Curran

My first thought was Choshu over Bushu. Lead fills in the nakago ana? That is a bit unusual for a Choshu or Bushu. That threw me a little bit, but I would chalk that up to having been added much later. Given my hard lean towards flower and tree designs, I remember having seen this design before. Not common. Memory keeps saying Choshu, though I doubt any one school owned this design. The inlay has a bit more of the Bushu flair to it. Ultimately, I'd let the iron tip my opinion between Choshu vs Bushu.

I am late to this thread and will have to read it in more depth to see if I can add any value. For now, here is one I have owned for a while. Thought it has gotten some surprising interactions out of tsuba scholars smarter than me, I have never inquired too much.

Not Ko-Nara. While there was a range on Ko-Nara designs, this is fairly far from from the Ko-Nara examples that I know.

Wow. That is a lot of work. Thank you @MauroP Two or three old friends are listed in there. Good to see them again.

Well, you know, a monster blade with a horimono to Hachiman comes out of the saya.... that band on the koshirae starts up the music Popeye style, and the lion shows it has some serious claws still sharp...

I know that I'm venting. I've got the mindspace and philosophical bend to try to Amor Fati this into a pleasant trip to Japan. I've never seen the sakura in spring. My tsuba live in Japan now. It might be nice to visit them there.

Don't. Give up on papering. It is over. Seriously. No, -really-, don't second guess this. DOA. So many headwinds for USA collectors, unless the Supreme Court actually rules against the current Tariff regime. I sent stuff before the Tariff shenanigans began. At present, it looks like I actually have to go to Japan to retrieve them.

Once more unto the breach. Otherwise, we shall flick your ear in this life.

That beautiful Higo copper patina. It always makes me jump mentally to Bizen ware and tea ceremony. Sometimes the Higo metal has that same micro texturing as Bizen ware. Probably was intentional, at least in the Hirata and Jingo (Shimizu) kinko works like this one. Nice tsuba.

Quite the rig all the way around. Right down to the sageo AND the shirasaya. I was going to praise the shirasaya before I even before I saw the stamp. Maybe the horn has been restored, but the same is exceptional quality. That is all around a 'flex' piece, quietly very strong all around. Beautiful looking blade too. It was made for quiet lion "umph" musculature when original, and looks so well maintained that it now has an old old lion beauty to it. I don't even know what material was used for under the saya lacquer. Interesting. @Okan Please take careful care of that one. Exceptional condition from head to toe. Wow. Definitely deserves to be on display with the right curator.

I wish I could unsee that one. wow. I do like the one that @When Necessary posted.

For starter's you can get Ito-san's books and the translations available. At times, groups have hired translators to do various Japanese texts. I have some of those translations, but not the rights to publicly share them. And I am in no rush to give up competitive advantage to AI. A simple example that many people know is the koban shape of the Hayashi tsuba seppa dai, especially nidai and sandai. Some like the Nishigaki and Hayashi had no problem intruding the design onto the seppa dai (hidden by seppa or tsuka). Pics attached. These are some of the largest seppa dai you will see in Higo, and the Kamiyoshi followed their Hayashi forebearers with some large seppa dai in late edo. Saya had gotten thicker n thicker by then. A Kamiyoshi pic attached, though it seems to have been spun 90 degrees. Kamiyoshi mostly lost the koban shape of the Hayashi, though sometimes did a darn good utsushi. Others like shodai Akasaka Tadamasa had rather pointy egg shaped seppa dai. I don't own or have an example of that.

Okay- teasing you a bit: you want a simple grand formula, then go with E=mc^2 More serious: with each school and each maker, there are _SOFT_ rules about size, shape, finish, and %_percentage of seppa dai vs total volume displacement of the tsuba. The seppa dai size is partially constrained by the surface area displacement of the saya and the tsuka. A tsuba with a seppa dai so much larger than the saya and tsuka face displacement = looks weird and unaesthetic. At least amongst the Higo schools, certain schools and certain generation had specific rules. Thus the seppa dai is a very important kantei point amongst Higo schools. This is also true of Akasaka tsuba. This tsuba has a seppa dai and hitsu ana % that is greater than almost anything seen from 1500 to 1910. It has ratios only seen in tanto tsuba, but it is definitely not a tanto tsuba. The far most likely reason you might end at this sort of ratio is if you are creating a tsuba for display that is not meant to be mounted, free of mounted aesthetics, .....----or is for a massively thick non-Momoyama/Edo saya and tsuka. Therefore: either it is a very eccentric late Edo or Meiji era tsuba, or it is a 20th century work. Those are my thoughts.

