Jussi Ekholm

For the question Gerry had about the quality, I think Chandler wrote really good answer. Several of the very large items ōdachi and naginata are not that high overall quality and some of those are even designated as Jūyō Bunkazai. In my opinion that is awesome as the item is so amazing it qualifies as Important Cultural Property. As I feel this should not be just about quality, of course there are several factors that affected things when items were designated and I remember @MassiveMoonHeh wrote good posts about how things were at time items got those designations. I have done few presentations here in Europe about naginata, and it has always been fun. Still I've noticed preparing for presentations / doing youtube videos (which I have not done), takes surprisingly large amount of time. I am just amazed how some people can achieve so many different things regarding swords in general, some people are so effective with their time. I do have about 3 projects that I am currently doing (these are competely under radar as I will just pop them out when they are ready) but I have been thinking it might be at least 2-3 years in my estimations that I might finish even one of these. Unfortunately I have not yet visited Sano Art Museum. It is on my go to list, and eventually I will go there some year and hopefully catch the Nagamitsu naginata there, although I might hope to see the signed Chōgi naoshi they have. For Nagamitsu I have so far seen the Jūyō Bunkazai naginata, and Kagemitsu Jūyō Bunkazai and the undesignated one of Nikkō Tōshōgū. They are of course very nice items but the next reference picture might show you slight view of my appreciation style and how size affects the general view of things. For my presentation last year I actually scaled all these pictures to scale. They are not perfectly 100% as I didn't count every single pixel but they should be very close. As I correlated blade length in cm to pixels, the image on right is 8000x8000 pixels. I did 3 slides Kamakura/Nanbōkucho - Muromachi - Edo, and as a fun factor I wanted to have Awataguchi tachi 75,5 cm and Hizen katana 70,5 cm as a reference in ever slide to show the actual size of the items (both big and small naginata). The National treasure Nagamitsu naginata is the small one on right side (N.11). As I have seen the big ones 9,10,12 in person and been awed by them, then as someone who does not have a keen eye for quality I might have trouble appreciating the National treasure as much as I should. Plus there is the thing that I am not a huge fan of the actual form it has , you can see the Ryō Hisanobu naginata of Tokugawa Art Museum has similar form. I feel one interesting thing in naginata and yari is the variance, there are so many different styles in them, especially when compared to katana & tachi which almost all look very similar.

That looks like an amazing book.

You are correct Gene, I had not realized the spear Otegine was destroyed in 1945. The article you linked is great and it explains things far better than I ever could. Only minor detail on it is that they have wrong Yoshisuke smith typed in. The smith is actually 義助 Yoshisuke from Shimada. I got more time today than I thought I would, and I looked through all my books that might have very long yari. I do have sword books from I'd say most of the major shrines with large sword collections. Unfortunately I think yari were not that often dedicated to shrines compared to swords, I think yari were seen more utilitarian in general. There are few ones but I think the longest few fall between 60 to 80 cm. As 80 cm blade length seems to mostly be the topping out point for long spears. I managed to find one that is 88,3 cm made by Wakasa Munenaga and dated to 1596. It is in the collection of Tokyo National Museum, and I believe it is a famous yari. If you are hunting for 70+cm yari, I would try to look into Dōtanuki, Shimada and Kanabō. Occasionally I think you can see long ones from late Muromachi Bizen, or late Muromachi Mino. My research is focused on ōdachi and naginata but I admit over the years I have occasionally looked the big spears. This might be the longest one currently on the open online market 80,9 cm and from 1476. https://nihonto.com.au/product/masamitsu-omi-yari-with-original-koshirae/

There is a famous yari that has blade length of 139 cm, I'd think that is about 55 inches. I will try to write a better post about this on weekend.

That was a very good question, it started bugging me so much I couldn't sleep before I counted them. From my data at the moment I found 108 naoshi that have over 70 cm blade length. Granted few of them might be from early Muromachi but almost all would be by or attributed to Kamakura/Nanbokuchō smiths.

I agree with Michael this is amazing discussion with great views. Learning lot of new stuff reading this one. Here is interesting blade that might be less known to many. I am lucky to have so many reference books at home, sometimes there can be cool information. As I put the magazine over the book, on the left you can see the blade in Tōken Bijutsu 261, and on the right it is Jūyō 24. Originally the sword had Norishige signature 伯佐則重, it got removed and the sword later went to pass Jūyō with shumei 古入道, and was seen as work by Uda Kunimitsu.

