50% discount)

There are many beginners reading these threads, and I'm always wary of the perils posed by exposing at length 1970's issues of the NBHTK. As the political climate has shown us with extreme clarity as of late, many people are simply incapable of holding two ideas in their heads at the same time and simply cannot grasp nuance. Often, you will see adoption of either: NBTHK papers are CRAP, therefore my opinion > their opinion NBTHK papers are Infallible, god-given truths. Then if you add to this the fortunate tale of fake peddlers on YJP! messing up their own game and mistakenly selling off a Green papered Sadamune which, by a miracle of fate, repapers to O-Shizu and not some mumei shinto/shinshinto/gendai crap job then the waters turn really murky and could lead beginners to venture into this swamp of garbage and get caught in quick sand.The overwhelming majority of YJP! fraud blades will turn into later work disasters and this is the responsible message to convey here. And the more mistakes people make the deeper they fall into the quicksand of self-righteous delusion and the harder it is to rescue them to the shore. At the end of the journey they start to issue their own Kanteisho and there is nothing left to do. This is the end game for "NBTHK papers are CRAP, therefore my opinion > their opinion" In any case we need to be a little bit careful with what is said here and not throw out the baby with the bath waters. Buy what you like provided you have studied to know what you like. More often than not, for mumei work, there are multiple good answers and maybe the two best answers are tied, and maybe you even get a "Den" which can go either up, or down, or sideways. Trust that NBHTK will give you one of these best answers. Then it's up to you to find the other good answers and live with the ambiguity forever. Perhaps your Den Naoe Shizu is really O-Shizu on a monday morning with a sake hangover. Perhaps your Yukimitsu was really made by a Taima smith for the temple headmaster. Shrödinger's Nihonto. And this is impossible to grasp for the "NBTHK papers are Infallible, god-given truths" people. This is where the mental break down happens and they declare it's all nonsense and quit. The absence of certainty is simply intolerable and the house of cards crumbles. Study all the possible states that the cat can be in. This is the best meaning of "buy the blade, not the paper" because in the end, the paper is just one possible state of the cat, a partial picture - and in the overwhelming majority of cases - the most accurate and probable state to describe that particular cat.

I really enjoyed this episode! A great journey to be taken along with.

All good answers. Michael is closest with "Student of Norishige" and I think you've all guessed right the Etchu influence here. Tametsugu also possible. Attribution is Kachu Sanekage. Traditionally understood as a student of Norishige. When the Matsukawa hada is less masterful, the next best guess is generally Sanekage, which can be understood as "Not quite Norishige".

"Typical for the smith" that was a real curve-ball you threw there! AFAIK there isn't a single Juyo attributed to him, perhaps in mistake, as this is clearly a fine hada. I don't think anyone of us have any experience with this smith, and common Bungo just isn't very good. The only Bungo I'm vaguely familiar with is Yukihira and the kantei is very easy when ubu. Also "Most cited school on NMB" I would have put my money on SEKI MINO, or UDA, in terms of frequency. But perhaps it you take the whole history of NMB Bungo comes up on top. That Kantei was very tough! Make an easier one! It's a fun game. Here is my contribution. Something different, much easier! And move all the way to the opposite of Yamashiro hada. For some vets here this will be too easy to get a good answer (there are 2-3 "good" answers).

It's a steal at this price. I'm surprised this hasn't sold yet. Where are all the bargain hunters?

Well done Guido, thank you sharing with us!

Great posts, thank you. Yes, we enter the domain of nearly unique artifacts and they carry, on top of their scarcity value - a scholarly value as the last remaining historical testimonies which will be used to construct the cannon by which other works will be attributed to this smith. This is something I came to realize only recently. Collecting signed works allows to collect pieces which deviate from the smith's established corpus. In a mumei condition, these swords would not have been attributed to this specific smith. This means that if one were to aim for a representative collection of a particular smith, collecting zaimei work can add a lot in terms of range and variety. Finally, zai work also carries a certainty value. There is no guess work involved, it says "this work was created by this smith". Whereas mumei attributions are always probabilistic in nature, with uncertainty sometimes encoded as "Den" when the shot falls at equal distance between two or more possible smiths. A good way to think about attributions is as "The qualities of the work corresponds most to the established style associated with this smith" and not "This work was created by this smith" - and there is subtle but large distinction between the two, since the the former excludes all experiments and non-cannon stylistic deviations which one may find in zai pieces while the latter is essentially a composite representation of an archetype constructed over generations of judges, going all the way back to the Honami.