Yes. I thought that likely too. Other than some of the ratios being very Un-Edo, it is a very well made tsuba. Someone had skills.

Oooff. I had similar thoughts, but the geometry seems younger. Beginning to think it is Meiji or newer. Very well made, so I hesitate at saying post WWII. Size ratio of the seppa dai and the hitsu-ana do open up to me the idea of whether it possible it was made by a talented Japanese artists somewhere in the 1960s or so? But there is a lot of good workmanship in there. I find this one challenging.

He passed in 2022. For what is is worth, I've seen some of his tsuba out there with recent Hozon papers. Long ago, I owned a nice Nobuiye utsushi by him, but traded it to Arnold Frenzel at one point. I liked the one from Arnold, but the Naruki Issei (Issei Naruki) certainly went up in value.

Thank you. Given my Owari focus, this is one I really want to own.

It looks a lot better in the newer pictures than what we saw before. A frack-ton more silver nunome than I was expecting. What we believed was shiny overcleaning might have been more silver reflecting. Interesting tsuba. It must have been a real BLING! piece back in the day.

? not sure what you mean. Yes, the tariff will have some impact- but this is one purchase where I would just eat the cost. However... that said: I did try and buy the book today, but found that I could not complete the purchase. Shipping to the USA was not an option. Probably tariff related issue. My two main interest have been Higo (especially kinko) and Owari (iron). It has been a long time since I so anticipated a book. If I have to beg someone going the DTI to send me back a copy, I probably will.

One way of looking at it: Top level guys doing fittings for the govt Tokugawa types go to = Goto, individually hand tooled stuff Higher officials needing work appropriate gear go to = Yoshioka shop, good formal. Some minor time saving shortcuts ex: https://www.aoijapan.com/kozuka-kogatana-yoshioka-inabasuke/ Other bureaucrats needing a rig, but a bit more cost go to = Yasuda shop, also pretty good- but maybe more gold plated or lacking in specifics of design. Example: https://www.aoijapan.com/kozuka-mumeiyasuda/ Or ... Fifth Avenue NYC, vs Off Fifth Avenue, vs Filene's Basement / Century 21. All decent, but how bespoke is it? You have Tokugawa mon on the kozuka and kogai. They look very clean yet not too ostentatious in execution. If you look at the nanako, probably it is very uniform and consistently the same size. Yoshioka work is often very clean and strongly uniform elements in the execution. Put another way, they had High quality control. Often unsigned. When they wanted to, they could kick it up a notch or two- so not all Yoshioka work is the same level. Tokugawa mon+ fairly formal with no signs of gold loss + very precise nanako => first guess is Yoshioka.

I thought Yoshioka or Yasuda (cousins) for the kozuka and kogai. I get @Bazza call for that with the tsuba, though gut instinct is towards something else. Not sure exactly what. Yoshioka isn't a bad stab at it. Just generally looks like a very good package. Even the seppa are better than most. Full choji and visible utsuri on the blade too. Why don't things like this ever pop up in my area? --Last sword to pop up near me had 4 hagire. 4. It was a wonder the blade hadn't snapped yet.

Yep. Memory says that aquamarine shot up in value in the late 1990s to early 2000s. Since 2004, I've been out of the community. Blue Topaz is something that definitely invaded the markets in the 21st century. In my past, I never saw it. Upon looking at the golden Tokugawa tachi-koshirae with magnification, it looks like a use of ruby, blue sapphire, a lighter jewel tone that I guessed to be aquamarine... but might be something else. While we see coral, jade, etc on some of the tsuba from the 1800s, rarer gemstones seem to have seldomly been used.

Link 1: https://romanceofmen.com/blogs/katana-info/what-is-koshirae?srsltid=AfmBOopl-20hAXeUlQXTVpH0pOyXCWeGtfwsPg0zq5oYBjDGU7QAE1bU I also pulled the Tokugawa book and found the gold tachi koshirae on page 100. I was not able to find the image online and expand it, but I can say from the book that it looks like it has been set with some small rubies or very red carnelians. Possibly some aquamarine too, or light blue spectrum stone. Given period of manufacture, the aquamarine is more likely than the blue topaz we see a lot of these days. Curran www.irontsuba.com

That was my thought. A pretty material that was once common, and now hard or expensive to come by.

Some Tokugawa tachi koshirae have a variety of stones. I'd have to pull the Tokugawa book to remind myself what stones. Background: had family and a friend who were bench jewelers. 20 years of hanging with them, and you learn a bit about stones by osmosis. I'm not a expert, but know a lot more than many.