Jussi Ekholm

I do believe it is legitimate sword by Norimitsu (則光) from Bizen province around mid-late Muromachi period. Now the "problem" is there were lots of Norimitsu (則光) smiths working during that time. So it would need an expert evaluation and in the end it could end up something extremely vague such as Norimitsu - Sue-Bizen, which does not pinpoint anything special. Around that time period I believe there were at least 7 "named" Norimitsu smiths and probably at least as much other Norimitsu smiths in Bizen.

I think the problems that happened at NBTHK in the past have multiple layers and even though we hear the stories etc. it all happened so long ago in the past and lot of factual information is lost due to time. I am not sure if people know but there were issues at branch shinsa in the early 70's too before the actual "scandal" that ended the old papering and new papering system takes now place only at HQ. I have acquired old Tōken Bijutsu magazines by NBTHK and they do feature some information about this. Unfortunately my Japanese is not suitable to really read/translate articles but I do think I somewhat got the point. For the earliest problems there were few points of action depending on how many items from branch shinsa would be sent to re-evaluation at HQ. Or you could send the item individually to re-evaluation at HQ (not through the branch). These problems led to termination on branch shinsa for a while. They were restarted and I believe run until the "scandal" hit, as it made NBTHK change their system. Personally I agree with Curran that to me they do carry some value. However I would not recommend making purchase based on the green papers, rather buying the item and the papers would be just accompanying the item. I remember Darcy used to oftern give a "barrel example" as in short that as more time passes the more better items with old papers get picked out of the barrel and only weak items remain. It makes perfect sense logically, and as so long has already passed you need to be bit cautious with items that carry old papers. NBTHK did offer in the beginning an upgrade option for the old papers if I remember correctly. For the set in the OP I think Steve made really logical explanation, and I dont think this would pass as a set through modern shinsa, not sure they would pass as a set even though everything would be attributed as Mino. I dont have much knowledge about fittings in general.

I am missing the book on session 55 but I will PM others to you.

NBTHK released the results of 68th Jūyō session 12.12. and can be found here: https://www.touken.or.jp/Portals/0/第68回重要刀剣等指定品発表.pdf I have always so much fun going through the results and like usual I wrote them out in western alphabet similar to the index I have made. Largest change to me was changing the format of whole index to Yu Mincho font (some very rare kanji are still in various fonts), as I got annoyed that there was continuous mix up of fonts. I will attach the 68th session PDF to here. Some very interesting items passed this time as usual, in general this seems to have been very picky session again as only 94 items passed from the 1097 items sent in. As I am not a fittings guy I am not 100% sure on reading of few of the rare signatures as I couldn't find any references online to them. Jūyō 68.pdf

Thanks for explaining what you see John, I was bit tired when reading the OP, of course you wrote it clearly in that too now that I read it again. Kirill and Steve wrote much better replies than I could regarding on the signature and how it is judged. I do think NBTHK is currently the most authorative body when it comes to Japanese swords, and to me they override old reference books. They have immensive combined knowledge gathered up. However they are not gods that never make mistakes. They do have information on hundreds of thousands of swords that I believe surpasses every other database in existence today. I would dare to guess they have total of hundreds of recorded various signatures of different signature types for this Nobuyoshi. However the sheer number of items sent to each Hozon & Tokubetsu Hozon shinsa makes the evaluation process at that level very quick. They cannot spend too much time on a single item in order to process through the items at reasonable pace. Unfortunately I dont believe outsiders would be allowed to see the shinsa process at NBTHK headquarters. I remember doing some fictional calculations based on the amount of submissions etc. that I posted here on the forum too, and I do personally feel at low level NBTHK shinsa the items get processed in conveyer belt fashion and average/regular items get processed through in fast pace while some items might get more thorough check up. They just dont have the time to spend hours on each item submitted, and cannot check every item with multiple resources and references they have available. I personally believe more timely and thorough checking of items by NBTHK starts at Jūyō level when the item has already achieved Tokubetsu Hozon status. However the submission number even for this level is still very high but the level of items sent in is also high. For example the latest yearly Jūyō shinsa results got published yesterday by NBTHK, 1097 items in total were sent in and 94 passed, 817 of the items sent in were swords. This is all published by NBTHK. I did some digging on the data on Hozon / Tokubetsu Hozon shinsa NBTHK published. With added speculation by me but I did some calculations that made me arrive at c. 2,500+ items sent into every sword Hozon / Tokubetsu Hozon shinsa that is run currently 4 times in a year. So in a year there would be c. 10,000 submissions for this lower level appraisal. The sheer volume makes it impossible to spend too much time on a single item. However the expert shinsa team has seen thousands and thousands of swords so I believe they can quickly evaluate items with very good results. Unfortunately I can't help much with this Nobuyoshi smith in particular as I focus my research on finding older items.