It’s possible. It’s also one step before the hadori. However it is appropriate only for a few types of blades, ichimonji in choji comes to mind. And then it’s impossible to capture on camera properly. There isn’t a cookie-cutter polishing style which is better for everything. Each blade has a « best in class » polish and Tanobe-Sensei would be the best for advice. Even within schools of polishers, honami, fujishiro, etc, there are flavors or ways to do the polish which will gives different impression and result at the end. For instance, mishina’s hadori heavy style is best for Shinto blades, whereas Dodo-san does miracle on Bizen I’ve heard. Can be training, artistic take, but it can also be rare stones. Polishers aren’t interchangeable. They’re artists in their own right hand and are very much inseparable from the final product. So it’s not just « hadori vs shashikomi » but rather the process of choosing an artist for a particular piece of work, with all his peculiarities and sensibilities. I think the bad rep in the West from hadori is there because we’ve been exposed to cheap and misleading hadori jobs due to excessive bargain hunting.

This isn't the Osafune Kagemitsu. As for what it is, it's very difficult to say. If I'd venture a guess: Shinshinto based on shape and hamon style Ubu or close, second Mekugi-ana added to make it seem O-suriage Gimei with the intent to pass as Osafune Kagemitsu Example of Kamakura-period Osafune Kagamitsu.

There is a substantial overlap between these schools, and an attribution to Enju can mean different things. It can be a quality assessment "lesser Rai" in the absence of defining traits. And in general Rai is better. But there are exception in which the Enju piece is at Rai-level in terms of its Jigane, hamon, and other characteristics, and goes to Enju because of the Boshi. It's a case-by-case basis and each blade needs to be evaluated individually to figure out whether the judgement is a quality call or a school call. Repeat this over time that the best Enju work gets absorbed into Rai, and the bad Rai get sorted down into Enju, and you end up with attribution-as-quality, notwithstanding the exception based on the defining traits. Back to the NTHK, I would be interested in learning about blades which have scored highly as well.

Soshu to Yamato can be quality gradient for some smiths, for instance in the case of Yukimitsu, especially the work with medium to high shinogi. The best work will go to Yukimitsu, and the lesser work to Yamato Taima. The cross-fertilization between Yamato and Soshu is even more pronounced in Yamato Shizu vs Naoe Shizu. It's not just the hamon which intersect. Ultimately it takes knowledge to differentiate between an attribution as a statement of quality, and an attribution based purely on defining characteristics. For instance, Enju generally means 'lesser Rai' but in some cases, the blade may be 'Rai-level' in Jiba and feature a defining Enju boshi which will put it at Enju with the quality of Rai. Something tells me its the same high-end collectors with green paper to Masamune and Juyo papers to Yukimitsu which will come to say 'high-end Soshu is all subjective and a matter of personal preference' - not the other way around. Strange how things flow in one direction only I've yet to see a collector show me a proper Masamune and whisper "you know, this is really Tametsugu...NBHTK is wrong..."

Ambiguously worded. While I agree that I haven't personally heard of a change from H to TH, changes do happen at Juyo and TJ. It means the judgement is converging to a better idea after deeper study. There is nothing to gloat about. Exactly my point above. Go the the NTHK if you want Muramasa judgement on a wide-gunome blade. Use that wiggle room to extract maximum cash. Because these are judgement of quality first and foremost, Uda means "below Norishige student" on top of meaning Uda. Shimada means "low quality late soshu" in most cases. Now you have exceptions to this once you get a judgement at the smith-level for Uda, e.g. Uda Kunimitsu means Uda Kunimitsu, outstanding Uda smith who even has a blade at Tokuju. I'm not convinced of this, but assuming it is the case - it could simply be because the NTHK uses Mihara to communicate a certain standard of style and quality, while the NBTHK uses Sue-Bizen. It's not like these works follow an archetype, there is a lot of fungibility at the lower levels. The lower the attribution, the wider the error-bar. My Shizu is a Masamune. I made a HUGE bargain on this one. The NBTHK is just plain wrong on this. They also made a typo on the paper and added "Naoe" before Kaneuji. Thankfully my sword-sensei knows the truth because he was initiated to the secret Honami methods through the scrolls of the late Chosiki. You wouldn't imagine how much I paid for it! Jokes aside, there are many foolish rich people who think they own gold when they own lead because their ego prevents them from appraising the situation objectively. Now, there is wiggle room between Yukimitsu, Masamune and Shizu for some swords which can fall into the middle, like a very notorious tanto, but on the whole - the majority of the corpus is very well differentiated, to say it's a matter of personal preference is a wild hyperbole...

