Jussi Ekholm

Do you have the blade length and tang length with habaki taken off from the sword?

Huge thanks for the pictures

Congratulations, as a big fan of Hōju school I am happy someone has gotten a sword from the north. Would it be possible to see the certificate for my research purposes as I have not seen this sword before? Just my personal feeling based after seeing the few pictures only I might think it is bit later sword (still very old sword though).

The Kiyomaro exhibition one is from Jūyō 25. Here is the item attached, it is easy to match it as there are the dots around the year. The kiritsuke mei is for the 1854 dated one in Jūyō 25. Unfortunately my early Index version contained some errors as I manually typed in all the items, so there were few accidents where I typed kiritsuke mei for wrong item. Now that I have done Index up to Jūyō 71, I have corrected almost all the errors over the years but I still find an error or two in the data every year. There should be at Jūyō level 3 katana and 1 wakizashi by Kiyomaro that are dated to this year, 4 items in total. Unfortunately I only track items pre Ōnin war, so I don't have conclusive data on Kiyomaro. I believe the 3rd picture on your post with many signatures Joe is the signature of Jūyō 35 wakizashi.

Unfortunately I only have the first NTHK book, I've been intending to get 2 & 3 at some point and I think there might be 4th one too. I do only track the old swords but so far I have matched NTHK Yushu for 1 Jūyō Bijutsuhin, 3 Tokubetsu Jūyō, 7 Jūyō and 4 Tokubetsu Hozon.

That is wonderful news. I think you can be fairly confident it is a Nanbokuchō blade as both organizations have given judgement for this period even though slightly different directions.

Not in Facebook but yes to support Paul for 1 or 2 books. I would be curious how this will be different from other National Treasure books? Will the difference be just the English language?

Lot 1 - Ayanokōji https://web.archive.org/web/20250807093456/https://www.seiyudo.com/ka-070325.htm Lot4 - Kagemitsu https://web.archive.org/web/20240531042531/https://www.aoijapan.com/katanamumei-attributed-to-osafune-kagemitsu-nbthk-tokubetsu-hozon-token/ https://web.archive.org/web/20251008162340/https://www.seiyudo.com/ka-091325.htm

It is the one from Tokubetsu Jūyō 3. I've seen it at the museum and I think I should have it in 5 different references. In my opinion it seems to me to be very unique in design.

My 2 absolutely favorite places for swords are Futarasan-jinja and Ōyamazumi-jinja. They do house the most amazing collections of ōdachi and naginata and because of my personal research focus I place them far above anything else. Photography related stuff, the 2 books I own of Futarasan-jinja swords do have great closeup pictures of the items, while the Ōyamazumi-jinja swords book has the more typical Japanese sword book style pictures.

I know my collecting and appreciation is crazy niche focused. This Yosōzaemon Sukesada naginata was probably my favorite item alongside tha absolutely superb Ō-Kanehira tachi at Tokyo National Museum this summer (including the Maeda exhibition). To me none of the 3 Masamune or 2 Gō on display came anywhere close to this naginata. Well I have to admit the Kotegiri Masamune is very nice sword. I do genuinely think that for most people this particular item does not probably evoke any strong feelings at all. However I am extremely happy TNM always has a naginata on display on 2nd floor. On my visits over the years I have seen many incredible naginata they have in their collection.

Those who know me probably guessed this would be coming. I am not one to have huge appreciation for fine swirls/twirls or other miniscule details in workmanship. I would actually want to see some of the swords from shrines. It wouldn't really matter to me who the smith is, rather I would like to have the items photographed that I have not yet found so far in any publication. Especially the ōdachi and naginata would be the most important pieces for me. Still various shrines have all kinds of amazing items, so many awesome tachi for example are in the various shrine collections. I believe photography is always forbidden at the shrines and as I have collected the shrine books around Japan, the images in many of them are unfortunately not that good. Of course there are some very nice books that have very detailed pictures, and I am really happy they have been published. The top smiths are always featured in every publication... I find myself often enjoying the relatively unknown smiths and there are many times I have been liking some of the works quite a bit and the items have seemed to be good quality in my eyes.

This is very interesting subject. As a disclaimer I must note that appreciating the fine details in workmanship is not my thing. I do agree with GP's view that the rankings are depending on many factors. One interesting thing can also be found in another thread by @MassiveMoonHeh where he pointed us that there has been quite long time since any item achieved Jūyō Bunkazai status, however NBTHK keeps awarding new TJ every 2 years. Also if the item is Jūyō Bunkazai it needs to follow certain rule set meant for items of this designation, while Tokubetsu Jūyō have no such requirements. This is just my personal opinion after visiting several places in Japan, and I feel that some places and families got higher rankings perhaps more easily than others. Of course that is related to the provenance of the item. Often the Bunkazai items are preserved in current condition and many of them are not in pristine polish, if you compare them to Tokubetsu Jūyō which are often in pristine polish. Also as described earlier for TJ items tend to be of very finely made, as the artistic quality of these blades is often very high. However for me personally just artistic quality alone is not what I want to study. I love the rustic items at the shrines that are not that commonly known, things surviving in nearly original shape and size, regardless of their quality. Now after I got back from Japan this morning I typed in all the swords I saw this summer to my data and being curious I wanted to see numbers and it seems so far I have seen 26 Kokuhō and 138 Jūyō Bunkazai swords. In my personal opinion there is a huge range among these swords. Just because something is a Jūyō Bunkazai as a designation the sword itself might not be comparable quality in my eyes to for example similarish Tokubetsu Jūyō sword. However if you would slap in the fact that it was dedicated to the shrine by Tokugawa XX in 17XX in koshirae, and it has been preserved ever since, now wouldn't that make it quite important item for example compared to perhaps slightly better quality item by same smith but with no known background? Also there are absolutely amazing items in Japan completely outside of these ranking systems.

Congratulations Andrew

Thank you for the wonderful historical info package Bobby. There was so much going on in the area during Muromachi period. I think it is possible that I could very well mixing up ruler patronage shifts from one lineage to another etc. There was so much going on in the area historically. It was great riding with Piers as he explained the geographical shifts in the area while we drove past certain areas. Would be awesome some day spend a long time just walking around the various historical areas of Bizen swordsmithing.