I am not sure if I understand the question correctly. What do you think is wrong in the NBTHK authenticated signature? Here are few more references with the signature 山城国住藤原信吉 https://www.seiyudo.com/wa-051112.htm https://www.juwelier-strebel.de/asienkunst/Japan/635-katana https://www.aoijapan.net/wakizashi-yamashiro-koku-jyu-fujiwara-nobuyoshi/ https://www.aoijapan.net/wakizashi-yamashiro-koku-ju-fujiwara-nobuyoshi-tsukuruno/ https://www.aoijapan.net/wakizashi-yamashiro-kuni-jyu-fujihara-nobuyoshi/

Here are 4 legitimate Unjū signatures on tanto & short wakizashi I have found so far. You can see some variation in the 4 reference signatures but I would be quite skeptical of the signature of the blade posted in OP.

I believe the attribution portion is - 尾張国藤原信屋 - Owari no kuni Fujiwara Nobuie

I am not a tsuba guy but very old tsuba are pretty much the only ones that are interesting to me. In general I don't really have tsuba books anymore as I focus on old swords. However years ago I got the book by Japanese Sword Museum: Iron Tsuba - The Works of the exhibition "Kurogane no hana". It has 5 Ko-Tōshō tsuba and 4 Ko-Katchūshi tsuba and in total c.45 pre-Edo iron tsuba in the book. As well as 6 Akasaka tsuba from Edo period. Unfortunately the text passages in the book are very short but I can recommend the above mentioned Tosogu Classroom series that is wonderful resource in English. I just checked and there are 2 Ko-Tōshō and 6 Ko-Katchūshi tsuba that have passed NBTHK Jūyō shinsa. What is interesting in that fact is that all 8 passed between sessions 43 - 52, I should have the books/pages for all of the 8. I was bit surprised only so few had passed.

I corrected as I had mistyped the year of dated tachi, it is 1298. This particular tachi is probably the only dated one in existence by Aritoshi as it is pretty much always mentioned when Aritoshi is mentioned (unfortunately I do not yet know the provenance of it or current whereabouts). I do believe it is often mentioned that Aritoshi has been listed being around Bunei (1264 - 1275) in Meikan but the one dated tachi remaining is much later than that. The second generation Chō Aritoshi is always listed as working c. Kenmu (1334-1336). Of course usually my source is NBTHK and for Jūyō they often just repeat the historical info on lineage etc. unless something new has been discovered over the years. However due to rarity of signed pieces by Aritoshi & Chō Aritoshi there will be bit of a problem. How much definitive stuff can you say about the work style if there are 5 signed pieces by Aritoshi and 2 by Chō Aritoshi remaining? I know Darcy wrote excellent stuff regarding how we should approach attributions. This is bit going to the subject of recent Shinsa decisions topic but it is sometimes very difficult to grasp the Jūyō passing. For example in Jūyō 31 session there was 1 den Aritoshi and 3 den Chō Aritoshi passing + 1 signed Tomoyuki ken, 1 mumei Taima and 3 mumei den Taima attributions. So that is 9 Taima blades in one session 8 of them mumei. In total there were 22 Yamato blades (From the 5 schools) passing and that Tomoyuki ken was the only signed one. There are some session that have high concentration on some stuff and then there can be long time with very little concentration. I know Darcy and few other computer guys have made extremely nice diagrams about passing numbers etc. I looked at the passed Yamato blades from session 60 to 67. Least passes were in 67 - 7, 60 - 9 and most in 64 - 19 and 63 - 18. On average in those 8 last sessions 12,75 Yamato blades passed. And as 7 of those recent sessions have featured signed Yamato swords passing (in 60 there werent any signed ones), as you have mumei Yamato sword passing Jūyō I would think it is very good quality blade. That is just my assumption as I am not able to see the items, and if Tanobe wrote long sayagaki it must be a good one . Will be nice to see the full list from NBTHK soon, even though we can't see the actual items that passed.