The problem with multiple standards of certification is straightforward: Submit twice Discard the lower attribution Profit I suspect this is why dealers in Japan generally regard these alternatives with mistrust. Imagine if they all played this game, the mess it would be. This is why personally I would also be suspicious of a different provider of Kanteisho if there is not an accompanying NBTHK kanteisho, and would be a no-go in Japan in particular where such an occurrence (Big name + NHTK kanteisho) would raise immediate red flags. So it seems the natural equilibrium of commerce has converged to the NBTHK as the norm to avoid this wiggle room. And in my opinion for good reason, because the NBTHK has not one, but four opportunities to revise its judgement. This means that bad calls get the opportunity for revision provided the blade is good enough to advance. This also means that attributions at the highest level are more reliable - and generally more precise - than attribution at Hozon. Hozon will typically be more conservative in judgement, with a greater use of 'buckets' where one needs to read between the lines. Juyo sees the bulk of the refinement in attribution. This is most often where a bucket can be further specified into something more specific, or a bad call overturned. Tokubetsu Juyo: This is the final chance to set the attribution to the best idea and as such it's a big burden of responsibility.

Here is the one tanto koshirae which is juyo from him. I am arguably biased from that singular example, and there is a variety of styles he worked with. My worries reside entirely in the expression of the tigers (more westernized, less Japanese) and composition (very heavy even for him) not with the workmanship which I agree is commensurate, at least based on the photos we have at our disposal. I am sure that in hand we could discern much more (e.g. are those strips inlays or not?)

The dragon passes the sniff test, it's the big cat which don't. These cats look much more modern than what would come out of his workshop in style and presentation, based on the (arguably limited) corpus of his work with which I am familiar which are in the Juyo volumes. Here is another fake piece sold not too long ago. Now the style of cats here work, but the quality and composition are low. Now I could be mistaken and Katsuhira opted for a completely different style of cats at some point in his career...

Doesn't look right. Too busy, and the representation of the theme doesn't fit the corpus either. It's a kitsch imitation designed to appeal to a wide audience going 'wow' and not knowing really better. I suspect a late Meiji workshop has been producing this one. Just like this one here and perhaps this one here. The F/K set by contrast is very elegant and beautifully carved.

Where is this tanto koshirae from? Something doesn't look right quite right about it. Seems like late Meiji imitation made for export.

"Three blades max at once" As if its a courtesy to be able to see the merchandise. The reality is that you will be much better served in terms of customer service in the many Ginza shops, such as Ginza Choshuya. There you will find a wonderful English speaking staff which will entertain you about swords and fittings while offering you fine tea. AOI photoshops blade to hide flaws, and this is just one of their many, many questionable business practice. While it may have the biggest online presence in the west, and they do once and a while have a good blade up there for sale, this is a rarity. They specialize in 'problem swords' which are hard to sell in Japan because of some hidden issue which allows them to buy cheap and sell high by exploiting ladder theory. I call their offering the 'freak circus' because you have all sorts of strange things, such as the RAI tanto with an unbelievably disgraceful horimono, a bizarre Ichimonji with a hamon which no longer corresponds to its old Oshigata, a Chogi tanto with a Hitatsura tempering which doesn't fit the smith, but the signature is authentic (?). The deeper you dig, the more you know, the more unsettling it gets...

I wouldn't touch any of these blades with a ten foot pole. Stay away! the Koshirae are makeshift junk 'bought by the kilo' and the blades are exceedingly poor in quality. While they look good at first glance, I guarantee that as you dig and dive into the hobby your eyes will sharpen and you will see it as what it is. Generally AOI is full of landmines and you need a lot of knowledge to avoid getting burned. In your price range what you want is MUMEI + top Muromachi / Shinto / Shinshinto maker. The MUMEI (no signature) will cause the price of a very high quality item to dive down to oblivion. This is how you can get away with a top quality piece at a steal. For example, a mumei first gen Tadayoshi which was, if I remember correctly, priced at 550'000. I had a look on the web to see if by chance I could find something nice as a starter piece within this very tight budget. I couldn't, even looking a prior listings. But as soon as you break 3.5+ you can start finding things which meet the criteria above (mumei, high quality, Muromachi+) Here is one: https://tokka.biz/sword/kanemoto6.html A fine Kanemoto Wak with the classic Sanbonsugi hamon (saw-tooth pattern). Healthy, no flaws I can see. A piece which illustrates an iconic style of hamon of the late Muromachi period which would endure for many generations. The price would be five times what it is, had the signature been preserved. As a bonus, there is a so-called 'Kinzogan' mei, a gold inlay inscription which reads Kanemoto. Now, the question is which generation kanemoto. This is a question for you to research, and here you can find a good primer. Of course the better option is to wait and build your war chest. Wait and see what comes up. Look for big names or big schools on the NBTHK papers, flawless, healthy and mumei of these eras. In the meantime study, study, study. Collecting Nihonto is a very slow hobby...

Green paper Muramasa on eBay: ✓ Enough said at this point. I have to admit the burley oak with plastic Mon sticker made me chuckle...