Bugyotsuji

When you put this set round your neck you may find that it slides down your front or down your back. You can hang a tassel or tool at the back as a counterweight, and a small primer flask from the ring at the front. We all tend to make our own rings or get one of the artisans to run one up. You can pull your Hayago down for filling the the barrel, and the flask down for priming the pan. The counterweight may tend to pull them back up afterwards if you have everything in the right balance.

It looks like eBay is alive and well! Congratulations Eric.

Thanks for posting your finds, Eric. There are fakes around, but yours look good. PS Is there a ring on the Hayago rope?

This box? You collect boxes too? Anyway, what makes you think I bought it?

Aw heck, just missed it! Happy Birthday! :D I am loving your stunning photos by the way,Carlo!

After a struggle I have somehow managed to get these pics. It is tied on a bed with a deerskin surface.

Just a quick note. I went round and took a series of shots, holding it in my hand for different angles, but my computer has suddenly decided not to recognize the memory stick any more. Been struggling for an hour: very frustrating. Someone I know paid 700,000 JPY for one of these little Hyotan Nambantetsu ingots. Are they so rare now? I was told they were in this Hyotan shape already as they arrived in Japan. The main lump was extruded and pinched to a flat area the size of a quarter dollar; this was further extruded and given a quarter twist to end like a slightly rounded but very thin/flat tip of a screwdriver. We are told that Hyotan had a high Phosphor content, but the survey shown in Nobody's link was done on a sample of only three ingots. Not a very wide base, I feel.

This has set me to wondering why they were made into different shapes originally. Did someone 'know' the element content? Was the shape an indication to others what type of steel it was, I wonder? Does 'Hyotan' have some sort of associative meaning like 'lemon' in English? Brian, I've now got the camera in the car so I'll see if I can get some time to go round there tomorrow.

Gulp!!! Always a step ahead! Now I do not need to take the photo any more! :lol: Many thanks, Koichi san.

Carlo, what is Yotan? You are saying Hyotan, right? Yes, I seem to be back here, for better or for worse. A few hours have passed. The ancient Britons often carried their yet-to-be-worked iron/steel as rings, I have read somewhere. Japanese swordsmiths plunged their incomplete swords into giant (eg Bizen-yaki) pots full of oil. The little ingot I saw yesterday was in the rough gourd shape of a Hyotan, with a larger clump at one end, then a waist, and then a smaller bulb, finally drawn out to a stalk. I'll see if I can remember to take my camera next time I visit.

Nice link Stephen. Thanks. Those puck/ingot sizes are quite small aren't they, Eric. They are quite close in volume. It was the specific shape that interested me, as much as, if not more than, the reverent packaging... and I am not sure if either puck (rounded object?) or ingot sound like what I saw. Perhaps the Dutch steel of differing shapes and sizes was melted down and reshaped for fair distribution throughout Japan, but of a recognizably different shape than a ball of Tamahagane? I wonder if what I was told is too much of a generalization or is in fact 'true'. Hmmm...

A propos of nothing, I was visiting a friend's house and he showed me a piece of 'Namban-tetsu'. Nothing remarkable, you might say, but indeed it was. It was in a special black presentation box and tied onto a green cushion, much as a Kozuka or a Tsuba might be, with ink brush writing on a white label describing the contents. I have never seen Namban Tetsu like this before, but I was told that it usually came in this shape, and was considered *extremely precious. Question: Has anyone ever come across one of these before? If not, can you guess what shape it was in? If you know the answer, please hold off for a few hours to see what people's guesses might be! :D Thanks. *Well, certainly more precious than its worth in weight as a lump of ballast steel!

Look up Kanzan (Chinese: Hanshan) and Jittoku (Ch: Shih-te).

Fpr more examples, click on Images, 4ｔｈ down. http://www.google.com/search?aq=1&oq=%E ... D%E8%8A%B3

Well, it does have some resemblance to a Kokeshi doll, and we all know what they were sometimes used for... although I suspect such energies were generally sublimated.

Brian, any closer than the three shots on the previous page? :D The only grinding is 'bump 'n grind' LOL

Damn, you guys got it! Yes, you wind the handle and some off-centre weights cause the broad end to wobble quite satisfactorily, providing a nice vibration/massage into your 'shoulders'.

Jean is surprisingly close. It is something that many ladies today enjoy having applied to themselves.

That was a clever find, Koichi san! Ron, not for pepper or even for salt! :? (It's about as long as your elbow to your fist.) In London now, bonny Scotland next month.

And that was just the plate. And the object? Voila!

OK, here goes:

:lol: Eric, the mystery object is in Japan and I am in the UK now, but the pics that I cleverly took before I left are in the camera here, and we are also having a patch of rain, so... watch this space, I guess!

Henry, is that because her family came with your wife? :lol:

We left at 9:00 am. The display in front of Himeji Castle (now half-wrapped in scaffolding) was from 3-3:30. Drenched in sweat we retreated and doffed armour. Then we donned the gear again with fresh sweet-smelling underwear and headed out for the collective 6:00 pm photo shoot with a group of Hime princesses dressed in ornate gold and red kimonos, and Himeji Castle as the backdrop. A treck to the main drag running from the station to the castle gates, and there we were formed up for the procession. Dying to sit down. The asphalt was hot underfoot as the high-pitched voice over the crackly loudspeakers shouted "Kuroda Kanbei for Taiga Drama!!! Ei-Ei-Ohhhhh............" At 8:00 pm (still around 90 degrees, or over 30) they let us walk the arcade blowing our shells for posterity, then we finally peeled/ripped the stuff off, got changed, and loaded the trucks with half a ton of clobber, before the trip to the dinner. Held in an old Saka-kura it was a group of Kuroda Kanbei supporters and lots of sake. Got home at 1:00am. One of the top experts in Japan on helmets paid me the supreme compliment. My Shikoro strings had suddenly given out during the display (rotten after hundreds? of years) and the shikoro were hanging half off. My friend had pulled out a length of wire and did a temporary repair. Back in the changing rooms, the helmet expert fingered the shikoro and said, I'll give you 40,000 JPY for these, er, no, make that 50,000 yen. I smiled at him pityingly. I mean, what would you do gentlemen, with a helmet missing the shikoro that were part of the original package back in 1615? There is an old Indian subcontinent saying that a rock can be lying in the bottom of a river for a million years, but someone can lift it out and in minutes it will be bone dry. I am flying back to the 'old dirt' tomorrow, so I hope that others will provide some interesting object for This Week's Edo Period Corner. (I did have one fascinating object prepared, but the response of late has been quite timid, IMHO. So I will keep it for a rainy day, hehehe...)

We can tell you what someone's written on the envelope, but not what's written on the paper. Also, just to be really nitpicky, it helps to put the envelope upright so we don't all have to adjust the photo or our necks; a picture of the tsuba itself can also help smooth out any difficulties in the subjective/objective description that someone has supplied for your Shoami.