Jussi Ekholm

I believe it is 土肥真了- Doi Shinryō

Great idea Joe! I wish you will get a good group running in the Midwest.

Yep that is really nice sword and nice deal. The unfortunate thing is my lack of funds...

Hello Stefan and welcome to the forum. Nice to hear you are living in Stockholm as NBTHK Scandinavia has many members in Stockholm and it is the place for our meetings. I will send you better private message when I get home from work. You will get excellent hands on help in Stockholm.

I don't have too many books on historical koshirae but I've got few historical examples. In Uchigatana koshirae book, both are katate-uchi with shinobi-ana. 48. Sukesada blade 1524 with shinobi-ana, koshirae is dated to been made in 1598. 63. Kiyomitsu blade 1514 with shinobi-ana, koshirae is dated to been made around 1660 - 1700 In Koshirae Taikan there is one Bakumatsu era Niten-koshirae that has 2 mekugi. Personally I am not sure about the need & functionality of this shinobi-ana. As many very large ōdachi from Nanbokuchō period survived perfectly well with only 1 mekugi that would indicate it is not necessary even for swords with massive blades and use during war times. However several ōdachi also have the shinobi-ana which is again reasonable given how large some of the swords are. I just checked the Futarasan-jinja ōdachi book that I have and shortest one with shinobi-ana had nagasa of 117,8 cm and longest one without shinobi-ana, nagasa is 133,8 cm (but the 1 ana is in lower portion of nakago) and 126,0 cm for more regular ana placement.

I've kept my eye on the one at Ryujinswords ever since it came up. That tachi blade is something I love but unfortunately for me it has the koshirae. As it is "total package" it pushes it much further from my grasp, and nobody wants to break a set like that. Well wouldn't have money for it in few years either way... I would love to read more about the blade itself but feels like in this the koshirae is a major selling point. Even though I am usually a fan of Naminohira swords I personally am not attracted to the one at Nihontoantiques. Well I am extremely picky with my taste.

Can you give use the measurements? Based on the pictures I see it is not made in katate uchi style. This one seems to have a short blade and long tang. Many Japanese swords are good for one handed use because they are so short in length even though they are often relatively heavy for their size due to thickness.

I think most collectors in here are not using their swords for cutting but I personally don't think using a modern made Japanese sword for cutting is doing anything too bad for the sword. Of course you will get so wear over time but nothing too bad. Getting a better polish when the sword is in using stage would be in my opinion money thrown in the well. It is better to get the polish only when you retire the sword from use. As far as polishers go I can't recommend anyone. I would advise looking at the worksmanship and background of polishers that you like and choosing a polisher based on those things.

Is the mei inserted on?

I would agree with Uwe - 城州

These also work very well on phones. I got bunch of these on my phone and I use them a lot while on the move. I have to recommend especially this book. You will be getting amazing koshirae reference for a tiny investment. Koshirae Taikan ..... $59.90 - $30

I think it's a good honest sword that would be a nice sword to own and study. Unfortunately it does not fit the direction where I am trying to go with my own collection so it is not a sword for me personally. However I believe it is much better value for money than several of the items on my own watchlist. I like how you put up this topic Stephen as it is important for many new people to know you can find nice swords for decent prices. There are actually plenty of good deals around for a smaller budget. I think the important thing is to be able to find them which can be difficult for new collectors. Of course different people value different things when choosing their swords so it's good that there is variance. In general I think that many dealers around the world have much better deals than the eBay "bargains". Of course there is the little excitement factor in trying to find few gems from eBay but generally I think you will get a lot better value for money from known dealers (or from forums like NMB).

I cannot speak for Darcy but I believe he means the sword has been altered during it's history like this. (Image is from old Bushido magazines)

I would think towards Uda too. You can check good reference examples from early 1400's in Markus' Kotō-kantei (which I am sure you have already checked). I think this is somewhat the rougher "style" people think generally about Uda. I have seen so limited amount of blades in hand but I happened to saw very nice tanto of Uda school at NBTHK Scandinavia meeting. If I remember correctly it was by Uda Kunihisa and had very fine jihada, bit of opposite of average thought of Uda. So I think your blade would be more "typical" Uda blade with standing out jihada.

日本刀装武具研究会 - Nihon Toso Bugu Kenkyu Kai? I do not know that organization.

Depending on the criteria I would say we have about 0-30 in Finland. I guess around 10 ish would be a good number of active collectors in here.

Thanks for posting this Uwe this was really fun one to try. Sword was very interesting.

While it is way over my league to comment on differences on Aoe smiths I have enjoyed greatly about reading the discussions. However I will have to point out that Aoi has again done the wrong unit conversion. My first thought was that the sori looks about 3 cm. Their Japanese site has measurement of 1 sun 5 rin which is c. 3,18 cm and not the stated 4,54 cm.

Well I'm not generally much of a topic starter especially about tsuba but I thought this one would be nice to share so that many might see this for the first time. I've never really been a big fan of Nanban items and never even gave them too much thought before attending to one Scandinavian NBTHK meeting some years ago which had Nanban fittings as one of the meeting themes and it opened my eyes for these. I am still not a fan of these but now I look these with bit different eye. I've seen and handled some small swords and one interesting thing is the small sword guard - tsuba relation and small sword guards influencing some Nanban tsuba. And on my weekendly browsing I stumbled upon this: http://nihontocraft.com/Namban_Tsuba_.htm It has been featured in the KTK article by Fred Geyer and might be well known for tsuba guys but I thought it is very interesting for many of us.

It is really nice to read the explanations and what more experienced eyes are seeing. I think the difficult part for many of us beginners would be first figuring out that the 2nd one is a Kanayama tsuba. I understand the situation Ben is decribing in the opening post. It is sometimes for a beginner really hard to tell the origin of the item especially in a situation like this when the design is common. Out of curiosity again what attribution the first one has, or is it just a mumei tsuba without papers/identification?

Can't get the both sides file downloaded. This is too difficult one for me to guess but here goes. Late Nanbokuchō to Early Muromachi - Hokkoku-mono - Uda school - Kunimune

So a Kanayama attribution. (not that it tells me much about pricing) It is important to carefully check eBay sellers and do the research. As Pete pointed out the original listing there is huge difference in price between that and the eBay sale.

I think we here might be able to give some assistance on database if needed. If you are thinking about starting small, maybe you could try to focus at first to some smaller time period & maybe few schools? For example Shinshintō and larger schools during that? I was just looking at Connoisseurs and it has 14 different Major topics for that period that you could start building on using as your base guide. I think more narrower field would be a lot easier to try on your test run. The reason why I am recommending a much smaller field at first is the fact that there are so many different swordmaking schools during the history of Japan, it is a monumental task trying to handle all at the beginning.

I'm no tsuba guy but out of those two I would pick number 1, to my untrained eye it just looks better aesthetically. Unfortunately I don't like Tokei tsuba at all, it is just not a style I like. Out of curiosity what attibution the number 2 has?

飛騨守藤原氏房 - Hida no Kami Fujiwara Ujifusa, seller has it correct in my opinion.