For me this item is far more interesting than Jūyō or Tokubetsu Jūyō items. I've chatted this one with few people and of course my view is very difficult to grasp. This one is for me kind of item that I travel around Japan to see, holy grail as I travel to see ōdachi and naginata. Unfortunately this one went more than I would have been capable of investing, and I was not in buying position at this moment. However I managed to buy another monster naginata from Yahoo Auctions earlier this year, it is still in Japan as like Gerry said arranging the shipping for these is very difficult, it was too large for me to bring on my flight this summer. For me it is a dream coming true even if the item itself is not interesting to many. I have been tracking Yahoo Auctions somewhat weekly or every other week for maybe at least 6-7 years now. This year is probably the first time I manage to see a monster naginata on sale in there, and now this has happened two times this year. It is showing the rarity of these a bit for the average buyer, maybe people with close connections to dealers will have better access to these items but these are not kind of items that high quality dealers usually focus on. For the fun of it I took a look on Kamakura - Nanbokuchō naginata that have in my data that are over 70 cm blade length and in my current research found only 25 of them (there are most likely some more in my data and in items I have personally seen in Japan but as I am not 100% sure on their age I did not include them). I have so far seen 7 out of the 25, I have tried to see even more of them but they have not been on display when I have visited the shrines. Out of the 25 items 13 are designated as Jūyō Bunkazai, and out of the 25 items 15 currently reside in collections of shrines & temples.

Thank you for specifying that Kirill. I understand it to a certain point, I am just so puzzled with Sōshū in general. If they were seen as so amazing items I would think there would be more preserved signatures in various forms, and as there are oshigata books that show various signed items.

I don't know Sōshū that well and it is a school I do really struggle to understand, I can't understand the fame. I got gifted the wonderful Sōshū-den book by NMB member and I admit I am puzzled by many things in the wonderful book. It is very well researched so it is most likely correct information. However I would think even late Kamakura Sōshū smiths would sign their tachi. There are several signed Shintogō Kunimitsu tachi, there is a signed Masamune tachi etc. I cannot see any reason why they would make mumei tachi, now I agree that the amount of ō-suriage mumei above certain length does not make logical sense, as not all of those surviving swords were in my mind ōdachi. I do personally believe not all remaining ō-suriage mumei are ō-suriage mumei, however I do not have skill or knowledge to prove my theory. I also think that several of the tachi that are currently judged as ubu mumei would have had a signature originally. Just my personal thought and way of thinking. Thank you for posting the item in Umetada oshigata and the connection to Tokyo National Museum item Brett. That was a new thing for me. What is interesting I personally think TNM might be skeptical of few Norishige tantō they have in the collection, as they haven't published pictures or information about the items on the website. I cannot see other logical reason why they wouldn't publish and document these extremely valuable signed examples well. They do have another interesting signed Norishige, and it is with Kamakura signature, that might be extremely interesting to the Sōshū lovers on board. It is signed □□国鎌倉住則重 / 保元年十二月三日 □□ Kuni Kamakura jū Norishige. As there is no picture it is impossible to say anything about the year but using logic I would think it is missing first character and it would be 文保元年, as in 1st year of Bunpō (1317). That would probably be fitting the timeline being established for the smith. https://colbase.nich.go.jp/collection_items/tnm/F-247?locale=ja Also it seems there has been Imperial collection item signed 相模国住人則重 and dated to 正中 (1324-26), however it seems Honma Junji doubted the legitimacy of this item. One thing is that whose authority will you accept on items. At Ōyamazumi-jinja there is a dated naginata by Norishige It is signed and dated to 1325, 正中貮□十月日越中国住人則重. Now I think it is easy to discard the shrine items that do not have authentication by Bunkachō or NBTHK but I feel they are extremely valuable items. I have seen the naginata several times, I cannot of course say if it is legitimate Norishige. However what is interesting is that several dated tachi oshigata by Norishige on Sōshū-den book have the similar form where year is written first and then Norishige signature on same side under it.

This is amazing and fun, I can't figure out how @Hoshi has been able to make this. This plays out very similarily to NBTHK monthly kantei with the description. Well this of course has very tight timer, and it makes you decide answer within 90 seconds. I admit I might have bit "unfair" advantage in having done NBTHK monthly magazine kantei for several years, so I know some words that NBTHK often uses as clues to some smiths/schools. And the bigger thing is that I've probably spent massive amounts of hours with Jūyō books over the years. There are items I know from memory after seeing the picture and measurements. However the system can be very tricky and throw in slight curve balls. In one session I automatically threw out Sōshū Akiyoshi as option as I thought I remember there weren't any items remaining by him. Well it turns out there are 1 signed and 1 attributed that I completely forgot about... Sometimes the options are very close to each other and occasionally you can immidiately exclude some of the 5 options. It is addictive and cool system, some quiz are very hard and some bit easier.