Unfortunately I don't yet have the book that Ian mentioned in above post but I will get it eventually, as it will be very interesting book. If you count all of the blades that I have found so far that are attributed towards Masamune (be it by den attribution, kinzōgan etc. that are authenticated by Government bodies, NBTHK or Museums, Shrines etc.), the number so far is 103 (there are 5 Jūyō blades that I do not yet have the books for). So it would be at least 108. Out of those at least 43 would be named swords (+1 Jūyō that I am missing). Even more of them could be named but I have not yet encountered their names in any references.

Congratulations 1) So far I believe there have been 39 swords by Aritoshi smiths or attributed as, in the 67 sessions. There are 4 signed tachi that have been awarded Jūyō status, and the one signed 長有俊 has been elevated to Tokubetsu Jūyō. I have found 2 other signed tachi by Aritoshi and one is dated to 1298, making the total of 6 signed tachi that I have been able to find so far. There is also gakumei katana signed 長有俊 that has made Jūyō. I cannot really say which is 1st gen and which is 2nd gen (Chō Aritoshi) but I took a look on the mumei attributions at Jūyō and I noticed I had made errors in falsely combining these 2 smiths under one category in my index and I just sorted it out. It seems that following are for towards Chō Aritoshi. 1 signed tachi, 1 gakumei katana, 13 mumei swords with Chō Aritoshi attribution and 7 swords with den Chō Aritoshi attribution. So I believe in total there would be 22 Jūyo swords that are towards Chō Aritoshi and 17 that are attributed towards the 1st gen. Of course this is only by looking at the one line attribution and not digging into what is said about these particular swords in the text portion.

Do you have a picture of the other side of the certificate? I would believe NTHK would have the attribution on that side.

Michael was faster than me, here are all of the 5 signed Tametsugu I have found so far. (can't understand why all of the pics are turned as they were correct position on phone...)

Great item, ticks the boxes for me, I think someone will be really happy with this one.

I think there is one problem as people can understand things differently. I personally classify smiths/schools by province in my own head. So regardless of the style they worked in, I have them by province, as to me it seems to be the most logical way.

I agree with Jacques in way that the more info there is available, the better it always is. Unfortunately I have to limit my own research to c. Early Muromachi at youngest. When you start getting to later Muromachi & Edo period there are just too many swords still remaining. I just don't have enough hours to track down all these younger swords, as old sword research takes almost all of my available free time that can be spent on swords.

I made new topic for signed Yamato stuff, as I don't want to derail this one and it is a nice subject to discuss. https://www.militaria.co.za/nmb/topic/42156-signed-yamato-works/ I know there are slight differences within the 5 schools of Yamato tradition. Unfortunately I cannot really tell them apart... I admit I am not good at kantei for mumei stuff. I can't yet grasp the slight differences and how they affect towards the attribution.

