Carlo Giuseppe Tacchini

To Bore me with pictures of NihonTo and Katchu (and everything concern ancient Japan) ? You need more then 16 giga... :lol: http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,12840 ... ticle.html

Hi John. Well deserved trip, after all those blizzards, nevertheless I still hate you :lol: Can't remember if you've already visited Omishima :

Euro' strenght help too.

Welcome back John. Blizzards stopped enough to return to post, eh ? :D

here in Italy an antiques and militaria dealer in Florence is selling a machine made gunto with well preserved mount at 1,000.00 euro, not U$. Almost 40% more then yours. Obvious madness. Once in England and Paris you were able to find NihonTo at flea markets for dirty cheap. Bounds of Shingunto mounts to search in. It was enough to watch and pick up the one with the "odd" curvature, et... Voilà . Purchased, polished and stored. I was a boy in the '70s but I remember a friend of mine, now passed away, making it. He passed to me a Naginata purchased in a very similar way.

My favourite : http://photobucket.com/

Hi Simon. Likely the hi is on Omote only. Looks like a shortened sword that had a koshibi now buried under the tsuka.

Better late then never. So this thread will shows some different examples for future references :

Hi Paul. Great post, no matter if the blade is faked or not. I have a question about the process you've so beautifully explained. Why has been choosen a different style of Yasurime for the altered part ? If the old was Higaki the reason is obvious but Takanoha ? Is still too difficult to make the upper part uniformed to the lower one or is intentionally made exactly to not be misunderstood as an attempt to fake ?

Hi Syd. Check your e-mail. If only I knew you needed it. I sold a copy of the de-luxe version sometime ago in favour of Genise : http://forums.swordforum.com/showthread.php?t=68467 The other "regular" copy has been sold out too.

Moriyama san, fell free to send the pages as you share the same time zone. Syd, I'll revert anyway to the mail this evening (italian time).

A lot of money, indeed. AFAIK even the "De Luxe" red edition is far from that price.

I'm at work now. I'll search and revert asap. Drop me a mail at tsubame1@tin.it and I'll revert with scans of the Japanese pages. Best.

:lol:

Thanks Guido. A beautiful one.

Guido, I'm intrigued by the Tachi that accompains the armor you've previously posted. Has it a Yamashiro or Yamato blade ?

Guess an in-hand judgment is still more important then date and details.

Hi Moriyama-San. Can't they be read as the 5 virtues a soldier was supposed to have ( Courtesy Truthfulness Courage Frugality Loyalty ) ?

Hi Jean. Sengokujidai is usually considered starting with the Onin war (1467), so quite before the date of this sword. 50 years are more then enough to start a mass-production effort (if it wasn't already in act for export) even in medieval times, but I'm nothing to correct Aoi-art. Just saying that historically speaking that sword was produced well into the period is ascribed to. Likely there weren't (yet) the gigantic armies that required so many Kazuuchimono as in the end of Sengokujidai, and possibly this is what they mean here. This could lead us in searching for "level of quality" among kazuuchimono, and possibly earlier ones were, generally speaking and with exceptions, still better then later ones when they were cranked out in the ten of thousand.

Hi Nigel. Guess there is some issue with Google, as I see (from both links) a page in italian and I assume you've not searched for my language. No download available for me too. Now you're still in Europe or back to base ?

Quote from the article : The market in derivatives -- not for the stock, but for the right to trade it -- is even bigger. About 1.2 trillion stock index futures contracts were traded globally in 2006 -- the total risk was worth about $73 trillion. unquote. Total Gambling. Electronic or not ? Here too the human factor is the difference. But if in NihonTo studies you can only make damage to yourself (or a very few others...) here the potential is much greater. Sadly this field is where the best minds spend their efforts, when global warming will remind them they (well us...) are just playing with something that doesn't exists.

Hi Andrew. Your blade has been produced for artic climate use. Follow the link Moriyama-San posted scrolling down a little, after the Japanese part). If you are interested in traditional NihonTo better suited to arctic climate then the "average" ones google "Ura Nihon no Toko".

Thanks Moriyama San. No inscriptions on the back. Seems to me it has no reference to a period so I dated it accordingly to the shape, dimensions, quality and theme. I've seen others very similar dated to 1905 war, but I can't be sure on this one.

Andrew, guess you'll like this wakizashi. Izumo Daijo Fujiwara Yoshitake, Yamashiro den, active around 1681 - 1684

Piers, they were very cheap when I purchased them. Some costed more in shipping fees then tag price. Now seems prices rised a lot. The alliance flags cost me >150,00 U$ !