Some very good posts in the thread. I admit I am often puzzled by mumei high end attributions. I believe there are Jūyō 15 Naoe Shizu - TJ 7 Shizu TH Tametsugu that I believe passed as Shizu in Jūyō 71 Jūyō 23 Naoe Shizu - Jūyō 65 Shizu Jūyō 20 Yamato Shizu - TJ 15 Shikkake Jūyō 36 Shizu - TJ 25 Yukimitsu These are Shizu related items that I know have shifted in attribution.

Thank you for posting this research Hector.

Jacques wrote my thoughts and Markus expanded on it with excellent post. As a person who is totally focused on shape and size of the swords, it is unfortunate that it is very rarely that experts share their thoughts on what they believe the original length of a shortened sword to be. They are rather focused on pinpointing the smith who made the item. For me that would be secondary stuff. I would much rather hear/read their thoughts on what kind of polearm (size,shape, etc) they thought naoshi X was originally. Or for ō-suriage katana it would be most interesting to read if they think it was 80,90,100 cm sword originally. I feel specialized definitions like kodachi, ōdachi etc. are bit difficult, as there should be some flexibility. There are some 60 to 65 cm swords that can be kodachi or tachi, and to be honest is there really any difference? They would just be short long swords. Similarly as I have focused my research on ōdachi, and by classification the defining line is 3 shaku, however there are swords around 88-89 cm length that I would basically say are ōdachi even though they fall tiny bit short of the actual classification. Similarily there are (extremely rare) katana that are 100-110 cm long that I classify as ōdachi as they are so far beyond average katana size. For the late Muromachi swords, technically there would be very little difference if the sword had 59 cm vs. 61 cm blade but by modern classification one would be wakizashi and other katana.

Thank you Sam, that does seem like an item with a wonderful story.

This is a personal take but I don't think den in front of item is too relevant, after all it is for mumei attributions and well they are attributions to begin with. I feel the item itself should be more important than some lines of text in description. The mumei Tametsugu discussed here is most likely very nice sword as it has passed the coveted Jūyō shinsa, congratulations Dustin for getting it. However I do admit I do not understand the sword at all. If I would see that sword without previous knowledge on anything about it I would maybe guess late Muromachi to Momoyama katana for it from pictures, I think I would not be able to figure out it is ō-suriage from these pictures alone. I think it is crucial to see swords in person for proper analysis, even though I admit with my skills it would still be extremely difficult to do identifications for mumei items. It feels crazy that I might not even be able to judge if the sword has been greatly shortened. I tried to do photoshopping for 20 minutes to bring my visualization to reality but couldn't make a proper one so I scrapped it... However I was measuring from the Jūyō book by ruler in old school style as my backup plan As NBTHK identifies this is an ō-suriage tachi and there is no hole below the 2 on the tang, then only logical explanation is that the original hole was removed by shortening. By my visualization if that indeed is the case then this would have been at minimum around 82 cm tachi in original form. I tried to do a nice photoshop side by side with current and presumed original blade in full size to get the idea. NBTHK expert in hand judgement is of course far superior to my personal opinion. For some reason there does not seem to be any long tachi by Tametsugu surviving to this date (just as note I do not believe the smith X only made ōdachi theory, as I do not think they were even that common in the period, and it surely cannot be true for every famed Nanbokuchō smith as there are ōdachi by almost unknown smiths remaining to this day). So far I have only found 2 signed tachi by Tametsugu, both would seem ubu and they are 72,4 cm and 68,2 cm. For comparison I have so far found 86 mumei katana with Tametsugu attribution (length range 75,5 cm to 61,8 cm), out of those 26 are with den prefix. Advances in AI have been so massive, I admit they far surpass my abilities to dig up information, and I think I am pretty good at it. It takes a person very long time to do what AI can achieve very fast. There are some mistakes it can make but it can also provide some information that might not be found by a single person. The difficult thing is that Japanese swords are extremely similar in shape and size throughout ages. Yes there are slight variations but in general I would say Japanese sword has changed quite little through history. It might be a generalization but the vast majority of sword fall within the common range. Identifying by just size and shape alone by AI or by a person can be very challenging. As that is my main identifying method I sometimes hit difficulties like that above. I just lack the skill to identify minor features, and I think AI could excel in this field beyond basic human ability if pictures/videos of very high quality were given to it.