As we had a discussion about rarity of signed items by 5 Yamato schools in the thread: https://www.militaria.co.za/nmb/topic/41949-new-aquisition I thought I would make a new thread for the subject for not to derail that one from it's original topic. I have done lots of digging for signed Yamato stuff over the years and here are the results I have found so far. I only included early Muromachi (at latest) stuff in and cropped the possible mid-late Muromachi stuff out. The format will be Kokuhō - Jūyō Bunkazai - Jūyō Bijutsuhin - Tokubetsu Jūyō - Jūyo - Tokubetsu Hozon - Hozon - Others (swords at shrines, temples, museums etc. without special designation and stuff featured in reference books I have yet to locate accurately). Senjū'in Kokuhō 2 - Jūyō Bunkazai 3 - Jūyō Bijutsuhin 5 - Tokubetsu Jūyō 8 - Jūyo 33 - Tokubetsu Hozon 8 - Hozon 1 - Others 7 = 67 Taima Kokuhō 1 - Jūyō Bunkazai 1 - Jūyō Bijutsuhin 0 - Tokubetsu Jūyō 1 - Jūyo 13 - Tokubetsu Hozon 0 - Hozon 0 - Others 5 = 21 Tegai Kokuhō 1 - Jūyō Bunkazai 7 - Jūyō Bijutsuhin 6 - Tokubetsu Jūyō 7 - Jūyo 46 - Tokubetsu Hozon 2 - Hozon 2 - Others 18 = 89 Hoshō Kokuhō 1 - Jūyō Bunkazai 2 - Jūyō Bijutsuhin 5 - Tokubetsu Jūyō 5 - Jūyo 13 - Tokubetsu Hozon 0 - Hozon 0 - Others 0 = 26 Shikkake Kokuhō 0 - Jūyō Bunkazai 5 - Jūyō Bijutsuhin 2 - Tokubetsu Jūyō 2 - Jūyo 16 - Tokubetsu Hozon 2 - Hozon 3 - Others 10 = 39 In total the number seems to be at 243 items which is extremely few as some of the earliest signed Senjū'in items are from early Kamakura period, and latest Tegai & Shikkake stuff from Early Muromachi.

Just looked and 7 signed by Tegai smiths who worked during Ōei-bit later. There are Tegai smiths whose active period is spanning from late Nanbokuchō to early Muromachi so I left them in. And 6 signed Shikkake Norinaga blades that I assume are likely to be Muromachi period work (I cannot really identify their age properly but they are possibly by later generation). In overall I feel the most important Yamato smiths worked early Kamakura - Ōei, and there should be still 200+ signed ones for them. However to be noted there are lots of smiths who have very few signed works remaining. Then there are some like Tegai Kanenaga and Shikkake Norinaga from whom there are lots of signed items remaining. I liked the example by Okan. I feel the differences when attributing mumei stuff can be extremely small and different people tend to put certain traits to certain stuff. Shikkake - Tegai - Senjuin, etc. I feel just identification as Kamakura - Nanbokuchō Yamato work is good regardless of towards which the sword will be put. Of course the higher quality item it is, the easier it can be to see some of the identifying traits which made the experts choose one way or another.

While not the topic of the thread I looked as I have that tachi in 5 different references but all seemed to have the same picture or oshigata. It is famous tachi designated Jūyō Bijutsuhin and I think named Hōjumaru 宝寿丸太刀. Hopefully I could some day see it at Musashi Mitake Jinja. I was able to find small pics that show sugata online. Here it is featured at Jinja site, you'll get good idea of the sugata: http://musashimitakejinja.jp/homotsu_multilingual/ja/kokushitsu_ja.html , and see small pic here http://park2.wakwak.com/~ome.net/24bunkazai0111.html I suppose it is almost always displayed with the large Hōju Ōdachi that is also owned by the Jinja.

I looked and for the 5 core schools I have 214 signed swords so far. I know I am missing 39 signed ones that have made Jūyō in that count, so the total is bit over 250 as I will eventually get info on those too. Even though the number seems large they are still very rare in my opinion. Few of those might be c. Mid-Muromachi but almost all should be early Muromachi or earlier.

There is a book or 2 in Japanese that I haven't so far managed to get. This one: https://www.japaneseswordbooksandtsuba.com/store/books/b486-early-style-Japanese-sword-search-origin-curve Has 10 very interesting old Gassan swords featured and each has an explanation page in Japanese. This one also has the oldest Gassan tachi I have found so far.

Kirill had the same thought as I did. Work by Ōei period Sukemitsu (祐光) seems extremely difficult to find. However the Eikyō period Sukemitsu is the famous one. For him I have been able to find dated swords from 1437 until 1462. And he was followed by 2nd gen.

My best guess would be 兼英 - Kanehide Unfortunately this is the only reference mei I was able to find fast: